News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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The Grand Coulee Dam School District is visualizing possibilities for what they call a “skill center,” a place where students can learn skills that lead directly to jobs, particularly jobs in the local area. The district is working on the project in collaboration with the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center based in Moses Lake, where GCDSD Superintendent Paul Turner, as well as GCDSD board members, will be visiting to bring some of the same opportunities to this area. One solid program of the skill center taking shape soon will be a cer...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District announced some staffing changes at their last school board meeting. The vice principal at the high school, Charlie Pierce, will be a full-time administrator again, and will no longer teach a construction class. The safety officer position is going to be eliminated, and the vice principal, along with a paraprofessional, will be taking on those monitoring duties. The elementary school vice principal position will be eliminated and replaced with a dean of students. A dean of students, unlike the VP, will not...
Local area voters will be faced with deciding on approval of a school levy that would restore six figures of property taxes per year to the school district for the next four years, but not raise tax rates higher than they were in 2017, putting them back to 81 cents lower than they are for 2018. Property taxes supporting the school district currently take $4.01 per thousand dollars of assessed property value towards a local “operations and maintenance” levy. In spring of 2019, that number drops to $1.50 per thousand, a difference of $2.51 res...
Performances coming up Young students at Lake Roosevelt School will put on an elementary musical called “School Is Cool” Thursday at 1:30 p.m. It’s written by four fifth-grade students. Acting is done by the fifth- and sixth-grade students, with a chorus consisting of the third- and fourth-graders. They will perform it in the elementary school gym. Donations accepted The Grand Coulee Dam School District board approved donations at their meeting Monday night: $3,000 from Colville Tribes to the Northwest Indian Youth Conference for the Nativ...
Chamber to Meet The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce will meet at the Siam Palace at noon this Thursday, April 26. General business is on the agenda. The public is welcome. Coulee Creators Meet on Tuesdays Coulee Creators meet at 412 Federal Ave. Room 207, Grand Coulee. Contact Marlene Oddie at KISSed Quilts or 509-386-5715 for further details. Hours are normally Tuesdays 1-4 p.m. Grant County Fire Dist. 14 to Meet Grant County Fire District 14 will hold its regular monthly meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, April 30, at the Electric City Fire...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District is looking for someone to serve on the school board. School board Chair Joette Barry recently resigned because she is moving outside the district, and the district is looking for a replacement. Since, for the most part, members of the board represent certain districts, a replacement for Barry would have to come from the Electric City area. If you live in Electric City and would be interested in serving on the board, write a letter stating your interest and drop it off at the district office in Coulee Dam....
1 Years Ago Coulee Dam woman arrested with millions of dollars worth of cocaine: A Coulee Dam woman has been arrested with millions of dollars worth of cocaine in California, where she was scheduled to make a court appearance. She had 71 bricks of cocaine in the back seat of her vehicle which she was allegedly driving at 90 miles per hour on the freeway. 40 Years Ago Spillway Lighting Is Assured During Summer: The Popular spillway program at the Grand Coulee Dam is assured for the 1978 visitor season. That assurance came from the Bureau’s Regi...
Local area voters may be faced with deciding on approval of a school levy that would restore $480,000 of property taxes per year to the school district for the next four years, but not raise taxes higher than they were last year. The Grand Coulee Dam School District board voted Monday night to put the resolution for a “capital levy” on the agenda for discussion at next month’s board meeting April 23. Local area voters would approve or deny the proposed levy in the upcoming August 7 election. In 2017, the state Legislature passed Engro...
A program to educate students who “don’t fit” the regular high school or who are at risk of not graduating high school will come back to the Grand Coulee Dam School District next year. The school board voted Monday to bring back the alternative learning environment (ALE) to the district. The ALE was removed from the district last year as a way to cut costs. The school board had removed the ALE in the current year’s budget, anticipating that students in that program would return to “regular” school, thus keeping money in the district, i...
After five years leading the Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors and a total of nearly a dozen years on the board, Joette Barry resigned Monday night because she is moving out of the district. “We’re the longest renters in the United States at the same address,” she joked after the meeting to explain the move. The house they’ve been renting in Electric City for years will be sold by its owner, who lives in Arizona. Joette and her husband, Jim, own a house in Coulee City and will be moving there within six weeks, but it won’t be...
Want a bus so you can get to the store or doctor? Want a bus in town to take you to the senior center? Want bus service to drive you home from a community event? Raise your hand! If any of this is true, why did we have a Grand Coulee Mobility Summit March 15 at the Grand Coulee Dam Senior Center, and out of 20-plus organization that were invited ONLY three attended? It does not help just to sit with your friend at coffee or at the bar and complain about things we do not have in town. Only one city had a representative, no representative from...
A week-long school security training session at the FEMA Emergency Management Institute “will make a huge difference in how we do things here,” Superintendent Paul Turner said Tuesday. People from the Grand Coulee Dam School District and other agencies nearby traveled to Emmitsburg, Maryland, last week on a grant, with meetings designed to get people in responding agencies who might be involved in some kind of security issues talking and planning together. School security was only part of the training, Turner explained. “We went into detai...
They say "still waters run deep." That would be a good description of Gary Darnold, who informed the Grand Coulee Dam School District last week that he is retiring after teaching here for 42 years. Darnold is soft spoken, but his eyes penetrate you like he is taking your measure. It is highly unusual for a teacher, any teacher, to spend an entire career in one district. Darnold did, and will hang it up after this year's teaching assignment. With a bachelor's degree from Washington State...
Coulee Dam wants to know if its residents would like high-speed internet access through a fiber-optic broadband network it's considering building, some of it just for its own use and savings. After researching the origin of some 96 strands of fiber that crosses the Columbia River in a city power conduit underneath the bridge, the city purchased for $34,995 the fiber that winds through west Coulee Dam, crosses the bridge and actually supplies broadband internet access to some enterprises on the...
Several school and other agency personnel are in Emmitsburg, Maryland, this week at the FEMA Emergency Management Institute taking training on school safety. In the forefront is Grand Coulee Dam School District Superintendent Paul Turner. Others in Maryland are elementary Principal Lisa Lakin; Randy Bowman, school maintenance; Stephanie Duclos, bus operations; and Tammy Norris, secretary. Other agency personnel include Randy August, Colville Tribes; Rick Paris, volunteer fire chief from Grand...
The massacre of 17 students and staff at a high school in Florida on Valentine’s Day wasn’t far from everyone’s mind when school safety became a topic at Monday night’s school board meeting in Coulee Dam. The issue of guns in schools occupied about 15 minutes of the meeting as members of the Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors took the opportunity to share their thinking regarding the idea of arming teachers in local schools. School board Chair Joette Barry said Tuesday that arming teachers is not just a board issue, but it...
Hires noted The school board made three hires and accepted one resignation at its meeting Monday night. Resigning was Gary Darnold, who will retire this year after spending his entire teaching career of 42 years in the Grand Coulee Dam School District. In his letter to the board, Darnold stated that in all his 42 years he couldn’t recall ever having a bad week. Hires included Jennifer Miley as an eight-hour-a-day custodian. She had been active as a custodian, but not in an eight-hour shift. Also hired by the board were Christopher Wonch as a fo...
Grand Coulee Dam School District NOTICE OF SMALL WORKS ROSTER OPENING Grand Coulee Dam School District is updating its small works roster for general contractors for future construction, alteration, repair or improvement of public works projects. If you are interested in being included on the roster, please email a letter of intent to annettee@ncesd.org or to the following address and we will send you a small works roster application: Grand Coulee Dam School District c/o North Central ESD Attn: Annette Eggers PO Box 1847 Wenatchee, WA 98807... Full story
Terms have been reached for the sale of Center School. An agreement to sell the old school building and property in Grand Coulee was reached at a special school board meeting Tuesday. The sale price was $155,000 — $5,000 more than the amount asked for by the school board at previous offerings. The site is to be purchased by a group headed by builder Nic Alexander, who owns Coulee Construction, and the sale was managed by former school superintendent Dennis Carlson. Carlson handled the sales effort during the two advertised offerings the d...
Chamber to Meet The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce will meet at La Presa Mexican Restaurant in Grand Coulee at noon this Thursday, February 22, for its weekly membership meeting. On Monday, February 26, the annual membership banquet and board installation is happening at the Melody Restaurant beginning at 6 p.m. The public is welcome. Please RSVP to 633-3074 by Friday, Feb. 23, if you plan to attend. Grant County Fire Dist. 14 to Meet Grant County Fire District 14 will hold its regular monthly meeting 7 p.m., Monday, Feb. 26, at the...
A number of school employees, and personnel from other agencies, plan on spending a week-long training session at the FEMA Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Maryland, beginning the first week in March, Superintendent Paul Turner advised the Grand Coulee Dam School District board Monday night. The plan, Turner said Tuesday, “is to get the same training for all the emergency responders that we depend on in this area so everyone is on the same page.” Going from the school district in addition to Turner are Lisa Lakin, elementary princi...
Immediately after joining the board, a new commissioner with decades of experience in the skateboard industry said he’d like to arrange a competition for the local skatepark for this summer. The Coulee Area Park and Recreation District board had just appointed Ben Hughes and Kevin Portch to fill vacant positions on the board at the Feb. 5 meeting. CAPRD, which extends through a wide swath of the four-county area, manages North Dam Park, which is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Hughes proposed adding features to the skatepark and planni...
Jolene Bowler Pickett passed away on Monday, February 8, 2018, in Murray, Utah. She was born on April 8, 1929, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, to Joseph M. and Lulu Bowler. Jolene spent her early years in Shelley, Idaho. She enjoyed singing and playing the saxophone. She married Victor R. Pickett on February 17, 1950. They were later sealed with their children in the Salt Lake City Temple. Jolene was a hard worker and held various jobs in her lifetime. She spent many years working for the Grand Coulee... Full story
Center School will go on the block again. This will be the third time that Grand Coulee Dam School District has advertised the old elementary school for sale. The school board has held firm on $150,000 as the lowest price it will accept for the building and surrounding property, about eight acres, and has authorized another advertising of the property. At the last “for sale” go-round, one interested person, Elijah Kleimenov of Moses Lake, had tentatively agreed to purchase the property. At the time he agreed to the price, Kleimenov said he tho...
Despite the passage of last year’s bipartisan agreement to fully fund K-12 public education with a property tax hike, the state Legislature is still wrestling over the issue as school leaders across the state say the changes will hurt their districts, including at Grand Coulee Dam. In November, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature needs to ramp up funding for teacher and other school staff salaries to meet its imposed September 2018 deadline, despite the billions that have already been allocated to public education. However, s...