West Seattle, Washington
23 Saturday
Schools and shots top the pandemic news tonight:
SCHOOLS: Looks like Seattle Public Schools will meet the first of two deadlines set by the governor for offering some in-person learning to students – the district and the Seattle Education Association announced a tentative agreement today that would cover all but middle- and high-school students by the April 5th deadline (one week before spring break); they’re still talking about how to get those older students some in-person instruction by April 19th. (By the way, though Gov. Inslee would not on Friday answer the question of what happens if schools don’t meet those deadlines, his full proclamation issued today says, “Violators of this order may be subject to criminal penalties.”)
SHOTS: Vaccination eligibility expands tomorrow to add everyone in Phase 1B, Tier 2, summarized as including “workers in agriculture, food processing, grocery stores, public transit, firefighters and law enforcement, among others, (and) people over the age of 16 who are pregnant or have a disability that puts them at high-risk.” (Check the PhaseFinder tomorrow if you’re unsure.)
ELIGIBLE BUT NOT VACCINATED YET? Here’s our list of where to look for an appointment:
*For the city-run Lumen Field, West Seattle, and Rainier Beach sites – get on the notification list here; check for West Seattle-specific appointments by going here
*Check with health-care providers (particularly bigger ones like UW Medicine, CHI Franciscan, Swedish, Kaiser Permanente, etc.)
*covidwa.com (volunteer-run aggregator)
*Pharmacies big and small – Safeway, Rite Aid, QFC, Pharmaca, Costco
*Sea Mar clinics
NEWEST KING COUNTY NUMBERS: Checking today’s daily summary from Seattle-King County Public Health – the cumulative totals:
*84.416 people have tested positive, 113 more than yesterday’s total
*1,441 people have died, 4 more than yesterday’s total
*5,185 people have been hospitalized, 5 more than yesterday’s total
*936,284 people have been tested, 2,304 more than yesterday’s total
One week ago, the totals were 83,274/1,421/5,150/920,798.
STATEWIDE NUMBERS: See them here.
NATIONAL/WORLDWIDE NUMBERS: 120.6 million cases worldwide, 29.5 million of them in the U.S. – see other nation-by-nation stats by going here.
GOT SOMETHING TO REPORT? westseattleblog@gmail.com or 206-293-6302, text/voice – thank you!
Though the pandemic brought concerts to a halt, it couldn’t stop the music – and veteran West Seattle musician Scott Adams has been working on an album throughout it all. He’s recruited some talented friends – including others from West Seattle – and a prominent producer. Now he’s crowdfunding to get the record made – and he’s most of the way there, but looking for one last boost. He tells the story in this video:
His Kickstarter page is here. (You can hear some of his past work here.)
Thanks to Arlene for the tip! Tony’s Market, the produce stand under the big red/green/white tent at 35th/Barton, is opening for the season. We went by late this afternoon and found out they were wrapping up a “soft open” day but planning to open for full hours tomorrow and beyond: 9 am to 7 pm.
Tony’s – named for its founder, proprietor Joey Genzale‘s dad, gone a decade now – is usually open through the spring and summer, on into Halloween pumpkin season, then closes for a while before switching to Christmas trees, and then a winter break before spring produce season.
Just in, a joint announcement from Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association, saying they’ve made a deal to get some students back into the classroom, four days after Gov. Inslee announced he would order schools to offer some in-person learning:
Throughout our joint response to the pandemic, the wellbeing of our students has always come first. On Tuesday March 16, Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association came to a tentative agreement that facilitates the safe return to school buildings for preschool and elementary students and staff. The agreement focuses on creating safe learning environments and supports special education inclusion by keeping students with IEPs in class with their general education peers. This tentative agreement is being brought to the SEA membership to be ratified and to the SPS Board of Directors for approval next week….
The tentative agreement includes our joint commitment to bring all pre-kindergarten and elementary special education intensive services pathways students back into classrooms first on March 29. SEA and SPS recognize the unique challenges that remote learning has presented these students. All other elementary students whose families choose the in-person instructional model and secondary special education intensive pathway students will start on April 5. …
Throughout bargaining the teams focused on meeting the needs of our entire school community whether in-person or remote. Additionally, to allow students more days of in-person interaction with classmates, the parties agreed on a hybrid (in person part-time and remote part-time) instructional model where students would attend either morning or afternoon in-person class four days a week, with remote teaching and learning on Wednesdays. All Families will also have the option of a 100% remote model. …
Kindergarten to 5th grade families will receive an Intent to Enroll Survey later this week and an opportunity to select the in-person instructional model or 100% remote.
Once the organizations ratify the tentative agreement next week, more details will be available.
Bargaining continues as SEA and SPS now focus on coming to an agreement to bring middle and high school students back to classrooms.
April 5th is the governor’s deadline for all students through elementary grades to be offered some in-person learning; for middle- and high-school students, he set April 19th. (His full proclamation is here.)
(Seattle Parks photo)
If you walk, run, or ride along the Lincoln Park beach, you might have seen this cleanup operation – removing a damaged floating dock and the Styrofoam beads with which it was contaminating the water and shore. A post by Seattle Parks today explains how volunteers and city crews teamed up to get rid of it after an initial report came in from a park visitor. Friends of Lincoln Park, Puget Soundkeeper, Green Seattle Partnership all had a hand in it. The cleanup started last Thursday with Parks’ Heavy Equipment crew removing the dock, and continued Friday with work to remove the bits of Styrofoam. That involved a variety of tactics – from vacuuming up dry bits of foam to filling buckets with scooped-up beach stones, sand, and shells, adding water so the foam pieces would float up for removal. (See more photos here.) If you ever see a problem like this, you can report it via the Find It Fix It app or the Parks maintenance line, 206-684-7250.
Staying healthy involves a lot of non-COVID vaccines too. If a teen or tween in your house isn’t up to date on theirs, this event next week might be of interest:
Make sure your students are up to date on their vaccines! The West Seattle Teen Health Center (located right inside of West Seattle High School) offers free vaccines to any SPS student. On March 25th, we’re doing an event dedicated to Meningococcal (MCV) vaccines. Students are recommended to have one at 11/12 years old and a booster at 16 years old. Give us a call or contact your primary care physician to get an appointment scheduled or for more information! Unsure if your student has already had one? Give us a call and we can doublecheck! Miss this event but still need vaccines? Send us an email or call to schedule another time! hgsamet@seattleschools.org or call/text 206-471-6263.
If you haven’t yet gotten your Girl Scout Cookies this year – you are almost out of time! This is the last week, local leaders point out. So one more reminder – you have three ways to buy cookies this year, as explained by the Girl Scouts of Western Washington website:
1. Cookie Connector – Free Delivery
Use our Cookie Connector tool to get FREE, contact-less delivery! Enter your zip code to get cookies delivered to your door by a local Girl Scout and their trusted adult.2. Ask a Girl Scout – Delivery or Shipping
Support a Girl Scout in your life by buying cookies from them directly. Don’t know any Girl Scouts? Ask your personal or social media network – Girl Scouts are advertising their digital storefronts online.3. Door Hangers – Delivery or Shipping
Local Girl Scouts are distributing physical order forms. Look for Girl Scout Cookie door hangers in your area and follow the instructions to place your order.
See the cookie varieties here.
We invited local Scouts/troops to share their direct links for cookie buyers – here’s who we heard from (each page has info on what the Scouts plan to do with their earnings, as well as a chance to buy cookies to donate if you don’t want them for yourself):
Troop 41169, raising money to paint a mural in The Junction – here’s their link
Troop 41169 member Akemi‘s link
Troop 44448 member Ava‘s link
Brownie troop 41534’s link
Troop 41534 member Sylvie‘s link
Troop 41843 member Asa’s link
Troop 43136 member the link for Olivia‘s link
Troop 43151 member Emma‘s link
Adding his name today to what’s now a 14-candidate list in the Seattle mayor’s race is someone who once, albeit briefly, held the title: Former City Councilmember Bruce Harrell. He was council president when then-mayor Ed Murray resigned in 2017, but declined to keep the interim mayoral position, so the council appointed another member, Tim Burgess, to serve the two months until the next election. Harrell then decided not to run for council re-election in 2019. His campaign announcement today is in the form of an “open letter” to Seattle residents. It tells his personal story as well as laying out a wide-ranging platform including business assistance, affordable health care, job creation, arts/culture/nightlife revitalization, public/private partnership to address homelessness, addressing structural racism and police bias, and more. His few days as mayor in 2017 were marked by issuance of four executive orders, as we reported here. This isn’t his first run for mayor – he ran in 2013, finishing fourth in a primary field of nine. This year’s primary is August 2nd; the candidate lineup will be finalized in May.
Martha “Marty” McLaren, a past West Seattle/South Park representative on the Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors, has died. Ms. McLaren, a Puget Ridge resident, was 76 years old. She was a longtime educator and community advocate, but her highest-profile role was that of board member. She won election in 2011 by unseating incumbent Steve Sundquist and then four years later was unseated herself by current board member Leslie Harris. We talked with Ms. McLaren after her election in 2011; she spoke of her teaching career following her involvement with advocacy as a PTA leader while her children were in school. More details on her life are in her obituary, which we’ve just received:
Marty McLaren (Martha Louise McLaren) lived from April 23, 1944, to March 13, 2021.
In Brooklyn, New York, Marty was born into the family of her mother, Marta B. McLaren, and US Naval officer William F. McLaren. She was the fourth of six children.
In early life, she lived on the east coast of the US, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the Mojave Desert, and San Diego, and moved to the Bangor Naval Base in Kitsap County at 14. When she was 17, the family moved to Seattle, where she lived most of her adult life. She was blessed with resources to graduate from the UW and had some interesting travels in her life, to Europe in 1967, to South America in 1969, and in 2002 to Ghana.
She was married for 17 years to Ted Kehl, and together they had four beautiful children — Catherine, Andrea, who died at 18 months, Lauren, and Samuel, who died in 2019 at 37. Motherhood and children became the most important and meaningful aspects of her life.
After her divorce, Marty earned a teaching credential. She taught preschool for several years, had an eye-opening 19-month stint at Family Services Homeless Children’s Network in the mid-’90s, and went on to teach middle- and high-school mathematics.
In 1994 she moved from the family home on Capitol Hill to the newly forming Puget Ridge Cohousing Association in West Seattle. Her cohousing community became an anchor and presence in Marty’s life. As the community grew and struggled to create itself, she also grew and found herself in fertile soil for developing and extending her interests and passions. Most important, she learned to cherish the opportunity to connect with others and understand them and herself more deeply.
She was moved to advocate strenuously for a return to “sane” math curricula in K12 schools, and her activism led to her running successfully for the Seattle School Board in 2011. She served on the board through 2015 with a deep commitment to students and to dismantling structural racism.
Marty loved to dance, to sing, to bicycle, and, in later years, to row crew. She was involved in various communities that fed her thirst for spiritual connection — including the Dances of Universal Peace, and the Somatic study of the Enneagram, and earlier, St Patrick’s and St Joseph’s parishes.
She dealt with cancer in 1987, 2013, 2018, and in late 2020, learning to join an attitude of acceptance with her passion to live authentically. She was blessed most abundantly with loving, caring friends and family, who held her with great tenderness to the end of her life.
She is survived by her daughters, her grandson Tracy, her brothers Jerome, William and Alfred, her sister Georgia, and her niece Scotti. Due to COVID restrictions, there will not be a formal commemoration.
J reports via email that this happened last night:
Car was broken into in the parking lot behind Starbucks at Fauntleroy and California between 5 pm and 7 pm. Smashed window and took backpack.
A black North Face backpack, to be specific, if you happen to see it dumped anywhere.
(Sun-gazing along Beach Drive – photo by Gill Loring)
A few notes for today/tonight:
WEST MARGINAL WAY: An update on the proposal to replace part of one southbound traffic lane with a two-way protected bike lane is part of the plan for the 9 am Freight Advisory Board meeting, online. The agenda includes viewing instructions.
CURBSIDE SERVICE: Tuesday is one of five days a week that curbside service is available at the Southwest Branch Library (9010 35th SW).
DEMONSTRATION: From organizer Scott, the weekly announcement of his twice-weekly sign-waving:
Black Lives Matter sign waving
Tuesday, March 16, 4 to 6 pm, corner of 16th SW and SW Holden
Thursday, March 18, 4 to 6 pm, corner of 16th SW and SW Holden
Come build awareness that will help tear down the systems that have oppressed Black lives for over 400 years on this continent. Hold signs, meet neighbors, and stand for racial justice. Scott at Puget Ridge Cohousing, endorsed by Hate-Free Delridge. Signs available.
ENDOLYNE CHILDREN’S CHOIR: Spring season rehearsals start today! For last-minute registration info, see our preview.
NO WSCPC MEETING: As announced Monday, the West Seattle Crime Prevention Council meeting – usually on the third Tuesday – is canceled this month.
6:12 AM: Good morning! Today’s forecast starts off cold, then segues into sunshine.
ROAD WORK
1st Avenue South Bridge – The work is scheduled to have ended with the just-completed overnight southbound closure.
Delridge project – Here’s where you’ll see crews this week.
TRANSIT
Metro and the Water Taxi are on regular schedules.
BRIDGES AND DETOUR ROUTES
358th morning without the West Seattle Bridge. Here’s how it’s looking on other bridges and routes:
Low Bridge: Tenth week for automated enforcement cameras, while restrictions are in effect 5 am-9 pm daily. Here’s a bridge view:
West Marginal Way at Highland Park Way:
Highland Park Way/Holden – with a new left-turn signal for northbound HP Way, turning to westbound Holden:
The 5-way intersection (Spokane/West Marginal/Delridge/Chelan):
And the 1st Avenue South Bridge (map) – remember those southbound lane closures are wrapping up:
For the South Park Bridge (map), here’s the nearest camera:
To check for bridges’ marine-traffic openings, see the @SDOTBridges Twitter feed.
See all local traffic cams here; locally relevant cameras are also shown on this WSB page.
Trouble on the streets/paths/bridges/water? Please let us know – text (but not if you’re driving!) 206-293-6302.
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