From Thursday night’s quarterly meeting of the Sunrise Heights Neighborhood Association (this area is roughly between High Point and Westwood, between 35th and Delridge):

E.C. HUGHES SCHOOL’S FUTURE: Sage Wilson of the SHNA board has been talking with Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association about applying for a city Department of Neighborhoods grant to study community interest in the closed Hughes school. (After temporarily housing South Lake High School the past two years, it’s vacant again this year.) The grant would facilitate open houses for public input on the site, to figure out if there’s enough interest to look into buying it, since it’s on the Seattle Public Schools surplus-property list. Neighbors’ general consensus was that it’s a good idea to talk about this before a development proposal comes in from outside the neighborhood. Sage will head up the grant-writing effort, to meet a July deadline.

SEX OFFENDERS: Detective Bob Shilling from the Seattle Police Sex Offender Detail briefed the neighborhood about how to find information online, as well as what families really need to know about sex crimes: Long story short, very few involve “strangers.” As for sex offenders in local neighborhoods, you can use this website to see if any level-1 or level-2 offenders are living near you (it’s linked from the bottom of our Crime Watch page if you ever need to find it again); the West Seattle overview is that the Southwest Precinct area has 163 right now, fewer than any other precinct in the city (the largest number is 343 in the North Precinct). Statewide, there are 20,178 registered sex offenders.

POKER TOURNAMENT FUNDRAISER: This Saturday night is SHNA’s 4th annual Texas Hold’em Poker Night at the social hall of Our Lady of Guadalupe, $15/person or $120/table of 9. Must be 21 or older. More info on the SNHA website.