The San Juan Island School Dis­trict Board of Direc­tors will hold a reg­u­lar meet­ing on Wednes­day, Feb. 16 at 5 p.m. Items up for dis­cus­sion or action at Wednes­day’s meet­ing include:

• Super­in­ten­den­t’s report
• Mid-year review of school improve­ment plans for 2021–2022
• Month­ly bud­get and enroll­ment report
• Addi­tion­al direc­tor reports
• Review of 2021–2022 Board calendar

The Board will also hold a non-pub­lic Exec­u­tive ses­sion at 4 p.m. on Feb. 16 to eval­u­ate the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of an appli­cant for pub­lic employ­ment or to review the per­for­mance of a pub­lic employ­ee. Con­tin­ue Reading

Island rock band Des­o­la­tion Sound will pre­miere live ver­sions of songs from their new album “Sal­ish Rock” at a ben­e­fit con­cert on March 12 at the San Juan Com­mu­ni­ty Theatre.

The event starts at 7:30 p.m., the entry fee is pay-what-you-can, and all pro­ceeds will go to the Joyce L. Sobel Fam­i­ly Resource Cen­ter and SJCT.

Des­o­la­tion Sound is Darvis Tay­lor, Scott Sluis, Tom Hen­ry, and Daniel Day. You can hear tracks from the band’s pre­vi­ous records on Band­camp.

Online reg­is­tra­tion and sched­ule details for the tenth edi­tion of the San Juan Islands Agri­cul­tur­al Sum­mit are now avail­able. This year’s event takes place on Fri­day, March 4 and Sat­ur­day, March 5.

Held on Lopez Island, the Ag Sum­mit fea­tures vir­tu­al pro­gram­ming on Fri­day and in-per­son work­shops and gath­er­ings on Sat­ur­day. It includes a keynote address from Rowen White, a Seed Keep­er from the Mohawk com­mu­ni­ty of Akwe­sasne and an activist for Indige­nous seed sovereignty.

Work­shops touch on a broad range of top­ics, includ­ing car­bon seques­tra­tion, on-farm com­post­ing, com­mer­cial orchard­ing, on-farm vet skills, and alter­na­tive mod­els for farm­land access. There’s also a song and sto­ry hour for kids and an out­door evening social.

The 2022 Ag Sum­mit is sup­port­ed by WSU San Juan Coun­ty Exten­sion, San Juan Islands Agri­cul­tur­al Guild, San Juan Islands Con­ser­va­tion Dis­trict, San Juan Coun­ty Agri­cul­tur­al Resources Com­mit­tee, Lopez Com­mu­ni­ty Land Trust, and Lopez Island School Dis­trict & LIFE Gar­den Program.

The San Juan Coun­ty Coun­cil will hold a reg­u­lar meet­ing on Tues­day, Feb. 15 at 9 a.m. Items up for dis­cus­sion or action at Tues­day’s meet­ing include:

• Salmon recov­ery grant
• Amer­i­can Res­cue Pro­gram Act update
• Approv­ing guild contracts
• Sched­ul­ing a pub­lic hear­ing to sur­plus Sher­if­f’s Office canine asset
• Approv­ing a res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing the Trea­sur­er to can­cel uncol­lectible per­son­al prop­er­ty taxes

The meet­ing will also include a coun­cil and leg­isla­tive update, an update from the Coun­ty Man­ag­er, and an update from the Coun­cil Clerk. In addi­tion, the Coun­cil will hold two non-pub­lic Exec­u­tive ses­sions — one to dis­cuss lit­i­ga­tion with legal coun­sel, the oth­er to dis­cuss acquir­ing or leas­ing property.

You can view the live stream of the meet­ing online or attend in per­son at the Coun­cil Leg­isla­tive Hear­ing Room. Masks are required for in-per­son atten­dance. To make a pub­lic com­ment, sign up pri­or to 9 a.m. on Feb. 15.

We would like to thank all of you who sup­port­ed the cam­paign to renew the EMS levy with your finan­cial help, your let­ters, your emails, your social media posts and, most of all, your votes.

After such a dif­fi­cult and con­tentious cam­paign it was grat­i­fy­ing that the large major­i­ty of you (near­ly two to one) cast your votes to renew the levy for the out­stand­ing EMS pro­gram we’ve ben­e­fit­ted from for the past 30 years.

Thank you for all your support.

The Com­mit­tee to Renew EMS
Karin Agosta
Win­nie Brumsicle
Everett Clary
Richard Grout
Susan Grout
Trish Lehman
Anna Lisa Lindstrum
Herb Mason
Liz Pillow

The San Juan Coun­ty Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment reports 48 con­firmed or prob­a­ble new COVID cas­es on San Juan Island since Feb. 4. The Coun­ty also reports eight new cas­es on Orcas Island and eight on Lopez Island. This week’s 64 new cas­es bring the total case count to 1,112.

The Coun­ty notes that more than 20 of the cas­es on San Juan Island are direct­ly con­nect­ed to the San Juan Island School Dis­trict com­mu­ni­ty — either stu­dents or staff.

The next vac­cine clin­ic offered by San Juan Coun­ty Health & Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices takes place this Sun­day, Feb. 13 from 8 a.m. to noon at the Fairgrounds.

Togeth­er with the Joyce L. Sobel Fam­i­ly Resource Cen­ter, Island Rec is bring­ing a Spe­cial Olympics pro­gram to San Juan Island this spring.

A track and field pro­gram, which runs from March 7 through June 19, is avail­able at no cost to indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties eight years of age and old­er. Coach­ing will be pro­vid­ed by vol­un­teers from the community.

For more infor­ma­tion, or to reg­is­ter, con­tact Jen Hen­ry at Island Rec.

The Fri­day Har­bor Film Fes­ti­val’s Best of the Fest series presents one fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary along with one or two short­er doc­u­men­tary films each week in Feb­ru­ary. The films are streamed on demand. For the week of Feb. 12 to 18, FHFF is show­ing Mission:Joy and My Invis­i­ble Hus­band.

FHFF shared with the Update a pre­view of each film.

Con­tin­ue Reading

The Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Coun­cil of San Juan Coun­ty announced that they will offer free home care aide train­ing lat­er this year. The EDC will also pro­vide finan­cial sup­port for the cost of state cer­ti­fi­ca­tion fees.

Accord­ing to the EDC:

HCA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion can help peo­ple earn a liv­ing while help­ing their neigh­bors. Work­ing as an HCA can be a step­ping­stone towards oth­er health­care careers such as nurs­ing or adult fam­i­ly home man­age­ment. If you work part-time, sea­son­al­ly, or free­lance, you could gain income sta­bil­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty by work­ing as an HCA for a sec­ond income. If you work in per­son­al care ser­vices, becom­ing an HCA would allow you to offer addi­tion­al services.

The EDC has part­nered with Cor­ner­stone Health­care Train­ing to offer the pro­gram, which has lim­it­ed avail­able space. Appli­cants must be 18 years of age or old­er and res­i­dents of San Juan Coun­ty. More infor­ma­tion is avail­able on the EDC web­site.

Last week the MV Tillikum head­ed south to Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries’ Eagle Har­bor Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty on Bain­bridge Island, where it will remain until ear­ly March. The ves­sel — built in 1959 and refit in 1994 — is in Eagle Har­bor for its annu­al main­te­nance and inspections.

The larg­er MV Sealth has replaced the Tillikum on the inter­is­land route.

The San Juan Coun­ty Mas­ter Gar­den­er Foundation’s online plant sale runs through March 11, but many of this year’s choic­es have already sold out or are close to sell­ing out.

The annu­al sale start­ed about two weeks ago and includes bun­dles of bare root shrubs and bulbs, along with local­ly grown wild­flow­ers pro­duced by the Sal­ish Seeds Project — a part­ner­ship between the San Juan Coun­ty Con­ser­va­tion Land Bank and the San Juan Preser­va­tion Trust.

Remain­ing vari­eties include Noot­ka rose, Broadleaf sedum, Great camas (pic­tured above), and Hook­er’s onion.