Dear Eatonville Community,

There is exquisite beauty in this season of spring. During spring everyday something new is born from a beautiful flower, buzzing bee and most recently my newest granddaughter. Spring is the giver of life and a time we all look forward to after a long hard winter.

I am always amazed that as we begin to enter spring, everything looks bare, dead and lifeless. Everything is colorless and cold. Spring warms slowly, almost like it’s awakening from a deep slumber. The hemisphere begins to warm significantly causing new plant growth to “spring forth,” as I see in my backyard filled with very long grass.

The rain picks up around April, as we certainly have seen this year, and Eatonville begins to bloom. Springtime in the Pacific Northwest has one of the most drastic changes in appearance. The snow on Mt. Rainier begins to melt, and streams and rivers swell with runoff. Spring is the time of growth, renewal, of new life (both plant and animal) being born. All of the trees begin to show new buds and come to life. The early spring flowers begin to bloom and everything seems possible.

This year of 2021 and last year most of 2020 have been so hard. The uncertainty, changes and sending kids and staff to school with new protocols has been unprecedented to say the least. I am proud of the teachers, they have made so many things come together for so many children. The ability to partner with families like no time before has also been unprecedented. Thank you for your flexibility, for your grace and for sending your children to our schools.

Like the spring season, this is a time to rejoice in our learning and to look to a bright future. The days are becoming more “normal”...school looks like school, with brilliant children who are learning and laughing with their peers. Our classrooms are brimming with clever staff and students, making the new protocols work. Our busses are happy places and our food service staff delight in delivering yummy food to all. Our secretaries are reaching out to the next year’s classes with positivity and we are all planning on what the fall 2021 looks like with eagerness and excitement.

This season always seems to be like a miracle. The sun comes out and the days are longer. We are nearing the end of the strangest school year I have ever seen. Let us celebrate the learning, the being together again, and finally the time for families and friends. Children will remember this year as a blur, but we who are adults know that we are coming out of this Pandemic forever changed. To hold my granddaughter is a gift, one that I hadn’t fully understood until this terrible year forced so many changes. At times it was bleak and seemed cold and bitter. But we are turning the corner!!

Celebrate the light this month, the ending of a year of learning, growing and embrace the flowering of the world around us. We have one more short month, June and then summertime. I can almost taste the strawberries and hear the ocean.

May: the most beautiful month in Eatonville. Enjoy!

Sincerely (in my flip flops:),

Krestin Bahr

Superintendent