School district urged to develop timber holding plan

Teacher Kyle Hurley asked the members of the school board to consider how they wanted to use the Farm Forest at Tuesday’s Wahkiakum School District’s Board of Director’s meeting.

According to Hurley, Dave Houk, a service forester for the Grays Harbor Conservation District is willing to assist with the drafting of a management plan, but he needs more information.

“I think it would be a great idea to have a professional management plan for the Farm Forest so we have an idea and a goal that we are working towards,” Hurley said.

“I would like to see as much education as possible with our holdings,” Board Member Tina Schubert replied, “but before we do any timber falling or timber management we need to do a survey to see what we have for timber.”

Students have been creating their own management plans and working toward those goals. According to Hurley, there are trail systems on the Farm Forest and the students have been marking trees with scientific and common names. They’ve cut back brush and planted trees, but there are projects that they cannot do for safety reasons. One of those things is logging.

“There are some big trees out there that are 60-80 years old,” Hurley said. “You’re running out of markets for that timber. Do we leave it, do we take some of it out? When the market comes back that might be a great time to harvest. I think it’d be great to have some kind of educational component to the harvest, though.”

Hurley presented the board members with a list of questions to consider before he brings Houk in to create a professional management plan. They will revisit the issue at the next meeting.

The expectations of ESEA, more commonly known as No Child Left Behind, were that schools, over time, would reach a 100 percent passing rate for all students in achievement tests, regardless of their demographics.

“Eventually every school in the state of Washington will be declared failing if Congress doesn’t change the language,” Superintendent Bob Garrett said. “Washington State School Director’s Association has gotten behind the statewide effort to get every school district to consider signing a resolution asking Congress to reauthorize ESEA and revise it so it’s not so unreasonable.”

“I think there are already like 100 districts that have gone on record as supporting this,” he added.

The school board approved and signed the resolution.

In other news, all five board members waived compensation for their duties.

Gomes Construction won the bid to repair the grandstand and started work on Tuesday. The project is to be completed October 8, otherwise Gomes will be required to pay a penalty.

Garrett was pleased to report that enrollment numbers were higher than expected and might be even higher in October’s report.