All posts by Wendi Dunlap

Editor of the Beacon Hill Blog.
Getting Around, Meetings, Urban Planning

Bike/pedestrian circulation planning meeting tomorrow

A cyclist rides on 14th Avenue South. Photo by Seattle Daily Photo, in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
“Beacon Hill kids, families and adults, riding bikes to schools, parks, the library and the urban village using a complete circulation system of designated, safe, bicycle routes, including bike boulevards” is the vision of a new group forming on Beacon Hill. The Beacon Family Bike and Pedestrian Circulation Plan Committee invites all interested neighbors to an organizing meeting tomorrow, January 27, from 5:00 – 5:45 pm at the Beacon Hill Library. Organizer Frederica Merrell writes,

“Join neighbors at a meeting to create a safe bike circulation plan that will also benefit walking in our community.  We are borrowing great ideas from our neighbors to the south in Portland who have been doing family bike planning since 1990 through the Bike Transportation Alliance.

“We want to get kids and adults on their bikes for those short trips on the hill from home to school, the store, McPherson’s, Jefferson Park and the library.  We don’t want to battle with dangerous arterial traffic.  We want to create bike boulevards on less busy streets, improve arterial crossings, add signage, and have fun doing it!”

The group’s draft mission is currently “To design, plan and steward the creation of a family bike and pedestrian circulation system for Beacon Hill based on the work of innovative Portland neighbors, PDOT planners, and the Bike Transportation Alliance in coordination with SDOT and components of the SE Transportation Plan, the Bicycle Master Plan and the Pedestrian Master Plan.”

The Beacon Hill Library is located at 2821 Beacon Avenue South. If you have questions or ideas, contact Frederica at frmerrel@seattleschools.org.

Education

Cleveland changes apparent at STEM open house

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Charlie Mas (a Beacon Hill neighbor) attended the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) option program open house at Cleveland High School on Saturday, and has posted his experience there at the Seattle Public Schools community blog.

He discusses the potential changes in the student demographics and some of the challenges the STEM students may face, including budget cuts, transportation issues, and a staff that will probably need to adjust to the school’s changes themselves. According to Mas, staff members at the open house at times seemed unprepared for the possibility that many of the STEM students will be working at or beyond grade level and will want to take advanced courses in subjects such as world languages.

However, Mas also describes what he sees as positive aspects of this new program on Beacon Hill:

“My daughter is looking for a small school, and I am convinced that STEM will be small. She is looking for project-based learning and they are definitely going to have that. She wants to escape the ‘Discovery’ math, and it looks like STEM will offer an escape from it. She is looking for a lot of science, and oh boy will she have that.”

The Seattle Times (BHB partners) also reported about STEM yesterday, focusing on concerns about budget issues and whether the District will be able to support the program.

To set up the STEM program, the District may spend $800,000 for curriculum and training from the New Technology Network, a network of schools with a STEM focus. Some, including School Board President Michael DeBell, are not certain this expenditure is necessary in a time of tight budgets.

The Times quotes Cleveland principal Princess Shareef, who feels the New Technology Network support is vital: “If we want to do this correctly, we’re going to need the professional development that the New Technology Network affords. I hope, hope, hope that the board approves it.”

Starting in Fall 2010, Cleveland will not be a neighborhood “comprehensive” high school, but instead an “option” school, open to everyone in the District. The STEM program will be phased in for freshmen and sophomores in the classes of 2013 and 2014, while juniors and seniors will be enrolled in a College Readiness Academy.

Beacon Bits

Beacon Bits: cerveza, soccer, and STEM

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Now customers at El Quetzal can have beer with dinner. Photo by Jason.
El Quetzal, 3209 Beacon Avenue South, has been approved for a liquor license in the category “Restaurant – beer.” Now you can have a cerveza with your torta.

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Seattle Soccer Club members are looking for players to join them for a pick-up soccer game at the old Van Asselt Elementary School tomorrow, Saturday, January 23, at noon. (If the field is occupied, they’ll move across the street to the Van Asselt Community Center.) Players of all levels are welcome. Details are on their Meetup page.

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The South Seattle Beacon discusses Cleveland High School’s new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) option program that will open this fall. In the article, principal Princess Shareef expresses some worry that Beacon Hill families near Cleveland might not take advantage of the STEM program’s availability: “The teachers and families want it to remain diverse, but when we have community meetings, families from our community haven’t been showing up… I want the Beacon Hill community to understand what is going to be happening here and for them to consider having their kids be students here.” Cleveland is hosting an open house for the STEM program tomorrow, January 23, from 10:00 am – noon, at 5511 15th Avenue South. (via Seattle Public Schools community blog)

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Urban farmer (and MacArthur Genius Fellow) Will Allen is visiting Seattle on February 3 for a series of events promoting urban farming to help Seattle residents gain access to healthy food.

At 7:00 pm he’ll be at Mercer Middle School for “Inside the Urban Farmer’s Studio,” a free, community-wide discussion about food, urban farming, and food policy.

You can find out more about Allen and the February 3 events at the Delridge Grassroots Leadership website.

Getting Around

Closures complicate trips to West Seattle, Sodo

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Getting to West Seattle and Sodo from Beacon Hill is going to get more complicated, starting tonight. As we’ve reported previously, the Fourth Avenue South off-ramp from the West Seattle viaduct will be closing permanently starting at 10:00 pm tonight, eventually to be replaced by a new off-ramp at First Avenue South.

Spokane Street (at surface level) will be closed from First to Sixth avenues, though business access will be preserved. The eastbound lanes will reopen sometime in 2010, and the westbound lanes will be closed for the duration of the project.

In more short-term closures, the northbound I-5 ramp to the West Seattle Bridge will close at 10:00 pm tonight and reopen at 5:00 am on Monday. The ramp from westbound Columbian Way to the West Seattle Bridge will also be closed for the entire weekend.

Fourth Avenue South will be closed entirely between South Horton Street and Industrial Way South from 10:00 tonight until 5:00 am tomorrow morning, with possible further restrictions as needed, and the same stretch of road will be reduced to one lane in each direction for at least a month after that. This may include full closure of northbound lanes at night.

Expect detours and congestion both on I-5 and in the Sodo area over the weekend. See maps and further info here, and more about the project here.

Photos

Look to the skies

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Apparently yesterday’s sunrise was amazing, though we missed it. Luckily for the blog, Joel Lee and Freeman Mester were paying attention to the sky and posted these amazing photos to the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr. Notice that the cloud formations are very similar; the photos must have been taken at nearly the same moment.

Photo in Jefferson Park, by Joel Lee, and taken with a cell phone camera!
Photo by Freeman Mester.
Meetings

Organizational meeting for Festival Street music series on 1/25

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Paul Ray writes that the music series project for the Lander Festival Street has another organizing meeting on Monday, January 25 at 7:00 pm, at ROCKiT Space, 3315 Beacon Avenue South.

Since the first meeting we have decided to create an Ad Hoc group called “BeHi Music” to try and organize a series of 4 music events over the summer of 2010, performed at the Festival Street next to the Beacon Hill Link Rail station. This series would feature musicians who live, work or attend school on Beacon Hill or groups that contain members that fit that criteria.

This is still in the early stages, still trying to establish the feasibility and identify the steps necessary to make this work, and hoping to start working on actually implementing those steps soon.

Anyone interested in this project is encouraged to attend.

Education

Education roundup: Time for levies and open houses

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Photo by Doug Wilson.
School levy ballots should be reaching mailboxes throughout the city this week for an election officially ending on Tuesday, February 9. Two levies are on the ballot this time, a capital levy (Proposition 1) to replace the expiring Buildings, Technology and Academics levy approved by voters in 2004, and an operations levy (Proposition 2) which replaces the expiring three-year levy that voters approved in 2007 and have supported every three years since 1976.

Among other things, the capital levy includes funds for ADA/life safety systems installment at Mercer Middle School, along with renovations districtwide. Beacon Hill schools would also see funds for academic improvement, including Early Learning classrooms at Kimball and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) option program at Cleveland, and funds for improving athletic fields and making their lighting more energy-efficient.

You can read more about the levies or watch an informational video by Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson at the SPS website.

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It’s open house season at local schools. We posted about a few recently.

Maple Elementary School is having an Open House and Math/Science Night on Thursday, February 11 from 6:30-8:30 pm at the school, 4925 Corson Avenue South. (Hat tip to neighbor JvA for the heads-up!)

Rainier Valley Cooperative Preschool is also holding an open house on Thursday, January 28 from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm at the preschool’s home, Beacon Lutheran Church, 1720 South Forest Street (across Beacon from the library). They say, “Come meet our families and learn about our preschool: We encourage the whole family to come to the open house and check out the space and meet the teachers and community.” For more information, email rvcpinfo@yahoo.com or call 206-723-3115.

Crime

Hicks pleads not guilty to aggravated murder

The Seattle Times reports that Daniel Hicks pleaded not guilty today to two counts of aggravated murder in the shooting deaths of his girlfriend and baby daughter last month near 13th and Ferdinand. Prosecutors now have 30 days to determine whether to seek the death penalty.

Jennifer Morgan, 28, and her daughter Emma, 13 weeks old, were both shot multiple times with a .45 caliber handgun on December 21. Hicks was arrested in Santa Cruz, California on December 28.

See previous reports here.

Local Events

Symphony to perform for free at Mercer school tomorrow

Photo by Emi Yañez.
The Seattle Symphony Orchestra will perform a free community concert at 7:00 pm tomorrow night, January 19, at Mercer Middle School (1600 South Columbian Way). The concert is open to the public — and, yes, we said free. Thomas Hong is the conductor, and the featured soloist is violist Amber Archibald.

The scheduled program includes works by David Diamond, Gustav Holst, Georg Philipp Telemann, Samuel Jones, and Felix Mendelssohn.

The concert is part of the Symphony’s ACCESS Project (Artistic and Cultural Community Engagement with Seattle Symphony), dedicated to bringing classical music to underserved communities throughout the region.

Local Business

From coffee to kung fu and yoga

Neighbor Jann VanOver reports via the Beacon Hill mailing list that the former Grown Folks Coffee site at 4878 Beacon Avenue South reopened recently as the Jun Hong Kung Fu and Sports Association, with martial arts and yoga classes.

Their Facebook page says, “Here you are not a customer, you are a brother, a sister, we are a family, we are shaolin kung fu.” They’re having an open house on January 23.

Beginning yoga classes are $10 a session, on Wednesdays and Fridays from 7:00-8:00 pm, and Saturdays and Sundays from 3:00-4:00 pm. Martial arts classes and practices are also offered throughout the week.