June 2007

The committee commissioned to make modifications or find alternatives to West Seattle High's block schedule have decided that a consensus cannot be reached and will instead present position papers to the district by its Friday (June 29) deadline.

Brad Bernatek, chair of the parent and staff committee, said a few weeks ago that he was confident an agreement could be reached.

"I was being optimistic," he admitted.

But disagreement between staff and a group of parents who oppose the school's four-period day system persisted.

Another major roadblock was

Not only did Lafayette Elementary School students enjoy the last day of school, they got to watch the groundbreaking ceremony for a new school playground.

The plan is to scrape away the pavement in the northern end of the playground to plant a grassy field with a path around it. A sprinkler system and drainage will be installed this summer too.

Two half-court basketball hoops are to be put in near the northeast section of the playground alongside a new wall ball court.

Just as the Constitution is the rulebook for the federal government, King County government abides by the County Charter.

Every decade, a commission is formed to review the charter and consider improvements. The last King County Charter amendment was in 2004, when voters decided to downsize the County Council from 13 members to nine.

The current Charter Review Commission held a public hearing at The Hall at Fauntleroy June 20 to gather ideas from people about what to consider changing on the King County blueprint.

The King County Sheriff's Office annual Party Patrol continues for at least the next several weeks.

Since the inception of Party Patrol in 1998, there have been no deaths or serious injury accidents involving juveniles and alcohol in the area where the patrol was in operation.

Party Patrol is a multi-jurisdictional effort by local police agencies, coordinated by the Sheriff's office. Past participants have included King County Sheriff's deputies and municipal police agencies around the county.

ArtsWest Playhouse's eighth annual gala "The Beat Goes On" was the most successful ever in the organization's history, raising $152,000 for arts and education programs.

"The fantastic success of this special event shows just how many hundreds of Seattleites care about ArtsWest," said Alan Harrison, ArtsWest executive director.

The city has announced several neighborhood projects that will receive more than $350,000 in matching funds from the Department of Neighborhoods.

The money will support projects in West Seattle and South Park covering subjects as diverse as public art, race and social justice, youth-development, and climate protection.

Four times a year, Small and Simple Project Fund Awards are given to groups committed to building a better community. Locally raised money, donated materials, and volunteer labor match the funding. The awards range from $1,105 to $15,000.

This fall, the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods will be providing free trees for planting on residential streets in Seattle neighborhoods. Applications are accepted from groups of neighbors and are due on Friday, August 10. This is the Tree Fund's 11th year, having planted 18,000 trees, and investing over $650,000 in making Seattle a greener city.

The Tree Fund is a program of the Neighborhood Matching Fund and the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Metro Transit is proposing "an innovative solution" that allows the agency to generate additional income by partially wrapping some of its buses with vinyl advertising.

The partial wrap of buses would respond to concerns about visibility inside full-wrap buses while creating a new medium to help fund transit operations.

Last fall, the Metropolitan King County Council directed Metro to phase out its full-wrap bus advertising program due to concerns expressed by some passengers that their views were obscured and the bus interiors were dark.

Some local elementary school children decided to flirt, 21st-century style: the boys sent photos of their "privates" to some girls' cell phones, and the girls responded by sending photos of their breasts. When the principal called in one parent to discuss the issue (and to show him some of the images), the father allegedly lunged across the table and fought the principal for the cell phone. After literally twisting the principal's arm, the father got the phone and began deleting the evidence before leaving the building.

West Seattle High School certainly is the target of a small but vocal group of parents that are opposed to innovation. There are a few parents that refuse progress. These are the few parents that we hear from with glowing, yet false, misleading and irrelevant information in support of the four-period day. They are the few parents that refuse to see other students in distress. At the last committee meeting on the schedule, there were approximately 20 parents from a variety of schools who came to support change to a six-period day.