home
 
ESD 105

Ellensburg’s Dick Wedin joins ESD 105 Board
      The ESD 105 Board of Directors welcomed Dick Wedin of Ellensburg as its newest member on Dec. 18.  Dick is representing District 1, which includes the Cle Elum-Roslyn, Damman, Easton, Ellensburg, Kittitas, Royal, Thorp, and Wahluke school districts.  His position had been held since 2002 by Royal City’s Denise Andersen, who left the Board this past fall.
      Dick recently retired from the Ellensburg School Board, where he had been a member during 1981-1987 and 1999-2007 and had been its president.  He has also been active with Kittitas County 4-H, serving as a past president and member of its Council since 1986 and as a member of its Endowment Trust Fund Board since 1988. 
      Dick has a B.S. degree in agricultural economics from Oregon State University and an M.S. in organization development from Central Washington University.  He retired from the Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources in 2004 after a 31-year career that included working as a land manager, a natural resource specialist, an asset stewardship section manger, and a property transactions facilitator. 
      The son of a longtime agriculture teacher, Dick is now serving as a distance learning instructor with Yakima Valley Community College.  His wife, Audrey, chairs of YVCC’s business technology department.  The couple has four children who all graduated from Ellensburg High School and Washington State University.
      “The greatest gift you can give to a child is an education,” says the new Board member.  “Education is a great enabler.  I want to enable these kids to be anything they want to be.  I look at this as a new opportunity in the field of education to learn and hopefully make a difference.”

ESD 105 expands with new parking site

      A new parking lot across the street from the ESD 105 Conference Center officially opened in early October.  The 60 additional parking spaces at the 21,000 square foot lot nearly doubles the available parking at the agency.  ESD 105 purchased the site of the lot (formerly a fenced storage area) and an adjacent warehouse at 108 S. 2nd Ave. in Yakima in 2006.  Work on the new landscaping, lighting, and asphalting at the site began last spring.

Math-Arts Integration Project begins
      ESD 105 has launched a program designed to boost students’ success in their third year high school math courses by incorporating visual arts concepts into their instruction.  The Math-Arts Integration Project is being funded by a two-year grant of $60,000 from the state’s Transition Math Project (TMP) through a contribution by the Ford Foundation.  ESD 105 is the only K-12 organization to receive a Math-Arts TMP grant, with the other going to Green River Community College
      From January through June, ESD 105 will work with art and math teachers from the Easton, Grandview, and Toppenish school districts to develop modules that will integrate artistic theories such as perspective, ratios, or repeating patterns as ways to help students connect with mathematical concepts.  Each school’s team will devise a module that they will test and teach together, ad the ideas will be shared among the three groups.
      Plans are to include the complete modules on the ESD 105 ArtFusion Web site this fall for others to use.  During the second year of the project, the modules will be refined and piloted in the participating districts, and possibly shared with additional schools.