LAKE STEVENS — The Lake Stevens School District has received a grant of $3,000 from the Tulalip Tribes that will be used to partially offset the purchase of ChromeBooks laptops for classroom use.
The School District recently purchased a package of 32 laptops and related equipment for use by third and fourth graders and staff at Sunnycrest Elementary. The computers cost $12,000, with the balance being paid for by the district’s technology levy.
The school district also received a donation of $1,887 from board director David Iseminger through Microsoft’s Giving Campaign. Iseminger works at Microsoft, and the company matches employee volunteer work with cash grants. Iseminger’s donation goes into a fund that allows students who otherwise don’t have access to financial resources to take part in extracurricular activities such as sports, music programs and field trips.
SNOQUALMIE, Wash., Jan. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — The Snoqualmie Indian Tribe recently donated $15,000 to the Mercer Slough Education Center, run by the Pacific Science Center. “The partnership with the Snoqualmie Tribe helps us to provide memorable and exciting encounters with environmental science, reaching 10,000 students, parents, and teachers a year,” says Dana Fialdini. “The Pacific Science Center is grateful for the support we have received.”
Another recent donation of $25,000 to the Burke Museum is supporting the exhibit Elwha: A River Reborn, which focuses on the removal of the Elwha Dams. Julie Stein, Executive Director for the Burke, says the museum is “delighted to partner with the Snoqualmie Tribe” and that the sponsorship helps the Museum and others “celebrate and share the historic and transformational story with tens of thousands of people in our community, across the state, and far beyond.”
The Tribe also made donations to Sightline Institute and the Seattle Aquarium for $6,000 and $40,000, respectively. “We are honored to support these worthwhile organizations that focus on educating the community on important conservation and environmental matters,” said Tribal Secretary Alisa Burley.
These most recent donations are part of the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe’s long-standing commitment to investing in various nonprofit initiatives in the Snoqualmie area and statewide. Since 2010, the Tribe has donated over $3.5 million to hundreds of Washington State nonprofit organizations, including the Woodland Park Zoo, the Swedish Hospital, Seattle International Film Festival, Pike Place Market Foundation, and the Seattle Art Museum.
“We are truly humbled by the amazing work these local non-profits are doing in our communities and are proud to partner with them in their endeavors,” said Tribal Chairwoman Carolyn Lubenau. “We look forward to what the future may bring for the Tribe and its community partners.”
To qualify for a donation from the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe, an organization must be located within Washington State and a 501c3 non-profit organization. Applications are available online at www.snoqualmietribe.us with the next application cycle deadline set as Friday, January 31st.
The Snoqualmie Indian Tribe is a federally recognized tribe in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Known as the People of the Moon, Snoqualmie Tribal members were signatories of the Treaty of Point Elliott with the Washington territory in 1855. The Tribe owns and operates the Snoqualmie Casino in Snoqualmie, WA.
Becky Berg opens a meeting between Marysville School District staff and State Legislators.
Marysville School District Superintendent meets with teachers, staff, and legislators
Article and photo by Andrew Gobin
Marysville – The structure of the school day may be changing. There is a discussion at the capitol in which Washington State Legislators are considering lengthening the school day and adding 80 hours to the 1000-hour yearly quota class instruction time. Dr. Becky Berg, superintendent for the Marysville School District (MSD), invited legislators, community leaders, administrative staff, and members of the teaching faculty to come together on January 6th to discuss the needs of the schools, specifically addressing the 6-hour day and 1080, reforms to the school day that are currently being discussed in Washington State. The meeting also emphasized the need to pass the levy this year.
The 6-hour day and 1080 discussion, as it is called, would lengthen the school day to include 6 hours of instruction time, as opposed to the 5.5 required now, and would add another 80 hours a year to the time teachers and students are required to spend in the classroom together. Consequently, the proposed changes do away with early release days and teacher workshops.
“We (teachers) rely on early release days to come up with time for collaboration and professional development. Enough with reform, if change needs to happen it needs be on a local level. People at the capitol don’t have the answers. People in D.C. don’t know what we need,” said Arden Watson, president of the Marysville Education Association.
Getchell High School Principal Shawn Stevenson agreed, “When you ask teachers what they need, more than anything they need time. Time to be proficient in their job, time to develop a teaching plan, and time to adjust and rework that plan so that students can succeed.”
Marysville Getchell High School Principal Shawn Stevenson explains the teachers’ need for time outside of the classroom.
Jodi Runyon, executive assistant to the MSD Superintendent, echoed, “With funding from the SIG grants, Quil Ceda and Tulalip elementary staff had the resources and freedom to redesign their schools. They were able to create planning time throughout the school day. Now they have enormous student success, which has recently been recognized on a national level. The only question now is where do we find the funding as the SIG grant has come to an end.”
The SIG grant is a three-year federal funding program for schools in need, which culminated this last November with a visit for the President of the National Education Association.
In addition to time for teacher planning and development, the levy was strongly emphasized as a crucial component for the MSD. For example, the technology aspect of the levy will help students and teachers access a state of the art fiber-optic network that is already in place district wide. The problem is there are no points of access. The infrastructure is there, yet the classrooms are not equipped to engage with the network. Currently, it is compared to a freeway with no on ramp. No one has access.
“It goes beyond the school day. At sporting events and after school hours, our Wi-Fi will be open to those at the school. Free Wi-Fi for parents and students, filtered of course, so to eliminate problems of access at home,” said Berg.
Dean Ledford called the levy “paramount to the success of teachers and students.”
The legislators and leaders that attended included Washington State Representatives Mike Sells and Hans Dunshee, Snohomish County Executive and former Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick, Senator John McCoy, 189 Educational Service District Superintendent Jerry Jenkins, former Mayor of Marysville Dennis Kendall and current Mayor Jon Nehring. They all offered support for what the teachers and staff of the MSD are trying to do, sharing similar concerns about the 6-hour day and 1080 discussion.
Anyone preparing or serving food on the reservation is required to have a current food worker card. Upon completion of the class and a passing test score, a food worker card will be issued which will be valid for three years from the test date. This card is valid for employment on the reservation only.
Please see the attached flyer for the address and further details.
The first Indian Education Parent Committee Meeting of 2014 will be held January 15th in the Totem Middle School library. Dinner will be at 5pm and the meeting will start at 5:30pm
All parents of Native children in grades K-12th are encouraged to attend!
Some items to be discussed:
– Liaison/Advocate updates
– Current/upcoming youth programs
– Totem Middle School report, Principal Tarra Patrick
– Upcoming Events
– Information on the upcoming IEPC Board Elections that will be held at the next IEPC meeting on April 23, 2014.
Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA The caption reads: Graduating Class, 1892. Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pa. Thomas Metoxen (Oneida.) Hattie Long Wolf (Sioux.) Reuben Wolfe (Omaha.) Luzena Choteau (Wyandotte.) William Baird (Oneida.) Albert Bishop, (Seneca.) Benajah Miles (Arapahoe.) Joseph Hamilton (Piegan.) Benjamin Caswell (Chippewa.) Frank Everett (Wichita.) Lydia Flint (Shawnee.) Fred Peake (Chippewa.) Photographer: John N. Choate, Carlisle, PA
Want to know more about students who attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School? Now doing just that is far easier.
Stories of Sioux children like Elsie Robertson, or Pueblo children like Bruce Fisher can now be read online, as can parts of the lives of the many thousands of students who attended Carlisle between the years of 1879 and 1918.
Readers can find this information on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project page of Dickinson College of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The college’s Community Studies Center (CSC) and its Archives and Special Collections Department put the project together in 2013 and since August of last year they have been sending teams of researchers to the National Archives to scan and digitize information relating to CIIS.
This week, project directors sent another team to the Archives to continue with the process. One of the directors, College Archivist Jim Gerencser, noted that they had already digitized 1,250 files, comprising about 11,000 pages of text.
“We think that within three years we should be able to capture all the information from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) files,” Gerencser said.
He also said that they had been in contact with a group of CIIS descendants on Facebook and were hoping to inspire other people with connections to the school to come forward. The first page of the project’s website extends an invitation also.
“Desiring to add to the school’s history beyond the official documentation, we will seek partners among those institutions that hold additional records regarding the school, its many students, and its instructors. Subsequent phases of this project will develop the capability for user interactivity, so that individuals may contribute their own digitized photos, documents, oral histories, and other personal materials to the online collection. The website will also host teaching and learning materials utilizing the digitized content and database, and will support the addition of original scholarly and popular works based on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project resources.
(Everett, WA) – United Way of Snohomish County is offering $51,000 to support financial education and financial coaching serving low- or moderate-income individuals and families. Grants may be used to support classroom instruction, one-on-one counseling or a combination.
“Financial stability is the cornerstone of a healthy community,” said Dennis G. Smith, president and CEO of United Way of Snohomish County. “These grants will help provide families in our community much needed access to financial education and counseling.”
Programs could include money management, savings, budgeting, avoiding fraud, credit management or other financial topics relevant to low-and-moderate-income families. Funds may be used to support or expand financial asset building services or to develop a new financial education offering.
The maximum award for a grant is $15,000. Organizations currently receiving United Way multi-year program grants are eligible for funding, including programs presently funded. For programs currently receiving a multi-year program grant, funds must be used to either expand or enhance impact.
For more information, please contact Lark Kesterke at lark.kesterke@uwsc.org or 425.374.5506.
Two years ago, eight groups received a total of $40,000 in financial education grants from United Way. Both that round of funding and this one were made possible through a grant from The Boeing Company to United Way.
Free tax preparation, encouraging people to purchase U.S. Savings Bonds and other financial education programs, in addition to these grants, are part of United Way’s overall effort to help Snohomish County families achieve and maintain financial stability.
A sabertooth salmon, as depicted by artist Ray Troll. The mural is part of the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History. credit: University of Oregon. A sabertooth salmon, as depicted by artist Ray Troll. The mural is part of the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History. | credit: University of Oregon.
For years, museum conservators and paleontologists have yearned for a way to duplicate fragile fossils without damaging them. Now scientists with the University of Oregon say they have found a way to do just that, with the help of a relatively inexpensive 3-D printer.
They’ve starting by duplicating the skull of a particularly important fossil in their collection: a giant saber-toothed salmon fossil discovered near Madras, Ore.
Nick Famoso, a PhD student at the university, is helping with the replication process. He says saber-toothed salmon, Oncorhynchus Rastrosus, swam the oceans and rivers of the Northwest 5 to 7 million years ago. They were ancestors of sockeye salmon.
“Put a big old gnarly tooth in the front jaw. Make it a lot bigger. That’s a saber-tooth salmon,“ he says.
The salmon grew to be 6- to 12-feet long, on a vegetarian diet of plankton and filter food. The tooth, which grew as long as a human thumb, developed on spawning males.
Famoso says the university holds what’s known as a “type specimen” of Oncorhynchus: a particularly well-preserved example that was used to describe the species. The university wanted to make the fossil the centerpiece of a salmon evolution exhibit at its Museum of Cultural and Natural History. But the Oncorhynchus fossil was too fragile and too scientifically valuable to risk casting — using the traditional method of pouring a latex mold around the fossil.
The saber-toothed salmon fossil.
Famoso says delicate fossils of fish and bird skeletons can shatter and be permanently lost during the process of removing the mold.
“Generally when you do that we use latex and we make molds, and we pull the mold and we make a cast out of that mold. That’s great but not all fossils can be molded and cast. This is where the 3-D printing comes in and it’s really exciting.”
Instead, the salmon fossil was given a CT scan, creating a detailed 3-D image. Now the university’s science librarian, Dean Walton, is feeding that image file into a 3-D printer. The printer’s software slices the image into a series of thin layers that are laid down with a plastic called polylactic acid.
“In some ways, you can think of this as a glorified glue-gun that’s melting and squirting out a little line of plastic,” he says.
Walton says the printer, which cost a little over $2,000, can print objects the size of a milk carton and has a resolution down to a tenth of a millimeter. He says University of Oregon students and faculty can use the printer for free, but should be warned it’s a slow process. Printing the first piece of the salmon fossil took 72 hours.
The first piece of the fossil’s printed plastic replica.
Walton is printing several more segments of the fossil this month. When it is complete, Famoso will use the plastic replica to make a traditional cast model for display. He hopes the new replication technology will make it easier for scientists to share copies of fossils for research and public display without putting the originals at risk. He says Badlands National Park in South Dakota is also experimenting with the technique. Paleontologists at the University of Washington are using a 3-D printer to make custom cradles to securely hold delicate fossils in place.
