Last year, the five commissioners who make up the Vashon Island Fire & Rescue board received, all told, $16,932. How? For the most part, simply by attending board meetings.
Most of us will agree that we frequently experience weird weather around here, so it’s high time we put colorful names to these widely varied atmospheric conditions.
A perfect October storm approacheth, one that threatens, at least in the short term, our very way of life. Mine anyway. I refer, of course, to the simultaneous late October closings of the Viaduct (repairs), and the Island Center Forest (deer hunting). It makes me think: “Where’s the Freedom?,” or “WTF?”
It’s unfortunate that the dispute between the Rosser family and the Vashon Park District is heading to court. Only a few months ago, it appeared, a settlement was nearly at hand, thanks to the efforts of longtime Islander Ray Aspiri, who stepped in to negotiate.
For the past few months, I have been serving on the Vashon High School Design Advisory Committee. I am pleased to have done so. However, I feel that there is an elephant in the room that only a few people want to see.
When I was 12, my mom married a man she had known less than a year. He came into our lives laughing and full of life and left our lives like the grim reaper.
As the front page of this week’s Beachcomber so clearly shows, the picture is mixed when it comes to the state of the Vashon Island School District.
A couple of years ago, Bill Knox, a Vashon resident and the grandfather of Amanda Knox, told The Beachcomber he would not speak publicly about the lurid case that had put his granddaughter behind bars and under an international spotlight — until she was freed.
Carlos Hernandez and his wife Maritza welcome me into their home and introduce their daughters. Only their son, Carlos Jr., 11, is not there. The conversation jumps back and forth between English and Spanish, with Cindi, 18, and Daisy, 16, speaking both languages flawlessly.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that there are profound seasonal changes underway on our Island. No, I don’t mean that our tomatoes are finally starting to ripen or that we are about to be swamped by a tsunami of zucchini. And I don’t mean the coming of fall. I mean the going of the Summer People. That’s right: Their semi-annual migration is now complete.
It’s a shame that the people left picking up the pieces of a scheduling error that placed homecoming on Yom Kippur are three or four seniors at Vashon High School. They’re the ones who are now scrambling, working fast and furiously to reschedule an event that takes place in a matter of days.
Big issues have dominated Vashon’s public education narrative of late. Staggering budget cuts and failing facilities are two examples that come to mind. But this focus on big dollar problems has obscured the fact that education is an incremental process. Each child’s knowledge accrues one class, one discovery, one assignment and one experience at a time. And it’s our teachers who create and manage these micro learning opportunities. Isn’t there an effective, low-cost way to support them in this effort?
I want to thank Steve Haworth for stretching our minds about the Oberlin Project and for others who have expressed their opinions about the two proposed arts facilities on our Island. After reading Steve’s columns, getting information about Vashon Allied Arts’ proposed arts center and learning more about the plans for the high school, I recognize the need for two facilities. But I want to express my concerns about building two similarly sized facilities and the siting of the VAA building.
