SOUTH BEND - South Bend School District will receive a plaque from the architects that designed the Mike Morris Elementary school building. The building was designed by the architecture firm Erickson McGovern Architects (EMA) out of Tacoma.

"When we started the planning for the new school, we knew we wanted to design and construct a school our community would be proud of for years to come," South Bend Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jon Tienharra told the Herald. "Our architects at Erickson McGovern nailed it, incorporating a beautiful, yet unique design with all the function demanded by an elementary school. We do have a plaque coming as part of this design award, it will be displayed in the school district office."

In honor of Child Abuse Awareness Prevention Month local community groups like the Crisis Support Network have created pinwheel gardens throughout Pacific County. Each pinwheel represents the happy, carefree childhoods all children deserve.

Big Nick's Pizza joined forces with Teen Link, Washington State Health Department and StartTalkingNow.org in mid-March to help teens and young adults to deal with the current COVID crisis and loneliness issues.

Big Nick's received 1000 14" pizza boxes from the Reach Out Over A Slice sponsors and have started delivering pizzas in them. The boxes are covered with trivia and a Truth or Challenge game. One of the squares to play with friends is TRUTH: What's one of your favorite memories? If the player refuses to answer then they do the CHALLENGE: Act out your favorite movie scene. The goal is to get the teens to socialize with members of their family or close friends.

Over the last 14 days, there have only been 13 new COVID-19 cases with only 11 cases being actively monitored by public nurses.

This brings the total number of cases up to 847. There has been no new hospitalization in the last 7 days and no new deaths due to COVID. The current case rate per 100k over 14 days is 60.1.

SOUTH BEND - A decent crowd attended the first track and field meet of the season on a cool, slightly windy, partly sunny Thursday at Don Weisel Oval on the campus of South Bend HS. Raymond won the girls' side and Naselle came away with the boys' team title. A total of five teams competed.

"I was happy with the results from our first meet," Raymond HS head coach Mike Tully told the Herald. "I think we performed as well as can be expected after eight practices.

"Kyra's marks were quite good for this time of year," Tully said. "Her long jump mark was a career best by almost five inches and tied the Raymond junior class record. Her high jump mark was only two inches off her career best, so she's pretty close there as well. I'm looking for her to do some pretty impressive things as the season progresses.

"One surprise was Morgan Anderson in the high jump," Tully said. "He hadn't high jumped in almost three years and hadn't ev

The new metrics for Phase 3 have started. The two key metrics for Pacific County are that we must have less than 100 new cases over 14 days and less than three hospitalizations over 7 days.

Pacific County reported 9 cases over the last 14 days last week with only 6 cases still actively being monitored by the public nurses. This brings the total number of cases since the state of the pandemic to 839.

Only one person has been hospitalized with COVID over the last 7 days and there has been no new deaths.

SOUTH BEND - South Bend School District received a $258,000 design grant to keep Koplitz Field House up to building code. With it's unique, old-style gym (1950), including that lovable balcony, it sometimes is challenging to keep it up to current seismic standards.

"It's kind of interesting, since about 2016 we've been working on the new elementary school, in particular trying to secure funding," Dr. Tienhaara told the Herald Monday morning. "During this time I have been able to connect with and meet lots of different people at OSPI and in the legislature, many of them work on special projects and legislative priorities. I think it was early 2018 I got a call from one of these contacts asking if we had any interest in participating in a geotechnical study that had to do with potential seismic upgrades.

"Since we were in the middle of the new school planning, we had already started to look at some geotechnical studies on the south part of campus, so I was very interested in possibly tying the project into additional funding," Tienhaara continued.

Only 5 additional positive COVID-19 cases in Pacific County. The sources of the infections are community gathering and household contact.

The total case count since the start of the pandemic is 821. There are 13 active cases being tracked by public nurses.

The current case rate per 100k over 14 days is 138.6. Between February 22 and March 11, Pacific County's case rate increased dramatically from 60.1 to 295.7 due to social gatherings.

Since March 22, the entire state will move to Phase 3 of the Healthy Washington Roadmap to Recovery Plan. In order to stay in Phase 3, Pacific County must have less than 30 new cases over 14 days and less than three hospitalizations over 7 days. If the county does not meet these metrics then the county will have to move back to previous phases.

SOUTH BEND - Groundwork has begun by Strickland & Sons Excavation Civil Contractors in preparation for the construction of the new Dollar General store in South Bend on Robert Bush Drive East (Hwy. 101), across the roadway from Chen's Restaurant & Motel. Construction Workers started last Monday (Feb. 8).

There will be no District IV Volleyball tournament for Raymond HS after two more student-athletes tested positive for COVID-19 last week causing the season to end for the undefeated Lady Seagulls. Two weeks ago, three players had tested positive for the virus bringing the total to five.