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Residents from the La Conner, Concrete and Mount Vernon school districts have a Feb. 9 special election to renew school levies. The districts need to continue local funding for educational programs and operations (EPO). The La Conner School Board voted in November to ask voters to approve a four-year, $1.45 per $1,000 in assessed valuation, a decrease from the $1.50 per $1,000 collected under the two-year levy voters passed in 2019. The funds will pay for school programs and services and non-capital expenses not fully funded by the state,...
Though sidelined all fall by the COVID-19 pandemic, La Conner High’s two-time defending state title volleyball team has still been able to show its championship mettle. Team members have served up two major public service projects in response to the virus crisis, designing and creating custom La Conner Braves face coverings benefitting the Skagit Valley Hospital Foundation and delivering holiday goodie bags to La Conner Retirement Inn. The team has also shared a Zoom Christmas card with the L...
Dear Parents and Guardians, When I began as La Conner’s superintendent in July and August, we faced a decision about how to safely serve our La Conner students during the COVID emergency. In late August, the school board approved a remote learning plan that indicated we would not make any major changes in our remote service model until the trimester or semester. We have followed that plan. With the escalation of the number of infection rates, currently over 350 per 100,000 county resients, it looked like we would need to remain remote longer. F...
Before COVID-19, Back to School was a late summer ad campaign. But now, with winter having arrived, the key issue remains the conditions for making schools safe enough for students to return on a limited basis. La Conner Schools, like districts around the nation, has conducted on-line instruction this fall to stem spread of the coronavirus. Just how much longer that format will remain in place remains unclear, but key decisions could be made next month. They were discussed at the Dec. 14 teleconferenced La Conner School Board meeting. Based on...
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the La Conner Schools campus has been a remote location this semester. That changed for a couple hours Wednesday afternoon. The La Conner Elementary School parking area morphed into a festive convergence zone with teachers donning favorite Christmas garb – and, of course, masks – while lined up to greet students and families as they drove through the school’s circular drop-off zone. Kids hung out of car windows, waving joyfully, and sharing gleeful s...
The Gilkey Square tree lighting. Fall and spring concerts. Regional music educator festivals. Christmas wreath sales. Pep band. Maybe Disneyland. COVID-19 wiped the 2020-21 school music calendar clean, leaving La Conner Director of Bands and Choirs McKenzie Clark and his students to make music on-line. That is a challenge for an essentially face-to-face endeavor. When meeting in person, music classes begin with call-and-response warm-up exercises. Clark sings or plays a line; students repeat...
The tipoff to the La Conner High basketball season has been delayed once again. The reason is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has rebounded this fall: a tenacious, relentless full-court press. Because of statewide spikes in coronavirus cases, the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) executive board has delayed the start of Season 2, including boys’ and girls’ basketball and wrestling, from Dec. 28 to Feb. 1. The delay is the latest in a series of high school sports’ schedule changes prompted by the pandemic. In response to th...
During a 90-minute Zoom meeting Monday, La Conner School Board Members heard results of public focus group sessions on the status of the district, then began setting a salary range for the next superintendent. Consultants Mark Venn and Dr. Wayne Robertson said about 100 focus group participants identified district strengths and challenges and the attributes the public values in a superintendent. “There was a lot of really good feedback,” Venn said of the teleconferenced meetings. “We had a wide range of groups, from alumni to the Chamber of Co...
La Conner wrestler Delaney Cobbs rarely faces a foe she cannot beat. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of those, however. New statewide restrictions put in place to curb spread of the coronavirus have forced Cobbs to forego participation in a major mat tournament in Arizona this weekend. Under mandates imposed Nov. 16, after Cobbs was selected to join a Tacoma-based national travel team for the Arizona trip, she and others traveling from Washington would have had to quarantine for two weeks upon their return. That would not have been feasible for...
La Conner School Board members were in a thankful mood Monday and hope to be so again in February when voters consider a four-year replacement educational programs and operations levy totaling $4,036,344. Acting on recommendations from a levy election committee co-chaired by La Conner alums Robert Hancock and Jerry Carr, the board, during a 90-minute Zoom meeting, unanimously approved a resolution putting the ballot measure before school district voters on Feb. 9, 2021. If approved, the levy rate on taxable property would be $1.45 per $1,000...
A La Conner High student has no trouble grappling with success. Adjusting to new COVID-19 pandemic restrictions might be less certain, however. Delaney Cobbs, a reigning girls’ 2A regional wrestling champion has been selected to square off against top mat talent from around the country at a major tournament in Arizona next month. Cobbs, a junior, is scheduled to compete with the Tacoma-based Ford Dynasty Wrestling Club’s national travel team in Bullhead City, Az., about 100 miles south of Las...
Normal life has been hammered hard by COVID-19. But the virus crisis, which led La Conner Schools to adopt a distance learning model this semester, is not stopping construction class students from continuing to build their projects. More important, the pandemic is also teaching them how to build lifelong problem-solving skills. Credit La Conner High shop teacher Daniel Castillo with laying the foundation to help his students overcome obstacles related to virtual classrooms and technology dependence. “When we come to technology challenges or lif...
Halloween was full of new tricks and treats for La Conner High football players. The Braves spent two hours Saturday morning working out, starting the day wearing helmet facemasks instead of Halloween facemasks. Afterward, first-year head coach Jeff Scoma treated them to ample shares of holiday candy. Just being able to line up on Whittaker Field was Scoma’s idea of an ideal Halloween thrill. “These guys have gone a long time without football,” Scoma, previously a coach in the vaunted Belle...
The Board of Skagit County Commissioners will award a total of $989,000 to schools and districts serving Skagit County students to assist with costs of distance learning and safe reopening during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed by Congress earlier this year provided funding to the County to assist with COVID-19 related concerns and expenses in the community. The County has awarded funding to public and private schools serving Skagit County students based on student headcounts...
Timing in life is everything. Before the COVID-10 pandemic led schools, colleges, and universities to shift courses to on-line instruction, a trio of La Conner High students were able to use the State Capitol as their government classroom. MacQuaid Hiller and siblings James and Mia Carlton served as legislative pages in Olympia, filling wide-ranging roles vital to making the lawmaking process more efficient. Hiller and the Carltons each spent a week last winter helping distribute legislative amendments and related material throughout the...
At its mid-month study session the La Conner School Board chose Northwest Leadership Associates as the consulting firm to lead the search for a new district superintendent. The in-state firm received the nod over McPherson & Jacobson, a leading national consulting company. “This is our number one job, to select a new superintendent,” board president Susie Gardner Deyo stressed during the panel’s video-conferenced study session on Oct. 12. Deyo was joined by board members Lynette Cram, John Agen, and Amanda Bourgeois. J.J. Wilbur missed the s...
Spikes on the volleyball court would be a most welcome change from those in COVID-19 cases. The hope is that will soon be the case. Especially in La Conner, where the two-time defending state champion Lady Braves are cleared to resume full team activities under anti-COVID guidelines set by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), which governs school sports and extra-curricular programs in the state. “The WIAA is allowing full team practices for activities and sports that are considered low or moderate at-risk if they a...
Numbers related to the COVID-19 pandemic have rarely been kind. But La Conner Schools last week realized a rare exception to that trend when the district reported to the state an enrollment of a fraction more than 597 full time equivalent (FTE) students, 12 more than was budgeted prior to the start of fall semester. State funding support is based on FTE data, so the school district will receive more state monies than anticipated. An FTE student is one who spends six hours per day with the school district, La Conner Schools Superintendent Rich...
Add one more item to the list of COVID-19 impacts here. The school board was told that the long running La Conner High senior seminar class, which featured formal student presentations before community panels, is morphing into a new program that is more technology oriented for this time of distance learning. “This year, with COVID,” La Conner Middle & High School Counselor Lori Buher told board members at their Sept. 28 video-conferenced meeting, “adding the senior seminar class is prohi...
Any other year the two-time defending state champion La Conner High volleyball team would be approaching mid-season form about now. But the COVID-19 pandemic has dictated the school sports calendar since mid-March. As a result, La Conner teams these days are content taking part through November in a modified practice format sanctioned by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), which governs school athletics and extra-curricular programs in the state. La Conner High’s v...
Two consulting firms wanting to help lead the search for a new La Conner Schools superintendent made their pitches to school board members during near hour-long Zoom presentations Monday night. Neither missed the mark. As a result, the board postponed at least until its Oct. 12 study session choosing which will lead the perhaps six months process. “I thought both firms did a good job presenting,” board president Susie Gardner Deyo said of the Northwest Leadership Associates spokesmen Mark Venn and Dr. Wayne Robertson and McPherson & Jac...
Outdoor education took on a whole new meaning when La Conner students and parents went back to school for Braves Days campus orientation last Thursday and Friday. The two-day event, held outside beneath canopies and shade trees, reflected adjustments being made by school officials this semester in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Families registered on-line for 30-minute outside appointments with teachers prior to the launch of distance learning instruction Sept. 14. While the coronavirus has...
McKenzie Clark and Naomi Williams have been selected by Soroptimist International of La Conner (SILC) for the 2020 Dixie Otis Memorial Award: $2,000 grants to full time La Conner teachers who are concurrently pursuing their master’s degrees. The award was created with memorial donations honoring the life of Dixie Otis, who died in December 2018. Clark was hired as the band and choir director in 2016. He is working for a Master of Music in Music Education at Central Washington University. As a teacher who is also a student, he hopes to model l...
Back to school in La Conner this year means back to the computer screen for students and teachers alike. La Conner Schools teachers and staff began training remotely last week with the new distance learning platforms that will be used to instruct students at least through fall semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On-line classes in La Conner are scheduled to start Sept. 14. For La Conner teachers and para-educators, the usual end of summer on-campus camaraderie with colleagues renewing friendships and sharing vacation updates prior to...
Teachers always stress the importance of lifelong learning, and this summer La Conner faculty members modeled that key tenet as they began preparing for the transition from traditional in-person instruction to presenting lessons on-line due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of those teachers took on a heavy load of technology homework over the summer, La Conner Elementary School Principal Heather Fakkema told the Weekly News last week. “They spent a great deal of their own time this summer,” Fakkema said, “learning about best practices for remot...
