Tag Archives: school closures

Beacon Bits, Lost and Found

Beacon Bits: Lost ring, hip-hop coffee, and a unicorn head

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(Editor’s note—I just fixed the link to the article about The Station in The Stranger. Sorry it wasn’t working earlier!)

Neighbor Julie writes:

My husband lost his wedding band yesterday, most likely taking his snow gloves off while we were out walking – here are the most likely places:

  • 23rd & Forest, or along 23rd between McClellan and Stevens
  • NE corner of 17th & Beacon, or across Beacon in front of the library
  • in front of Red Apple

We gave our name and number to Red Apple and we are searching for it, but please keep an eye out!!
Men’s size 10.5 white gold plain wedding band, 4mm
Thank you!!

Julie 206-713-8606

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Sledding, bah. How about sliding down South Hanford Street on a giant unicorn head? Video here.

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Charles Mudede of The Stranger interviews local rapper Gabriel Teodros at The Station coffee house, and The Station is practically the co-star of the interview:

“‘This is my favorite coffee shop in the city. This is the place where my whole city comes through.’ Indeed, a whole city seems to come in and out of the Station. Beacon Hill is a planet.”

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MSNBC’s John Brecher must live around Beacon Hill. He supplied several before-and-after snow photos to a feature on the MSNBC website. Slide the slider back and forth on the pictures to see our neighborhood with and without snow.

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Seattle Public Schools will use Friday, January 27 as a snow make-up day. It was previously scheduled as an off-day for staff professional development. The other two make-up days for this week’s snow days haven’t yet been scheduled.

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Frozen fennel flowers. Photo by K. Shuyler.
Weather

School cancelled, garbage pickup still on schedule (for now)

Seattle Public Schools are playing it safe in advance of tomorrow’s predicted snowstorm. School is closed tomorrow, Wednesday, January 18. Evening activities are also cancelled. For other schools and universities in the area, please check schoolreport.org.

If your garbage pickup is tomorrow, Seattle Public Utilities is currently advising that you treat Wednesday as a normal day for garbage, recycling, and food/yard waste collection. Of course, weather could still change all of that.

Weather forecasters, including those at BHB news partners KOMONews.com, say the next round of snow won’t skip Seattle, and will spread from south to north early Wednesday morning, probably arriving between 2 and 4 a.m. On top of the potential snowfall, we may get winds gusting to 35-40 mph. The “Slushmageddon” mentioned by folks like Cliff Mass in the last few days probably won’t happen after all; the storm will be snow all the way through. Current expectations are that we will get 4-6 inches of snow in Seattle, but as those of us who have been here a while know — you never know what might actually happen.

Weather

Two-hour delay for Seattle Public Schools

Seattle Public Schools have announced a two-hour delay for tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17. All schools will open two hours late, and pre-school activities such as preschool and Head Start are cancelled.

If your children ride school buses, be aware that buses will be running on snow routes, which means that yellow buses only run on roads that have snow removal maintained by the City. You should have received notices about snow routes in the mail during November.

For updated delay/closure information for Seattle Schools and other local schools and districts (including colleges and private schools), keep your eyes on SchoolReport.org. Snow is expected both today and tomorrow, and conditions are definitely subject to change.

Education, Local Events

Juneteenth gathering to celebrate African American Academy

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The African American Academy African Dance Troupe were a blur of motion at a Martin Luther King celebration at Mt. Zion Baptist church, 2003. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.
The African American Academy African Dance Troupe were a blur of motion at a Martin Luther King celebration at Mt. Zion Baptist church, 2003. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.
The African American Academy (AAA) on South Beacon Hill will hold a Juneteenth celebration on June 19 focusing on the life, purpose, and accomplishments of the Academy. The AAA program has been discontinued and the Van Asselt Elementary program will be housed in the AAA building next school year, after a century at their previous site.

The Academy program first opened as a K-5 school in 1991 at the new Colman School (now Thurgood Marshall) and eventually became a K-8 at Sharples (now Aki Kurose). The current AAA building was specifically designed for K-8 use and opened in 2000.

The Juneteenth event, “Celebrating the Life of the Academy”, is on Friday, June 19 from 4:00 – 7:00 p.m. at the African American Academy, 8311 Beacon Avenue South.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, Van Asselt is also celebrating their history this month, with a 100th Anniversary celebration and reunion this Friday.

Education, Health and Safety

Aki Kurose Middle School to close tomorrow due to swine flu outbreak

Aki Kurose Middle School and Stevens Elementary will be closed tomorrow (Friday) through Thursday, May 7. Two of the newest H1N1 flu cases are students that attend those schools. Madrona K-8 was already closed until next Wednesday because of an earlier flu case. Seattle Schools recommends these tips for students of closed schools:

“To avoid spreading infection, students should not gather outside of school during the week that school is closed. If students or staff do become ill, avoid contact with others and remain at home from work and school either for 7 days after illness starts or for a full day after the illness is over, whichever is longer. If your symptoms are more severe, call your health care provider to discuss if you need to be seen and evaluated, and tell them about the school closure for swine flu.”

Public Health – Seattle and King County has a page set up to provide up-to-date information about the flu outbreak.

Education

School closures finalized; AAA to close, Van Asselt to move

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Photo by Jason Walsh.
Photo by Jason Walsh.
As expected, the ax has fallen. Last night the Seattle School Board approved Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson’s proposed school and program closures, amid an angry and rowdy crowd of parents and students. The direct effects to Beacon Hill are that the African American Academy program and the Van Asselt building will close at the end of this school year, and the Van Asselt program will move to the Academy’s building, about a mile south on Beacon Avenue. Other buildings to close at the end of the year are Genesee Hill, Mann, T.T. Minor, and “Old Hay,” and programs to be discontinued are Meany, Cooper, Summit K-12, and T.T. Minor.

There are a lot of strong opinions about the closures, and it seems that very few are happy (except, perhaps, the Arbor Heights and Alternative School #1 communities, who dodged the closure bullet earlier in this process). The heavy impact of the closure plan on Central and Southeast Seattle, as well as the impact on minority and low-income children, is fairly obvious; and the expulsion of James Bible, president of the local branch of the NAACP, from last night’s School Board meeting certainly doesn’t contribute to any sense of fairness in the way the District has dealt with the situation. If a lot of South Seattle families feel betrayed by the District today, it’s hardly a surprise.

A couple of opinions from the local blogs: Dick Lilly concludes on Crosscut that “the experience may all add up to distrust of the superintendent, and that would be a slide downhill from the hopes with which she was welcomed two years ago”; Scott at the Central District News suggests “maybe some day we’ll get some school leaders who put education first and fight to fund it right, and shut down schools in other people’s neighborhoods only as a very last resort.”

Beacon Bits

Beacon Bits: a new home, bad neighbors, and a local school

Candice would rather not hear a barking dog at all hours. Photo by Ordinary Guy.
Candice would rather not hear a barking dog at all hours. Photo by Ordinary Guy.
Mike Lewis at the Under the Needle blog has an update about Deb Manuma, the single mom who was nearly evicted from her Beacon Hill home through no fault of her own when her landlord neglected to pay his mortgage. Manuma now has a new home in Skyway, though she still lives near Beacon Avenue — Seattle P-I

Beacon Hillian Candice is having neighbor problems — noise, inconsiderate parking, a barking dog, you name it. She says, “we just want it to stop and we don’t know what to do.” Can you provide any advice? — Beacon Hill Blog Forums

Community educator Gayle Johnson suggests the African-American Academy on Beacon Hill should not close and cites WASL results to back it up — Seattle Times

Beacon Bits

Beacon Bits: Painting, zoning, and protesting

Portrait by Mimi Torchia Boothby.
Portrait by Mimi Torchia Boothby.
Education

School changes ultimately useless?

A commenter at the Seattle Public Schools community blog provided a link to a very interesting presentation that suggests that the Superintendent’s proposed closures and program relocations don’t make any meaningful change to existing capacity imbalances, and the costs will be unacceptably high.

The presentation is based on the plan as it was a few days ago, and does not reflect some of the changes made in today’s announcements, but much of it still applies. Dick Lilly had an editorial yesterday on Crosscut that made many of the same points.

An interesting note: over 20% of Southeast cluster students would be forced to move, and the costs of these changes would make changes to this cluster a net loss for the District.

It would be nice to see an updated version of these stats to reflect the status quo after today’s announcements.