Bainbridge Conversation

As we reported last week, the Bainbridge Island School District is studying the possibility of closing a school building, in the face of declining budgets and enrollment.

A School Configuration Committee began meeting last fall and has identified three options for grade and school configurations. One option would maintain the status quo. Two options would relocate Ordway Elementary students and staff, move Commodore Options School to the Ordway building, and close the Commodore campus. No changes would be made until the 2014-15 school year, at the earliest.

Community outreach is the next step in the process and the district announced firm dates for a series of public meetings this week:

• May 7: 7 p.m., Commodore Options School commons, 9530 NE High School Road.
• May 14: 7 p.m., Wilkes Elementary School commons, 12781 Madison Avenue NE.
• May 16: 7 p.m., Bainbridge High School commons, 9330 NE High School Road.

A presentation will be given at each meeting and public comment will be taken. Materials from the Configuration Committee meetings can be found here.

(The first meeting date has been corrected from an earlier version).

Apparently Bainbridge middle school students really know how to write essays.

Last week Woodward Middle School student Julia Batson won the state Letters About Literature contest and moved on to the national competition. This week the school district received word that Odyssey seventh grader Michaela Leung is a champion of the NASA Titan & Europa Essay contest.

The contest challenged students choose the goal for the next NASA outer solar system mission. Students could pick between Saturn’s moon, Titan, or Jupiter’s moon, Europa as the target for the mission. They were asked to defend their choice based on its scientific value.

The winning essays will be posted shortly. Winning classes will be invited to take part in a teleconference with NASA scientists. Judges complemented Leung “articulate prose and sound scientific zeal” in their announcement of the award.

Leung won the Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest in 2012. You can read that essay here.

(This version corrects an earlier post with amended information from the school district.)

A Bainbridge Island middle school student is one of three champions of the state Letters About Literature competition. The competition, sponsored by the Washington State Library and the Library of Congress, encourages students to write letters to their favorite authors. About 3,400 letters were submitted.

Woodward Middle School seventh grader Julia Batson won her age group with a letter to Randa Abdel-Fattah, author of “Ten Things I Hate About Me.” In her letter, Batson discussed how the book changed her thoughts on discrimination, friendship, and the struggle to find a place in a peer group.

“… it became clear to me that even though being myself is hard, the people who will admire me for doing so outnumber those who will make fun of me for it.” Batson wrote. “Being myself feels gratifying and rewarding, like I’m finally free of some heavy burden.”

Batson’s winning letter will now be sent to the Library of Congress for the national competition. Winners will be announced in late April.

Letter.batson

Wilkes Elementary School teachers took a page from PSY’s playbook and used a little Gangnam Style to promote the school’s spring science fair.

We’ll give these educators an A for effort. Not only did they nail the horse dance, they also managed to outline the entire application process without losing their groove.

The video is below for your Friday afternoon viewing pleasure. We eagerly await a Harlem Shake remix.

The Bainbridge Island School District and Bainbridge Schools Foundation each responded this week to continued criticism of the Spanish Immersion Pilot Project at Commodore Options School.

As we reported last month, some Bainbridge parents questioned the process used to create and fund the pilot (known as El Velero this year). Calls for greater transparency continued at a Feb. 28 world language forum, while other parents spoke in support of the program.

Following the forum, a well-circulated letter from parent Kim Paulson accused the district of colluding with the Schools Foundation to funnel private donations to the program:

Instead of being open about their intentions and avoiding backlash, BISD created SI with a lack of communication, financial transparency, and due process. The school district and foundation should be held accountable for these shortcomings and work to earn the public trust once more.

School board President Mike Spence and Supt. Faith Chapel offered this detailed and direct rebuttal to Paulson’s letter Tuesday:

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A lifelong friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. will be among a group of speakers visiting Bainbridge High School this week, as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day approaches.

Rev. McKinney

Rev. Samuel Berry McKinney and four other guest speakers will reflect on the legacy of King and the civil rights movement at the high school Wednesday. A public presentation will be held at 7 p.m. in the LGI building as part of the “Carrying on the Dream” program.

McKinney attended Morehouse College with King in the 1940s and they remained close. McKinney supported civil rights protests in Seattle in the 1960s as a pastor at Mount Zion Baptist Church. He organized King’s visit to the city in 1961 and later joined King for marches in Selma and Montgomery, Ala.

Appearing with McKinney on Bainbridge will be Patricia Moncure Thomas, president of the Black Historical Society of Kitsap County; state Rep. Drew Hansen, author of “The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation;” Dr. Rosie Rimando Chareunsap, a 1995 BHS graduate and vice president at South Seattle Community College; and Ali Saunders, a BHS senior and president of the school’s United Brothers & Sisters Club.

McKinney and Hansen will visit with Bainbridge classes during the day. The evening presentation is free and donations are accepted.

The public program was organized by the Sing Out Kitsap committee in cooperation with the school district; the Bainbridge Island Schools Foundation; UBS club; the district’s Multicultural Advisory Committeeand the Filipino American Community

Former Bainbridge High School teacher Rory Wilson will share reflections and photos from his rowing odyssey to Hawaii next week.

The presentation is scheduled for 7 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Bainbridge High School commons. The event is free, and donations will be accepted for the Bainbridge Schools Foundation.

Wilson made the 44-day journey from San Diego to Honolulu earlier this fall in a slender homemade craft powered by oars and kites. He called the vessel “KROS,” short for kites, rowing ocean, solar. Wilson’s math students at Bainbridge High helped him prepare for the journey.

You can get a taste of Wilson’s adventure in the video below, which shows KROS dancing through waves under kite power.  Wilson has posted many more amazing images on the KROS page on Facebook.

Photo and video courtesy Rory Wilson, via Facebook

It’s been three weeks since former Bainbridge High School teacher Rory Wilson shoved off for Hawaii in an experimental watercraft called KROS.

The 21-foot boat, powered by oars and kites, is creeping steadily toward its goal, according to updates posted by Wilson’s brother Shane on the KROS Facebook page. Wilson launched from San Diego on Sept. 18 and spent the first few days of his solo voyage paddling southwest off Baja California. He is now traveling roughly due west for Hawaii.

Wilson relays his position to Shane using a SPOT GPS tracker (the latest track is shown above). The brothers also talk regularly by satellite phone. According to Shane’s latest post, Wilson has rowed up to 12 hours a day when the wind is too light to use KROS’ kites.

“He sounds like he’s having a great time, all in all…” Shane wrote.

Wilson taught math at Bainbridge High and used the plans for his experimental voyage to engage his students. Before departing last month, Wilson compared the KROS to a moving math problem.

“It’s just like a really cool, multivariable equation of all the factors that go into it,” he told the Sun’s Angela Dice.

Courtesy photos

The Bainbridge High mountain bike team pedals through the Grand Forest on Mar. 21. Photo: Larry Steagall.

A few weeks ago, when I looked into doing a story on Bainbridge High School’s newly-formed mountain bike team, its coach, Gordon Black, was quick to suggest I come to a Wednesday practice and bring my bike along.

I immediately cast that idea to the side. I’d have a City Council meeting at around the same time, and I couldn’t show up muddy and sweaty to a place as decorous and dignified as Bainbridge City Hall. But then a fight broke out during a recent council meeting, and I figured ‘what the heck. If the politicians can practice hand-to-hand combat, why can’t the reporters show up covered in mud?’

I mountain bike fairly regularly, but not at this team’s pace. I’m also not accustomed to the rollicking, narrow pathways they take in Grand Forest Park. There were plenty of sharp turns, steep slopes, crisscrossing tree roots and muddy patches that can instantly rob a bike of all its hard-fought momentum.

I showed up to the practice with a mountain bike a guy at an island bike shop once playfully ridiculed as a “Mad Max” bike. It’s made from mostly scavenged, bartered and donated bits and pieces. Its best part – the front shocks – were yanked from some ivy behind a church in Bremerton. Nothing really syncs up well thanks to the mismatched components and my own happy-go-lucky approach to bike assembly.

Black yelled for me to shift to an easier gear on our first hill. “You’ve got to shift, Tristan! You’re going to kill yourself!” Little did he know that steep-slope shifting on the Mad Max leads only to chain derailment.

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Here’s Tad Sooter’s story about Island Cooperative Preschool’s effort to plant 50 fir trees at Meigs Park. The school is in the process of earning “Eco School” status from the National Wildlife Federation.

Bainbridge preschoolers replant island park
By Tad Sooter

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – A few years from now the freshly planted Douglas fir seedlings at Meigs Park will be the size of Christmas trees. The children who planted them, meanwhile, will still be in elementary school.

Bundled up in fuzzy hats and rubber boots, students from Island Cooperative Preschool planted 50 firs at the park Nov. 19, with the help of their parents and tree specialist Jim Trainer.

The children were performing a community service by replanting a clearing recently stripped of invasive Scotch broom. But this was more than a work party. Parents and teachers also hope activities like the tree planting will help the children build an appreciation of the environment at a young age.

“It’s really important to get kids out and doing something real in nature, so they’ll grow up to be stewards of the earth,” teacher Ellen Carleson said.

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Ordway Elementary did something pretty amazing around this time last year. Through the leadership of teacher Sean Megy, the school had 300 out of its 400 students bike to school on National Bike to Work Day.

That’s 75 percent of the student body.

This year, Megy would like to hit the 100 percent mark. He knows that’s unlikely, but by aiming high he thinks Ordway may top last year’s turnout.

I plan to check in and see how the school’s effort goes this Friday.

In other Bike to Work initiatives, Squeaky Wheels is hoping to get more than 200 cyclists on the 7:05 a.m. ferry to Seattle on Friday. Last year, they nearly reached 160, so 200 is well within reach, said Squeaky Wheeler Dana Berg.

For more, head over here.

Bainbridge was abuzz about “Three Cups of Tea” in 2007.

The bestselling book about Greg Mortenson’s transformation from mountain climber to school builder in the isolated regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan was required reading at Bainbridge High that fall.

When Mortenson stopped by the island for a visit, hundreds flocked to his readings at the high school and Eagle Harbor Books. Attendees called Mortenson’s story uplifting and inspirational.

I wrote a story about Mortenson’s Bainbridge visit. You can read it here.

This week, the CBS show 60 Minutes and author Jon Krakauer (“Into Thin Air”) cast doubts on key parts of Mortenson’s story.

“It’s a beautiful story, and it’s a lie,” Krakauer said on 60 minutes.

60 Minutes also called into question the way funds are allocated by Mortenson’s charity, the Central Asia Institute, indicating that large sums have been used to promote Mortenson rather than build schools.

You can see the 60 Minutes piece below the jump.

Krakauer’s lengthy article is here.

Mortenson denies wrong-doing, although he does admit the truth was stretched a bit in the book. He gave his side of things to Outside magazine. You can read the interview here.

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