Robby Kublic Memorial Hoop Tourney, may 17, 18, 19 at the Tulalip Tribes
As Long As The Rivers Run
Preserving a documentary film about the struggle for treaty fishing rights
Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Norma Frank is arrested on the banks of Nisqually River for exercising her treaty fshing rights. Photo Courtesy NWIFC
Tribal fishers, leaders and others active in the treaty fishing rights struggle are being interviewed for the second phase of the “As Long as the Rivers Run” documentary.
The first phase documented the Fish Wars of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film, directed by Carol Burns and co-produced by Hank Adams, was acquired by Salmon Defense in September 2009.
The “As Long as the Rivers Run” project is aimed at conserving and redistributing the film as an educational tool. The film will be remastered to meet today’s digital standards, and will be distributed to tribes, schools and others.
The movie is available on DVD or streaming through the Internet Archive.
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, April 1-30
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is one of the destination events for the Pacific Northwest, held from April 1-30. Every spring hundreds of thousands of people come to enjoy the celebration of spring as millions of tulips burst into bloom. As with all things governed by Mother Nature, the tulips bloom according to their own schedule sometime during the festival. The tulips allow us to share our corner of the world and showcase Skagit Valley agriculture.
Click here for more information.
Gardening with Cisco and Plant Swap at EvCC
Celebrate Earth Week at Everett Community College
Tuesday, April 23
Movie: “Who Killed the Electric Car?” 5-8 p.m. in Gray Wolf Hall, room 286. Watch the movie 
about the development of an electric car in America and stay for a post-film discussion with EvCC Resource Conservation Manager Molly Beeman.
Wednesday, April 24
Gardening with Ciscoe
Pacific Northwest gardening export (and TV and radio star) Ciscoe Morris speaks on organic gardening and answers your questions. 1:00pm to 2:00pm in the Gray Wolf Hall Courtyard. Free and open to the public.
Plant Swap
Get all the green you want for free at the annual EvCC plant swap! Students and employees can donate plants and seeds April 24th. Want to drop off your plants early in the AM? You can bring them to Maintenance (the building behind Glacier Hall) from 7am to 9am on April 24th. Want some new vegitation? Pick up plants and share what you’ve got between Parks Building and Graywolf Hall (in the Courtyard) From 9:30am-12:30pm or until they’re gone. (You don’t have to donate anything to take a plant home.) Free and open to the public.
Thursday, April 25
EvCC’s Earth Art Competition
Submit your sustainable work of art at the EvCC Earth Week “Earth Art” competition for bragging rights and valuable prize money. Click here for the 2013 Earth Art Entry Form. No project? Visit the Whitehorse Hall Critique space (Whitehorse Hall 2nd floor) between Monday, April 22nd and Thursday, April 25th to view the submissions. Vote for your favorite recycled material artwork by submitting a “people’s choice” vote and help a starving artist find fame and acclaim! EvCC Earth Art Competition projects will be displayed beginning Monday, April 22nd through Thursday, April 25th. Judging will commence from 10am-1pm, April 25th, 2013, Whitehorse Hall Critique Space. Event entry limited to current students, staff and faculty of Everett Community College. Event attendance is free and open to the public.
Click here to learn more about these events
Everett library hosts lectures on opera, ‘The Big Money’ novel
Source: The Herald
Here’s a chance to get your culture on.
The Everett Public Library is holding two presentations, one on opera and another on a classic novel.
Seattle Opera’s Robert McClung will talk about opera in general and will also discuss two operas coming up at Seattle Opera: Francis Poulenc’s “La Voix Humaine” and Giacomo Puccini’s “Suor Angelica.” Seattle Opera will be performing those operas from May 4 to 18.
McClung’s talk is at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the main library.
The second program is by professor Roger Berger, at 7 p.m. April 30, who will lead a discussion on John Dos Passos’ novel, “The Big Money,” as part of the library’s Books You’ve Always Meant to Read series.
The book is set in the Roaring ’20s and is considered experimental because the author punctuates the narrative using newspaper headlines, stream of consciousness segments, scraps of contemporary oratory and brief biographical sketches.
Berger will talk about these methods of narrative and the similarities between the time of “The Big Money” and today, according to a press release.
Both programs are free and at the Everett Library’s main auditorium, 2702 Hoyt Ave., Everett. To check the library’s event calendar online go to www.epls.org/calendar. For more information call 425-257-8000.
28th Annual Edmonds Community College Pow Wow, May 3-5
May 3 -5, 2013
Edmonds Community College Pow Wow
FREE – Everyone Welcome!
Contest Pow Wow
Grand Entry Friday, 5/3 at 7:00 PM
Grand Entry Saturday, 5/4 at 1:00 PM & 7:00 PM Grand Entry Sunday, 5/5 at 1:00 PM
MC: Arlie Neskahi
AD: Robert Charles
Sound: Randy Vendiola
Host Drum: 206 (Pending Confirmation)
www.edcc.edu/powwow
Nisqually Tribe is crossing the river to help salmon
Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
The Nisqually Indian Tribe is taking a creative approach to help a new streamside forest thrive.
“We’re using thousands of donated burlap sacks and transporting them across the Nisqually River by boat to make sure thousands of newly planted trees don’t get overrun by grass,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the tribe. The tribe’s restoration planting crew recently reforested 15-acres of off channel habitat owned by the Nisqually Land Trust.
“Usually, we’d drive in with weed whackers and selectively use some herbicide to make sure the grass doesn’t take back over,” Troutt said. “But, this parcel is wet and remote, which means we had to take extreme measures.”
Much of the Land Trust property on the mainstem Nisqually is covered with water, so the tribe decided against traditional herbicide, because it might have spread downriver. Placing burlap sacks around the young trees prevents grass from crowding them out. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Sumner donated five pallets of used burlap sacks for the project.
After the initial work, the crew will return by boat every few weeks with weed whackers to take care of the plants they couldn’t put burlap around because they were too close to water. “We’ll have to maintain some plantings by hand because we’d probably see burlap sacks floating down the river if we tried to keep the grass down that way,” Troutt said.
The tribe employs a handful of tribal members on a planting crew that conducts and maintains salmon restoration planting projects across the watershed. Almost every habitat restoration project in the watershed has some element of planting and plant care. In just more than five years the crew has planted over 200,000 trees and shrubs.
Off-channel habitat is vital to the survival of young salmon, especially chinook, coho and steelhead. Those species can spend take more than a year before leaving for the ocean, so the quality of freshwater habitat is especially important. Both Nisqually chinook and steelhead are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
“Off channel areas give salmon a place to rest and feed during the winter when the mainstem of the river might be flooding, making it inhospitable for them,” Troutt said. “Hopefully, by restoring and protecting this spot on the river, we’ll see larger salmon runs for everyone in the future.”
How the tab for education got so big
As lawmakers have expanded the definition of basic education, they’ve also increased the burden to pay.
By Jerry Cornfield, The Herald
OLYMPIA — One of the state’s most coveted entitlements is at the center of a billion-dollar battle in Olympia.
It is basic education, and the fight, surprisingly, is not on how much more money to spend on it. Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Gov. Jay Inslee agree it should be at least $1 billion.
They are divided on where those dollars should go to boost achievement of 1 million students and satisfy the state Supreme Court, which ruled last year that the state was failing to pay the full tab of the basic education program it had promised those enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade.
That tab is as large as it is because laws passed in 2009 and 2010 expanded the program of basic education and required expensive enhancements such as increasing hours of instruction and providing full-day kindergarten in every school.
What exactly is a basic education Washington taxpayers must cover?
It is teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. And it is testing students to see how well they’ve learned, and compiling reports to compare achievements of students statewide.
But it’s much more than that.
In 2013, basic education means paying for all the books, buses and bodies: teachers, librarians, principals and custodians. It also means paying for computers and electricity, providing instruction for students with disabilities and those in detention centers, as well as offering career guidance to those desiring to attend college or seeking a job.
Lawmakers can define and redefine basic education the way they want when they want — and they have. Supreme Court justices acknowledged this power in their 2012 decision.
“The program of basic education is not etched in constitutional stone,” Justice Debra Stephens wrote for the majority. “The Legislature has an obligation to review the basic education program as the needs of students and the demands of society evolve.”
Justices concluded the state needs to pay for the basic education it promises and was not upholding its financial side of its basic ed bargain with school districts.
Education, redefined
Washington’s obligations regarding education are enshrined in the constitution and etched into law.
The constitution says the state has a “paramount duty … to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders.” In 1977, amid legal wrangling on whether the state was living up to that edict, the Legislature approved the Basic Education Act to become one of the first states to sketch out a minimal amount of classroom instruction and services for students, then assume responsibility for paying for it all.
In that law, basic education had a loose definition of instruction to be conducted in a 180-day school year. It set broad goals of teaching students to “distinguish, interpret and make use of words, numbers and other symbols … organize words and other symbols into acceptable verbal and nonverbal forms of expression … to use various muscles necessary for coordinating physical and mental functions.”
It also laid out a means of picking up the tab of special education students and bus transportation from local school districts.
In 1993, lawmakers updated and redefined the law, inserting specific goals of instruction to include reading with comprehension, writing with skill, and communicating effectively and responsibly. It also called for teaching the “core concepts and principles of mathematics; social, physical, and life sciences; civics and history; geography; arts; and health and fitness.”
And it still included special education and buses, as well as a payment per student for materials, supplies and other day-to-day operational costs.
State laws passed in 2009 and 2010 revised the definition of basic education again by adding new pieces and expanding existing ones. They also inserted new formulas for how to distribute dollars to the state’s 295 school districts.
What resulted from enactment of House Bill 2261 in 2009 and House Bill 2776 in 2010 set the stage for the court fight on funding and this year’s legislative debate on where to invest a billion new dollars.
The situation today
Today, basic education covers several different programs with a combined cost of $12.7 billion dollars in the current two-year budget, which ends June 30.
These include special education, bilingual education, the Learning Assistance Program that assists underachieving students in all grades, instruction for students in juvenile detention centers and state institutions, and the highly capable program, which aids those performing at the top academic levels.
Basic education still covers the separate and growing expenses of bus transportation and of materials, supplies and operational costs. The state pays a different amount of money to each school district for buses and supplies. Those sums are based on the number of students and a complicated formula written into the recent laws. Today, the state does not cover the whole bill, which forces districts to divert local levy dollars from classroom instruction to make up the difference.
Those laws in 2009 and 2010 also required the state to do a lot more in certain areas of basic education by the 2017-18 school year.
Among the major changes are:
•Increasing the minimum number of instructional hours for seventh through 12th grades from 1,000 hours to 1,080 hours. It will remain at 1,000 hours for first through sixth grades.
Increasing the minimum number of credits for high school graduation from 20 to 24.
Boosting support of career and technical education and skill centers.
Providing full-day kindergarten in schools statewide.
Reducing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade.
Paying the entire bill for student transportation.
Increasing funds for maintenance, supplies and operation.
Increasing salaries for administrative and classified employees in line with a formula written into the 2010 legislation.
Facing the price tag
Lawmakers knew the price tag for these enhancements of basic education would be in the billions of dollars. But until the McCleary family sued and won, state leaders had shown little compunction to face the financial challenge.
This year, they are.
Budgets passed in the House and Senate and the proposal put forth by the governor each earmark at least $1 billion for the state’s unpaid portion of basic education.
All three plans designate the majority of new money for buses and supplies because it will free up local levy funds for instruction.
There are significant variations after that.
For example, the Senate puts $240 million into learning assistance programs and nothing into reducing the number of students in kindergarten through third-grade classes. The House, on the other hand, puts $225 million into class-size reduction and $22.8 million into remediation programs. Inslee’s approach is similar — $128 million for smaller classes and $28 million for LAP.
Inslee and leaders of the two chambers will work to settle this and other differences before the scheduled end of the session April 28.
Dispose of unwanted medicines on National Drug Take-back Day, April 27
Correct disposal helps prevent unintentional poisonings
Source: Snohomish County Health District
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. –Unintentional poisonings are at a record high in Snohomish County. The most recent information shows that in 2011 the number of such poisonings affected 150 county residents– more than triple the 46 reported in 2000. You can help reduce the chance of unintentional poisonings by disposing of your unwanted medicines on National Drug Take-back Day, April 27 at multiple locations in Snohomish County.
“Unintentional poisonings frequently involve prescription drugs,” said Dr. Gary Goldbaum, Health Officer and Director of the Snohomish Health District. He said they not only harm people, but improperly discarded drugs can also harm the environment when they enter septic systems and household trash.
To help protect the public’s safety and health, area law enforcement agencies and Bartell Drug will participate in National Drug Take-back Day, Saturday, April 27 at sites throughout the county. Find locations and hours on the Health District’s website, www.snohd.org, or call 425.388.3199. The sites accept unused, expired and unwanted prescription drugs, including narcotic painkillers and other medications.
All police departments in the county have drop-boxes available year-round, Monday through Friday, including the NCIS office at Naval Station Everett, the Washington State Patrol office in Marysville, and tribal police stations on the Tulalip and Stillaguamish reservations. Additionally, two Group Health locations and many Bartell Drugstores accept unwanted vitamins, pet medications, over-the-counter medications, inhalers and unopened EpiPens year-round.
Only law enforcement locations can accept controlled substances, such as Ativan and OxyContin. Leave all items in their original containers.
The Saturday drug-return hours support the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s “National Drug Take-back Day,” through participation by the Snohomish County Partnership for Secure Medicine Disposal. Partnership members include the Snohomish Health District, Snohomish County, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s office, the Snohomish Regional Drug and Gang Task Force, the Washington State Patrol, and all local law enforcement agencies.
Established in 1959, the Snohomish Health District works for a safer and healthier Snohomish County through disease prevention, health promotion, and protection from environmental threats. Find more information about the Health Board and the Health District at http://www.snohd.org.
Drop-Off Locations and Hours
The Snohomish County Partnership for Secure Medicine Disposal provides residents with secure medicine drop-off locations year-round. The hours listed below are for the Saturday, April 27 National Drug Take-back Day.
City: Arlington
Time: 10 am – noon
Location: Arlington Police Department
110 East Third Street
Arlington, WA 98223
City: Edmonds
Time: 10 am – 2 pm
Location: Edmonds Police Department
250 Fifth Avenue North
Edmonds, WA 98020
City: Everett
Time: 8 am – Noon
Location: Everett Police Department – North Precinct
3002 Wetmore Avenue
Everett, WA 98201
City: Lake Stevens
Time: 10 am – 2 pm
Location: Bartell Drugs (hosted by Lake Stevens Police Department)
621 SR 9 NE
Lake Stevens, WA 98258
City: Lynnwood
Time: 8 am – noon
Location: Lynnwood Police Department
19321 44th Avenue West
Lynnwood, WA 98036
City: Lynnwood
Time: 10 am – 2 pm
Location: Home & About Home Care (hosted by Snohomish Regional Drug & Gang TF)
15121 Hwy 99
Lynnwood, WA 98087
City: Marysville
Time: 9 am – 1 pm
Location: Marysville Police Department
1635 Grove Street
Marysville, WA 98270
City: Mill Creek
Time: 9 am – 1 pm
Location: Snohomish County Sheriff – South Precinct
15928 Mill Creek Blvd
Mill Creek, WA 98012
City: Mountlake Terrace
Time: 10 am – 2 pm
Location: Mountlake Terrace Police Department
5906 232nd Street SW
Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043
City: Snohomish
Time: 8 am – noon
Location: Snohomish Police Department
230 Maple Avenue
Snohomish, WA 98290
Taking the Reservation to Washington
Photo of the Week: Taking the Reservation to Washington
Levi Rickert, Native News Network
WASHINGTON – Photo of poor housing needs to be shared.
“Since Washington cannot come to the reservation, we will take the reservation to Washington,”
said Paul Iron Cloud about the Trail of Hope for Indian Housing’s 1,500 delivery of a Pine Ridge Indian Reservation house to the nation’s capital city.
This photo of the week was chosen because the story of sub-standard housing on Pine Ridge is significant.
The purpose was to bring attention to members of Congress of the sub-standard living conditions that exist on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The dilapidated structure represented of the overcrowded and sub-standard housing conditions where Northern Plains Indians are forced to live. Many Indian reservations have the worst housing in the United States.
So, the group left last Saturday for Washington with a portion of a house that was erected at Pine Ridge Village in the 1960s.
The house arrived with and was parked out the US Capitol on Wednesday for people to see. Once parked outside the Capitol Hill, some people stopped to ask if the house was really from the Pine Ridge.
On the side of the house was a sign that read: “A month ago, 13 people lived in this 2 bedroom, 1 bath home.”
Unfortunately, for the organizers of Trail of Hope for Indian Housing, only Senator Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, who sits on the US Committee on Indian Affairs, was the only member of Congress to attend the short program.
Wednesday was a hectic day in the nation’s capital due to national security concerns. Only two days before terrorists disrupted the Boston Marathon by leaving behind two bombs that killed three people and some 180 wounded. A portion of the Capitol Hill was closed down due to a ricin poison-laced letter sent to Senator Wicker’s office.
This photo of the week was chosen because the story of sub-standard housing on Pine Ridge is significant. We hope it gets shared on the internet – especially to members of Congress who were otherwise preoccupied on Wednesday.