KMAS Radio

How do you keep schools improving when the money's tight? Shelton School District Superintendent Wyeth Jessee sits down with Jeff Slakey on Focus on Shelton as the district wraps up Shelton Success, its five-year strategic plan, and starts gathering input for the next one.
Jessee explains why his team is having conversations and writing down what people say on cards instead of relying on surveys. So far they've collected about 300 pieces of input. He puts the district's reading progress in context, saying about half of third graders are meeting standard in reading and writing, and that Shelton has posted some of the strongest early literacy growth in Washington.
Then the conversation turns to what's hard: paying for mental health supports, working within state budget pressure, and taking on math with limited staff and money. "I'm not looking for sympathy," Jessee says. "I'm just looking for understanding."
They also talk about how the school board makes decisions, why Jessee is in classrooms most Thursdays, what a one-on-one reading conference sounds like, and how shared routines from preschool through 12th grade help students show up ready to learn. He also shares how the district is working to support about 40 students with the most intensive needs.

In this episode:
• The current strategic plan is closing out, and the district is gathering input for a new five-year plan.
• Jessee says rolling out new math materials will take at least three years. The district's website says it plans to implement a new program for grades 5–12 and pilot a K–4 program in 2027–28.
• Jessee says there's no direct pot of state money for mental health, so those supports compete with other priorities.
• Consistent behavior expectations across schools have helped bring a steep drop in discipline, Jessee says.

Links:
• Share your input (strategic plan survey): https://forms.gle/gPEmFW3hgjNLyoJCA
• Shelton Success strategic plan: https://www.sheltonschools.org/district/strategic_plan
• Math adoption information: https://www.sheltonschools.org/departments/teaching_learning/math_adoption

0:00 Superintendent Wyeth Jessee and the strategic plan wrap-up
0:33 Why Shelton Schools wants conversations, not just surveys
2:49 The low-hanging fruit is gone
4:03 Third-grade literacy in context
4:41 Mental health supports and budget trade-offs
5:15 State funding and the "razor's edge"
7:02 Math is next: why it takes three-plus years
9:03 Closure talks in other districts and the Shelton School Board
11:44 Why the superintendent walks through classrooms
15:05 Just-right books and one-on-one reading conferences
17:14 A strong start at Shelton High and Oakland Bay
18:32 One system from preschool through 12th grade
19:35 Shared behavior expectations and less discipline
21:11 How structure gives teachers room to teach
22:03 Transitions for students with intensive needs
23:16 How to weigh in on the next strategic plan

#SheltonWA #MasonCounty #SheltonSchools #SheltonSchoolDistrict #FocusOnShelton #KMAS #WashingtonEducation #PublicEducation #Literacy #MathEducation

Just off Highway 106, about a mile from the Hood Canal School, stands a longhouse that sm3tcoom Delbert Miller of the Skokomish Tribe spent more than seven years of weekends building by hand. In this conversation, recorded inside the Skabob House, Miller tells KMAS’s Jeff Slakey how a great-uncle’s instruction to “face it towards the east” shaped a lifetime of preparation — and how he milled the logs on his own sawmill, hand-hewed the beams, and set yellow cedar corner posts on a scorching summer day.

The house was built for his daughter. Miller describes a series of ceremonies spanning her life, from the day she was born onward, witnessed by members of the Lummi, Tulalip, Nisqually, Nooksack and Skagit tribes and by a sitting Washington governor. Two years ago, with the house finished and a family song presented to her, she became head of the home — completing a ceremonial cycle Miller says hadn’t been carried through in 175 years. He also explains how the longhouse is used today for namings, weddings, memorials, healing and salmon ceremonies, and how the carvings on its walls came out of a family’s grief.

In the second half, Miller turns to the history many Mason County residents drive past without knowing. He shares his elders’ account of a prophecy of upheaval, of the arrival of missionaries and Indian agents around 1850, of longhouses along the water destroyed, and of the nine Twana bands — from villages at Quilcene, Dabob Bay, Seabeck, Dewatto, Tahuya, Belfair, Duckabush, Dosewallips and Hamma Hamma — being moved to Skokomish. He describes how breaking up community longhouses into single-family homes changed a way of life, how burial laws and funeral homes cost families their land, and why, through all of it, his people say: “We’re not victims.”

sm3tcoom Delbert Miller speaks at the Hood Canal Improvement Club meeting on Tuesday, November 3.

#SkokomishTribe #Skokomish #HoodCanal #MasonCounty #MasonCountyWA #SheltonWA #KMAS #FocusOnShelton #Longhouse #TwanaPeople #IndigenousHistory #NativeHistory #CoastSalish #PacificNorthwestHistory #WashingtonHistory #HoodCanalImprovementClub #TribalHistory #LocalHistory #PNW

Ahead of the September 25 Coats for Kids fundraiser at Taylor Station, Jeff sits down with Amber Anderson of South Mason Fire and Stephanie Bronson of Taylor Station to walk through what the night looks like and why the program matters. Amber explains how the fundraiser — last held in 2023 — has funded the department's coat program ever since, helping South Mason Fire District, including the Squaxin Island Early Learning Center, keep kids warm and dry through the winter. The program isn't limited to kids or to fundraiser night, either: Amber describes South Mason Fire crews carrying coats on calls and handing them out on the spot, including to houseless adults the department's mobile integrated health team encounters in the community.

Stephanie details Taylor Station's role since taking over the restaurant in 2023 — a standing in-house coat donation display, a Christmas Giving Tree program, and, for this event, 10% of all proceeds from 5 p.m. to close going toward Coats for Kids. The night itself runs 5 p.m. to midnight with a silent auction (bidders don't need to be present to win), live music from Katie Wade, an emcee, a full open bar, and dinner specials including prime rib and a homemade pasta dish. Steph and Amber also make the pitch for local businesses to donate silent auction items — recent donations include a Blackstone griddle, a custom cake for 50, and a "Taste of Mason County" gift-card basket built from six local restaurants.

Hashtags

#CoatsForKids #TaylorStation #SouthMasonFire #KMAS #MasonCountyWA #SheltonWA #HoodCanal #WashingtonState #SilentAuction #CommunityFundraiser #LocalNews #GivingBack #PNWEvents #ThingsToDoWA

Taped on 9/8/2026 at the 1889 Prime Steakhouse in Downtown Olympia, Washington, Jeff Slakey talked with Mike Tice,  former Seahawk and former Minnesota Vikings head coach, as the Seahawks open the regular season at Lumen Field in a rematch of last year's Super Bowl. Kickoff's at 5:20, with our pregame starting at 3 on KMAS. 

Tice spent 14 years playing in the NFL, 130 games with Seattle, and 21 years coaching, including four seasons as the Vikings' head coach. We got into what it's really like having an NFL Films crew embedded with your team for Hard Knocks (he lived it himself in Atlanta), what he's seeing from the Seahawks' new coaching staff and their rookie running back, why he thinks the NFC North could be wide open with Kyler Murray in Minnesota, and which under-the-radar teams he's watching this year.

We also talked about what brought him to this community in the first place, and the golf tournament he and his wife Diane run that's given more than $1.1 million to youth charities, including a $90,000 check to the Boys & Girls Club of Thurston County just two weeks ago.

#Seahawks #GoHawks #NFL2026 #MikeTice #MinnesotaVikings #SeahawksOpener #KMASRadio #MasonCountyWA #SheltonWA #FocusOnShelton #NFLSeasonPreview #ThurstonCounty

Mason County Public Health Director Dave Windom sits down with Jeff Slakey from KMAS for an update after weeks of budget discussions in front of the county commissioners, and the picture is a difficult one. Windom lays out where his department's money actually comes from, and why state-level constraints on foundational public health funding are leaving Mason County short somewhere between $800,000 and a million dollars. Most of it has been absorbed through retirements and unfilled positions, the county now has one food inspector where it had two, but Windom says the department has reached the point where any further reduction means cutting programs outright.

The conversation widens from there. Windom explains what public health actually does day to day, from communicable disease investigations and bat protocols to septic inspections, code enforcement and the county's new mobile health unit, which is now running in partnership with North Mason Fire after the state clawed back funding for a nurse practitioner position. He discusses why health funding has grown steadily more urban-centric over the past decade, what HR1 could mean for rural hospitals where two-thirds of patients are on Medicaid or Medicare, and the fast-moving $181 million Rural Health Transformation award that small counties may not have the staff to chase, applications are due August 21 with the money spent by October 31.

Looking ahead, Windom describes a possible return to a model Mason County last used in the early 2000s, with public health itself providing low- and no-cost care, women's health, family planning, immunizations, out of two clinic rooms that are built and sitting empty. Paying for it may fall to local voters: the legislature's House Bill 2442 gives counties new sales and property tax options tied to public health clinics, and Windom plans to bring those models to the county commission. The interview closes with a practical roundup: why salmonella outbreaks come from big commercial packagers rather than the farmers market, the measles outbreak in Clark County, and a multi-year uptick in tuberculosis cases that has staff watching patients take their medication in person.

#MasonCounty #MasonCountyWA #PublicHealth #KMAS #SheltonWA #HoodCanal #RuralHealth #WashingtonState #DaveWindom #MasonCountyPublicHealth #HB2442 #RuralHealthcare #PNWNews #Matlock #NorthMasonFire #MeaslesOutbreak #FarmersMarket #LocalGovernment #ThingsToKnowWA

Author and playwright Joe Fuller joins Jeff Slakey at Lions Park in Olympia for two conversations in one. First: his book "8th Street," a collection of short stories and poetry about growing up in a big Catholic family in Olympia, Knights of Columbus, St. Michael’s School, and the kind of free-range childhood a lot of South Sound listeners will recognize. Joe talks about how a chance visit with fellow local author Dick Pust during the pandemic pushed him to finally publish stories he’d been writing since his early 30s, and shares one of the book’s best moments: the true story of sneaking out his bedroom window with his brother, only to get locked out by his own dad. Then the conversation shifts: Joe opens up about getting sober at 33, working at Olympia’s recovery clubhouse for $4.35 an hour, and a 1991 intervention for a high school friend that didn’t work that day, but did six months later, and the friend has been sober ever since. That night became the seed for a musical stage play Joe wrote about drug and alcohol intervention, with every song written from a family member’s point of view, what addiction looks like from the outside, not the inside. Joe closes with a simple message: it’s never too late to ask for help, and support is closer than you think.

https://www.amazon.com/8th-Street-Joe-Fuller/dp/B0BXMTJT3N

#OlympiaWA #KMAS #SouthSound #ThurstonCounty #LocalAuthor #8thStreetBook #PNWAuthors #Playwright #RecoveryStory #Sobriety #InterventionSupport #AddictionRecovery #WashingtonState #CommunitySpotlight #NeverTooLateForHelp

Kevin Shutty is leaving the Mason County Economic Development Council at the end of the month, and before he goes he sits down with Jeff Slakey from KMAS for a wide-ranging look back at two and a half years, and a pointed look forward at what the county has to get right next. Shutty, who came to the EDC from the Mason County Commission, says the arrow keeps pointing up for Mason County: the community landed in the top 10 nationally for growth among communities its size, and he describes an organization that has deliberately widened what "economic development" means, from supporting existing small businesses to career pathways with the Shelton School District to a transportation partnership with North Mason Regional Fire Authority that gets people into recovery and health care appointments. His argument: a healthy, stable community is economic development.

The heart of the conversation is infrastructure, and Shutty doesn't soften it. With a new face joining the county commission in January, he lays out the collaboration problem in the Shelton urban growth area, the city, unincorporated Mason County, PUD 3 and the Port of Shelton all holding different pieces, and points to the Shelton Springs Road sewer extension as the kind of project that would unlock housing and development quickly if the jurisdictions could align. "The real question for the new commission," he says, "is how do they get out of their own way." He rejects the build-it-and-they-will-come framing in favor of something blunter: trunk-line infrastructure serves the public good, and if you don't build it, they aren't coming anyway. He also details a concrete win, Mason County and the Port of Shelton splitting the cost of site readiness at Johns Prairie Industrial Park, tied to an international recruitment: a shellfish and agriculture manufacturer looking to relocate from British Columbia to Mason County.

Shutty also makes the case for what Mason County could be. Living wage jobs come first, he says, but the county can hold onto its timber and shellfish heritage while courting remote workers, startups, manufacturers like TruFab, health care employers, and an emerging defense sector positioned to capture spillover from a multibillion-dollar investment at the naval shipyard in Bremerton, five miles up the road from Belfair. On growth itself he's unequivocal: "good enough isn't good enough for Mason County," and with roughly 1,500 housing units moving through Shelton's permitting process, growth is going to happen whether the county plans for it or not. The conversation closes on a lighter note, the EDC's own limited-edition blend with Olympic Mountain Ice Cream, debuting at the August 20 event, and on Shutty's confidence in Karin Leaf, who steps in as interim executive director, and the board that will hire his replacement.

#MasonCounty #MasonCountyWA #SheltonWA #KMAS #HoodCanal #Belfair #EconomicDevelopment #MasonEDC #ChooseMason #KevinShutty #PortOfShelton #PUD3 #WashingtonState #PNW #RuralEconomy #SmallBusiness #Housing #Infrastructure #LocalGovernment #OlympicMountainIceCream #Allyn #Matlock #ShipyardJobs #LivingWageJobs

KMAS is the local radio station in Mason County Washington.

This month's Sheriff Sit-Down, brought to you by Our Community Credit Union, finds Mason County Sheriff Ryan Spurling walking through the biggest changes the department has faced in generations. With the county's population reportedly tripling each summer, Sperling starts with how deputies are handling the seasonal traffic surge before diving into a major internal restructuring: two new lieutenant positions, four open sergeant slots, and a shift of detectives, neighborhood watch, DARE, school resource officers and the PIO into a reorganized civil division. He calls it the largest leadership turnover the 172-year-old agency has ever faced, driven by retirements and by growth anticipated from the naval shipyard's new dry dock. Sperling also details the department's SET team, the first proactive crime unit since 2018, bridging the gap between an overworked patrol division and detectives tied up on major cases. He closes with a direct answer to a question a lot of residents ask: with Washington ranking near the bottom nationally in officers per capita, how does Mason County avoid being either under-policed or an over-policed "police state"? His answer includes a real-world example, a 50% drop in crime after two neighborhoods funded a dedicated deputy — and a philosophy rooted in Sir Robert Peel's 1829 principles of community policing.

#MasonCountySheriff #SheriffSitDown #KMAS #MasonCountyWA #HoodCanal #WashingtonState #CommunityPolicing #PublicSafety #LawEnforcement #LocalGovernment #RyanSpurling #PNWNews #ThingsToKnowWA #SETTeam

Hoodstock 2026's Saturday night turns ticketed and 21+ at Robin Hood Village in Union, WA — and the James Berkley Band is one of two acts closing out the weekend on land, alongside the Stephanie Anne Johnson Band (6–10pm; James Berkley Band on around 8). Singer-songwriter James Berkley, born in San Diego, raised near Seattle, now based in the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene area, joins KMAS by phone for one of the most personal previews of the festival. He talks about the sound (for fans of Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz and John Mayer), how storytelling and genuine connection drive his shows, the Jason Mraz song that first put a guitar in his hands, and growing up in music through his father's churches. For Hoodstock he plays as a trio with his nephew Anthony Berkley on drums and Frank Sinclair on bass and vocals — his bandmate in The Red Books. It's the ticketed evening cap on a full Hoodstock weekend that also includes the free daytime Land Concert and Saturday's Water Concert out on Hood Canal. Get evening-show tickets and the full lineup at hoodstock.org.

James Berkley
Saturday Night Tickets

#Hoodstock #Hoodstock2026 #JamesBerkley #JamesBerkleyBand #TheRedBooks #KMAS #HoodCanal #MasonCounty #UnionWA #RobinHoodVillage #SingerSongwriter #AmericanaSoul #LiveMusicPNW #SpokaneMusic #PNWEvents #WashingtonEvents #ThingsToDoWA

Hoodstock 2026's Saturday Water Concert gets a full-horn dance party in the middle of the day when Seattle ska and reggae mainstays The Georgetown Orbits take the Water Stage at the Union Marina on Hood Canal. Guitarist and founder Orion and bassist Cale join KMAS by phone to talk about the band's two decades playing traditional Jamaican music — ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub — the Bob Marley gateway that started it all, and their 2025 album Constellations. A seven-plus-piece band with a full horn section (sax, trombone, trumpet, keys), the Orbits build the kind of danceable, deep-catalog set that gets a crowd moving — even a crowd floating on kayaks and paddleboards. They land midday on a water bill that runs from Santa Poco's country in the morning through DJ Mixtress to a Tom Petty tribute from Petty Thief at night — all part of a full Hoodstock weekend that also includes the free daytime Land Concert at Robin Hood Village. On the water, your ticket is a flag: grab one at the Union Country Store, Union City Market, Summertide Resort or May Mobile Marine, and see the full lineup at hoodstock.org.

https://thegeorgetownorbits.bandcamp.com/

#Hoodstock #Hoodstock2026 #GeorgetownOrbits #KMAS #HoodCanal #MasonCounty #UnionWA #WaterStage #WaterConcert #Ska #Reggae #Rocksteady #SeattleMusic #LiveMusicPNW #WashingtonEvents #ThingsToDoWA #ExploreHoodCanal