A THEATRICAL FEAST Island entertainers team up to indulge audiences. Page 10
ARTS | Composer recognized
A NIGHT OF SCHOOL PRIDE High school royalty parades around at Homecoming. Page 17
for innovative music. Page 10 NEWS | Beachcomber named best for its size. Page 4 PARKS | Longtime park district dispute goes to court. Page 5
BEACHCOMBER VASHON-MAURY ISLAND
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2011
Vol. 56, No. 38
www.vashonbeachcomber.com
Students make use of nature’s classroom Thanks to a county grant, a once-barren site has become a living pond By NATALIE JOHNSON Staff Writer
Kay Burrell’s fifth-grade class buzzed with excitement on Monday afternoon as the single-file line of kids approached a small detention pond just beginning to fill from the autumn rain. Surrounded by thick woods, only the noise of the playground in the distance reminded the students bundled in sweatshirts and raincoats that they were still near their elementary school. Circling the water, the children quieted. Some stood and others sat in the grass as Burrell asked them to write in their science journals about what had changed at the pond since their last visit, about a month ago when the pond was dry and the grass and bushes around it a different color. Suddenly Burrell stopped midsentence. “Shhh. Listen,” she said. “What’s that?” “A frog,” one boy shouted out as a Pacific tree frog continued to chirp nearby. “That’s a good thing about being quiet when you’re a scientist,” Burrell said with a smile. At a time when school funding is tight and many extracurricular
75¢
A new reality: Some school programs hang by a thread By LESLIE BROWN Staff Writer
until 5 a.m. Oct. 31 will mark the longest shutdown of a Seattle-area highway in the state’s history, traffic officials say. And many, like Pearson, are expecting the worst. The Seattle region is already heavily congested during commute hours. Add the 110,000 drivers who will be displaced by the closure of the north-south arterial along Seattle’s waterfront, traffic experts say, and the result will likely be several days of the toughest commute in the region’s history — especially at the beginning, before commuters find their way
Jackie Merrill remembers her Camp Waskowitz experience as a fifth-grader on Vashon Island — feeling at first scared to go, then, after a week at the rustic cluster of cabins in the foothills of the Cascades, wishing she didn’t have to leave. That was 32 years ago. Now, she’s one of a handful of parents scrambling to try to save a fifth-grade rite of passage that has become the stuff of legend on Vashon. An intensive and largely successful fundraising campaign in support of the Vashon Island School District earlier this year enabled the district to maintain all of its academic programs and teaching positions, several of which were threatened by a sizable budget gap. But despite the ambitious campaign, which brought in more than $450,000 from parents and other Islanders in support of the district, the public school system is still facing the reality of a declining budget, said Superintendent Michael Soltman. And the outdoor school known as Camp Waskowitz could become one of the casualties. “We’re not able to do everything anymore,” he said. Last spring’s fundraising campaign played an integral role, he noted. “We were able to preserve the academic programs and the class size.” But with another state deficit looming that could force mid-year cuts in the school district’s budget for the second year in a row, Soltman — like superintendents and school board members across the state — says he and his staff are having to face a new reality.
SEE VIADUCT, 19
SEE OUTDOOR SCHOOL, 20
Natalie Johnson/Staff Photo
Students from Kay Burrell’s fifth-grade class sit next to the detention pond Monday, recording what they see and hear. programs are threatened, the fifth graders are learning about science at the school district’s new living pond, an outdoor classroom made possible by a King County Waterworks grant the district received in 2009. At that time the detention pond — built in the woods behind the school in 1993 to capture runoff from the Chautauqua Elementary
and McMurray Middle School campuses — lay barren as it was regularly cleared of vegetation to comply with county code. But since the school district got special permission from the county to use the area as an outdoor learning space, the pond has slowly sprung to life. High school interns funded by the grant and led by David Warren
of the Vashon Forest Stewards cleared blackberry bushes and Scotch broom that surrounded the area’s perimeter. With help from high school horticulture students and Master Gardener volunteers, they planted native trees and shrubs around the pond, which swells to about half the size of a SEE POND, 12
Viaduct’s closure could hit Vashon hard, some predict Many brace for the region’s longest highway shutdown By LESLIE BROWN Staff Writer
Glenda Pearson, a University of Washington librarian, already rises at an ungodly hour to feed her many animals before making her long commute via a vanpool to Seattle. Next week, however, when the Alaskan Way Viaduct shuts down for a little more than a week, the Vashon woman is braced for an even
earlier start to her day — rising at 3:15 a.m. instead of 3:30. The goal, she said, is to get her vanpool onto the 6:25 a.m. walk-on-only boat, which allows two vans to board, instead of the 6:40 a.m. boat the van usually catches. But even with an earlier start, she’s expecting a tough commute. Asked what she thinks her daily trek into Seattle will be like for those nine days when the viaduct closes, she answered in a word: “A nightmare,” she said. “Our major concern is that some people have to be on campus by a certain time, and that won’t be possible, we don’t think,” she said. The viaduct’s closure from 7:30 p.m. Oct. 21