REVIEW BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
Friday, November 20, 2015 | Vol. 90, No. 47 | WWW.BAINBRIDGEREVIEW.COM | 75¢
Not easy to be cheesy at BHS
Cooking students slip into the frying pan for grilled cheese contest BY BRIAN KELLY
Bainbridge Island Review
If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen, or so the old saying goes. It’s a bit more complicated at Bainbridge High: If you can’t stand the cheese, stay out of the voting booth. At least, that was the case one recent Friday afternoon in teacher Ryenn Deitz’s advanced foods class as her students gathered around their Kenmore stoves in a frenzied effort to invent the greatest thing since sliced bread — with cheese. It was the class’ first-ever grilled cheese sandwich competition. Teams of two to four students sliced, diced, sautéed and sizzled their way in a delicious dash to finish six sandwiches while a crowd of invited judges — a few dozen BHS staff, students and invited guests — hovered nearby, waiting to taste and judge the students’ culinary creations. The air was thick with the smell of bacon as the teams raced the clock to finish their sandwiches. Deitz said her class typically does a chili cookoff every year, but decided to mix things up with a grilled-cheese contest this semester. But these weren’t your grandmother’s grilled cheeses. “Dude! Less butter!” Ryan Holt pleaded to his teammate as he spread guacamole on a slice of bread. Gabriel Emert, the man with the spatula, inspected his skillet and his soggy slices. This bit of butter was turning out to be the toughest part of getting their sandwiches right, Emert said, because the bread needs to be a beautiful brown. “If it’s too buttery, it’ll be dark. If it’s not buttery enough, it will just burn,” he said. Emert looked for more ingredients for another sandwich, and glanced at an almost empty plate that held the last
INSIDE: Spartans win state crown, A22
Chapel to step down as superintendent of Bainbridge schools Leaving post of eight years at the end of the school year BY JESSICA SHELTON Bainbridge Island Review
Brian Kelly | Bainbridge Island Review
BHS student chefs Morgan Du Bois and Kenny Dosono assemble their artisan grilled cheese during the recent cookoff. Below, an example of one sandwich.
lonely bits of a hash brown. Their sandwich, he explained, was a takeoff on a recipe they had found on a website called Grilled Cheese Academy. “We kind of put our own style on it,” he said. The ingredients included hashedbrown taters, a bit of Brie, bacon, eggs and grated cheddar packed into two slices of sourdough. There was also some guac, of course, and a little garlic tossed in. “We’re hoping that the guacamole and the egg cut through the cheddar,”
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Holt said. At a nearby station, Morgan Du Bois and Kenny Dosono were putting together their sandwiches using a completely original recipe. Built on slices of a French baguette, it included Swiss and Parmesan, sautéed potato slices, bacon, green pepper slivers and onion, with a creamy cauliflower sauce spread on the bread. Du Bois said he never had to cook under pressure before, and with his next class coming at 3 p.m., the deadline was getting ever closer. The pair, like many other teams, said they didn’t have time to taste test their concoction. That, they said, they’ll leave up to the judges. “We’ll pretty much test it under fire. It’s either going to be good, or ‘Please don’t make this ever again,’” Du Bois laughed. Deitz said she put only a few restrictions on the recipes. Students had to use at least two types of cheese — but no more than three — and they also had to use something from three different food groups. Sophie Crandell was putting together a creation using classic French bread. “We actually have some barbecue sauce, some caramelized onion. We have some turkey marinated in pesto,” she said. TURN TO CHEESY | A27
Bainbridge Island School District Superintendent Faith Chapel is stepping down, and the school board is gearing up to find her replacement. In a letter sent to the school board last Friday, Chapel announced her retirement and said it was an honor to work on Bainbridge, where she has been since 2001, serving as superintendent for the past eight years. “I want to express my gratitude to you and to the Bainbridge Island community for the opportunity to serve as the superintendent of one of the finest public school districts in the nation,” Chapel said in the letter. “It has been an honor to work with you and with a dedicated and talented group of administrators, certificated and classified staff to build upon a longstanding tradition of educational excellence and set the stage for the future,” she added. District officials said Chapel will be missed. “Faith has been an outstanding superintendent for our district,” said School Board President Mev Hoberg. “She took the district’s helm at the beginning of the recession and successfully guided us through very trying economic times,” Hoberg said. “We emerged strong, and with her leadership we have focused on improving student growth and teacher development. She has set us on a great path, and we will truly miss her.” Hoberg added that although Chapel will prob-
Faith Chapel ably be remembered for her financial stewardship, “she’s done so much more.” “During the hard economic times, a lot of districts were cutting their music and arts specialists and we kept ours because that was important to her — educating the whole kid. “She was also focused on tightening things up in terms of data; how are we measuring how our kids are doing? She was instrumental in getting the focus on doing the right kind of measurements.” The biggest challenge during Chapel’s tenure, Hoberg said, was state-level finances — “the fact that we couldn’t count on the state to do what they were supposed to do.” And that’s still a challenge, Hoberg added, something the next superintendent will have to deal with. The school district will launch a comprehensive search process to select the district’s next superintendent. Officials said the effort will begin next week with a request for proposals from headhunter firms with experience hiring superintendents. Chapel’s retirement takes effect on June 30. While the school board hopes to have a replacement for Chapel in place by TURN TO CHAPEL | A4