News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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My favorite sport is Track & Field. So, I loved watching our Raiders compete at the recent Washington State Championships. Our coaches will miss the Seniors and these kids were super excited about their Senior trip. Head Coach Lori and Assistant Coach Ashley could not coach all 18 events without the help of their 3 volunteer coaches – Christy, Chance and Alfredo. Much appreciated! Once back home, I checked the Star newspaper and wanted to truly thank Scott Hunter for kindly printing my thoughts. I apologize for a grammar mistake, but Scott know...
Multiple times per week, two local people drive hours away in pursuit of gaining life-saving aid for their community. Merlee Liberty and Mike Shear are undergoing extensive education in order to become paramedics. Liberty and Shear, who live in Coulee Dam and Electric City, respectively, both travel around two hours to school and work. Their graduation as paramedics will be in early June. At the same time, their community has also engaged in discussion about creating an emergency services...
by Scott Hunter Grand Coulee Dam School District teachers and staff pressed board members and administrators for clearer budget information and a different approach to staffing cuts during at Monday’s school board meeting, saying the current reductions are eroding morale and will ultimately harm students. Several elementary teachers described rising class sizes, increased responsibilities, and what they see as a lack of shared sacrifice between district office staff and those working directly with students. “I would like to see the real dat...
It’s hard enough to understand the difficulties the local school district finds itself in without making an argument that resorts to deliberately cherry-picking facts to color the origins of the problems in much darker hues than a clear picture would provide. For example, citing a chart that peaked with an anomalous high enrollment of 311 students higher than the current count gives a distinctly worse impression than a more accurate average of the seven prior years, which would tell you the district is down about 130-150 students from that aver...
All school districts face significant employee costs, increased insurance rates and inflation along with other major challenges. Many school districts get the same funding sources as the Grand Coulee Dam School District, but they are thriving. Why? It is due to advanced planning, foresight, knowledgeable leadership and gradually taking care of these issues over time before a crisis can develop. Our local elected School Board members, who have boasted they are good stewards, and their current superintendent have destroyed our local school...
Aaron Derr told the school board Monday that cuts to personnel were going drastically in the wrong direction to satisfy budget tightening needs in response to lowering enrollment. Derr, a teacher at Lake Roosevelt, said he'd used data from the state website for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the lead K-12 education agency in the state, or OSPI. The Grand Coulee Dam School District has lost 120 students in the last three years, he said, and OSPI recommends about the...
An early peek at a survey done by the Grand Coulee Dam School District to gauge feelings about the transition to a four-day school week for students indicates most parents are more pleased than not with the change, Superintendent Rod Broadnax says. Broadnax presented the school board the results so far at the last school board meeting April 27 and discussed it at an informal meeting with constituents at Voltage Coffee House the next morning during his bimonthly "Coffee with the Superintendent"...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District's reduced education program is colliding headon with the people who run classrooms every day. Over the last two board meetings, staff and community members have spoken up to plead for preschool, career and technical education (CTE), athletics, and key administrative positions they say are holding the system together - even as district leaders stress that the math simply no longer works. "We're shrinking, we're going away" At the March 24 meeting, CTE...
The forces shaping decisions about the Grand Coulee Dam School District are stubbornly calling for what one might reasonably conclude are exactly the wrong decisions. Last fall, when the process of laying out a “modified education plan” — the term in education for layoffs — members of the public were calling for the district to stem its financial losses by increasing the amount of money coming in, rather than cutting expenses. In public education, that means bringing in more students — through increased offerings, not fewer. The district... Full story
Notice of Date Change for the GCDSD School Board Meeting Please be informed that the Board of Directors of the Grand Coulee Dam School District has changed the date of their School Board Meeting from Monday April 13th to Wednesday April 15th. (The meeting will be held at the regular time and location; 5:30 p.m. at the Jr./Sr. High Library) (Publish April 15, 2026) Nespelem School District No. 14 Okanogan County, Washington NOTICE OF MEETING TO ADOPT 2025-26 BUDGET EXTENSION AND CONDUCT PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE is hereby given, pursuant to RCW... Full story
The following notice came from the GCDSD office today: Notice of Date Change for the GCDSD School Board Meeting Please be informed that the Board of Directors of the Grand Coulee Dam School District has changed the date of their School Board Meeting from Monday April 13th to Wednesday April 15th. (The meeting will be held at the regular time and location; 5:30 p.m. at the Jr./Sr. High Library)... Full story
Lake Roosevelt Schools will lose at least six teachers, and up to eight, after this school year to a reduction in force (RIF) authorized by the school board Monday night following reports and deliberations on how the school district “got here” and what the way forward will be. Unlike the federal government, school districts must run on a balanced budget, so when revenue falls, so must expenses, most of which is in salaries and benefits mandated by the state, but not necessarily paid for by it. The deficit before adjustments are made is pro...
Notice of Date Change for the GCDSD School Board Meeting Please be advised that the Grand Coulee Dam School District’s Board of Directors has moved their regularly scheduled meeting from Monday, March 23rd to Tuesday, March 24th. Monday, March 23rd the board will hold a Board Work Session at 5:30 p.m. at the Jr./Sr. High School Library. (Publish March 18, 2026) Public Notice Irrigation operations begin for the Columbia Basin Project In preparation for the 2026 irrigation season, the Bureau of Reclamation released water on March 2 at Dry F... Full story
One person visited with the Grand Coulee Dam School District Board on Monday regarding district plans for handling their budget emergency. "After reading some of the letters to the editor in The Star this week, I wanted to come and just kind of get an understanding from the board as to what cuts are being made and why," Sam Halvorsen said. Halvorsen visited on a day the board had just put off a discussion on an upcoming emergency budget resolution, opting to discuss it at a "workshop" on...
I’ve lived in many public school systems around the country and all of my nine children attended the public schools where my family lived. I can tell from talking to hundreds of people here in the Grand Coulee area, that the schools here are not high quality and are not meeting the needs of children or their parents. I lived in a similar school district in Texas and after trying to change the local school from within, I ultimately moved my family to get my children into a better school. I’ve met only a few people in this school district who...
A proposed reduction in high school secretary hours has become a flash point in the Grand Coulee Dam School District’s broader struggle to close a mounting budget gap, with staff warning of strained student support and administrators describing a years-long squeeze of rising costs and falling enrollment. High school secretary Tammy Norris told the school board that trimming one secretary position from 9 to 7.5 hours a day is more than a simple line-item cut. “In a district our size, there is no extra, there is no cushion,” Norris said during th...
The educational leader who has led Nespelem School District since 2020 will resign at the end of the school year. Dr. Effie Dean, who took over in June of 2020 as the Covid pandemic was disrupting education and society in general, informed the district board of directors Jan. 30. Monday night, directors voted to begin the search for a new superintendent, engaging Northwest Leadership Associates, of Wenatchee, to begin the search and vetting process. Dean’s last official day is June 30. She told The Star on Tuesday that she is not certain of h...
In our local Grand Coulee Dam School District, we have and always have had amazing staff. As a community member for several decades, I’ve shown appreciation for many of their successes but I’ve barely scratched the surface of impactful differences they make in the lives of their students every day. Great school districts have staff who realize that schools must manage their funds properly, provide a safe and secure environment with sound mental wellness options for their students, among many other common-sense priorities that come before aca...
While a lot of energy is put into celebrating the achievements of athletes in local schools, another celebration is in planning to do the same — for academic achievements. Grand Coulee Dam School District Superintendent Rod Broadnax told the school board Monday that, although the district honors students who meet certain goals with a special event on a regular basis, it’s been suggested to do more to bring in parents to celebrate with students for successes in their studies. “As a matter of fact, I got an earful from a parent after an eight...
Grand Coulee Dam School District Superintendent Rog Broadnax presented a certificate of thanks Monday night to teacher Ethan Tatum "in recognition of your hard work and dedication to the children of the Grand Coulee Dam School District." Tatum, who teaches Spanish and English Language Arts, told The Star later that after being told to attend the school board meeting, he had thought he might be expected to discuss curricula decisions made last year; the award was a complete surprise. "It has...
As a longtime community member and taxpayer, I hope that it is now obvious to others in our area that the crisis the Grand Coulee Dam School District is in was totally preventable. This should be unacceptable to all of us. The crisis is much bigger than very poor fiscal decisions. It is a culmination of multiple systems in the organization being mismanaged due to a significant lack of expertise, best practices and on-going reactive management instead of successful preventive collaborative leadership. The upper brass and their hired hand have ne...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors was scheduled to meet this morning, Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 10 a.m. in the high school library, after The Star’s deadline. The district’s Dec. 22 board meeting was canceled last week for lack of a quorum. Notice was sent by the district office Monday that included the same agenda for Tuesday morning, on next to the last day of the year....
School directors voted to authorize an emergency budget resolution last week that allows the superintendent to issue RIFF-and-recall notices that warn of a possible reduction in force but would not implement them if it can be avoided. Instead, Superintendent Rod Broadnax is instructed to look for other savings and to "maximize revenue" for the Grand Coulee Dam School District. Preferred strategies for this include savings in supplies and operating costs, purchased services, and travel expenses,...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors will meet tomorrow morning, Tuesday, Dec. 30, at 10 a.m. in the high school library. The district's Dec. 22 board meeting was canceled last week for lack of a quorum. Notice was sent by the district office Monday that included the same agenda for Tuesday morning, on next to the last day of the year. The meeting can also be attended online via Zoom: https://gcdsd.zoom.us/j/89474772041?pwd=Zk5pNnB6MWovOUNLMEtUcTR1MEsyQT09 DO NOT CLICK "Sign... Full story
Mayor Ruth Dalton pulled ahead in the race to keep her office in Grand Coulee. Dalton switched the advantage since last week, when challenger Chantel Crowe, the deputy city clerk was ahead by a few votes. Dalton now leads with 56% of the vote, 120-104. Likewise, for Grand Coulee’s council member 2 seat, Andrew Dobson pulled ahead of Cameron Whitney 88- 79. Cheryl Hoffman gained a 54% lead over Jeremiah Seekins in the race for Electric City’s Council Member 1 seat, 154-129. Bradley Oliver holds an insurmountable 185-97 lead over Robbin Boy...