West Seattle, Washington
13 Monday
(Photo by WSB co-publisher Patrick Sand)
Arbor Heights Elementary School teacher Mark Ahlness started the Earth Day Groceries Project in 1994, and it’s still going strong – with Ahlness and his students bringing this year’s delivery of specially decorated bags to Roxbury Safeway manager Sai Cho (upper left of our photo) this afternoon. The 350-plus bags – bearing art and messages about Earth Day – will be distributed to Safeway shoppers. (Though April 22nd is still more than a week away, but this is the last day of school before a week of spring break, and that’s why this was delivery day.)
“West Seattle Trader Joe’s Day 1” isn’t the only opening of note today: It’s also the first day for the Seattle Public Schools student art show at Seattle Art Museum downtown, and West Seattle High School shares the news that 20 pieces of art created by their students is part of the display. Teacher Michelle Sloan shared two of the photos you’ll see in the show – J.P. Patches, by Brandon Gilbert, and this one, by Dasha Medvedeva:
Michelle says the student exhibit is in the SAM lobby, which is open to the public without an admission fee, so it won’t cost you to go admire the students’ work, on display through May 27th. Any other local students involved, let us know! (And for teenagers themselves, tonight is Teen Night Out at SAM – free admission for students.)
Thanks to Cheryl for sharing the news about this, before Seattle Public Schools families head into spring break: Roxhill Elementary will host a community meeting on May 3rd about the district BEX IV levy draft proposal to close Roxhill and “merge” it into Arbor Heights Elementary. Since the proposal’s surprise emergence two weeks ago, there already has been a community meeting at AH, with Roxhill reps in attendance (WSB coverage here) and one district-led West Seattle meeting about the levy (WSB coverage here). The Roxhill meeting is set for 6:30-8 pm May 3rd; the school is at 30th/Roxbury.
Road game, so we weren’t there, but for those tracking the win streak of Chief Sealth International High School‘s boys-varsity soccer team, they won again Thursday afternoon, 2-1 over Franklin. That brings their record to 10-0-1. Seattle Public Schools are on spring break next week, so no games; they play again Tuesday, April 24th, hosting Ingraham at Southwest Athletic Complex.
While sharing the news last weekend about the Roxhill Elementary Saturday Academy graduation, principal Carmela Dellino mentioned that her school played host last Friday to Council President Sally Clark and Councilmember Tim Burgess. She shared a note he wrote afterward; it read in part, “Council President Clark and I came away inspired, encouraged and motivated to share your story with our colleagues and all of Seattle. I’ll do a blog post early next week on our visit.” And indeed he has – you can read it here. He describes the school as “impressive” and closes by calling Roxhill “another example of a Seattle public school that’s working.”
5:10 PM: The final’s just in from Hiawatha: The undefeated, #9-in-the-state Chief Sealth International High School boys-varsity soccer team won its match with West Seattle High School, 12-0.
9:40 PM: Added two photos. Right above this paragraph, that’s Sealth head coach Ron Johnson with the player whose teammates call him “Coach Dillon” – Dillon Zang, sidelined for months with a torn ligament, but turning out for the games to be on the sidelines for his teammates as the Seahawks continue rolling onward (now 9-0-1 on the season). Here are the game stats, as published by our partners at the Seattle Times. Both Sealth and WSHS (0-7) play again on Thursday, with road games at 3:30 pm – Sealth at Franklin, WSHS vs. Cleveland at Van Asselt.
With the pro-football preseason is four-plus months away, there’s plenty of time for players to set their sights on a different playing field – local schools. Seattle Seahawks quarterback Josh Portis made a surprise appearance today at Arbor Heights Elementary School (whose students are the “Junior Seahawks”). His message: Stay in school. Not that dropping out is a big problem at the elementary level, but it’s never too soon to start making sure the message sinks in – encouraging better attendance has been a big districtwide campaign this school year. (Thanks to the Arbor Heights parent volunteer who shared the photo of the quarterback and Ms. Wilson, the first-grade teacher who led today’s assembly.)
If you are, or know, a graduating West Seattle High School senior, time has almost run out to apply for a West Seattle HS Alumni Association scholarship, says 1966 class rep Tom Friberg, sending out one last call for applications:
One of the activities of the Alumni Association is the awarding of scholarships to graduating Seniors. This year 14 scholarships are available, ranging from $500 to $5,000. The request for applications has been out since December 2011 and the deadline is nearing. All applications must be postmarked by April 13th. … For last-minute entry forms, contact the school directly at (206) 252-8800.
And if you have one that hasn’t been postal-mailed in yet – West Seattle High School Alumni Association, (updated address) 4742 42nd Ave. SW, #215, Seattle 98116.
8:08 PM SUNDAY: It was originally Louisa Boren Junior High School … with multiple school using it as temporary quarters in recent years … and now, the Seattle Public Schools site at 5950 Delridge Way SW has a new sign officially declaring it the “Louisa M. Boren Building.” As you probably know, it will be home to a new school, K-5 STEM at Boren, for at least the next two years, and the first wave of enrollment letters for the opt-in school are scheduled to go out one week from tomorrow. Meantime, the school Design Team meets again Tuesday night at 6:15 pm at school district HQ in SODO; you can plug directly into discussions about the new school on its community-created Yahoo! discussion group, here.
ADDED MONDAY AFTERNOON: Just received the link for district notes on the Design Team’s long Saturday session – you can see them here. New principal Dr. Shannon McKinney is now here from Arizona and joined the team for the session focusing on curriculum and related items.
Another tale of West Seattle student achievement this weekend: Eight students from Denny International Middle School went downtown for the Youth Town Hall, reports principal Jeff Clark (who shared the photos, too):
This Saturday, Denny International Middle School scholars joined many Seattle area teens at the Youth Town Hall, an annual event hosted by the Seattle Youth Commission.
Denny’s delegation of eight student leaders took time out of their weekend to get up close and personal with Mayor McGinn, Council President Sally Clark, and Council members Sally Bagshaw, Tom Rasmussen, Nick Licata, and Tim Burgess.
They really showed remarkable leadership in connecting with our civic leaders asking questions during the Q&A session and then approaching individual council members to hear more about what these city leaders do to serve our great city. Our Denny Dolphins joined scholars from other Seattle middle and high schools to ask questions about educational funding, transportation, crime prevention, public safety and civic service. We are proud of all the students who participated and got a first hand opportunity to engage our civic leaders.
Principal Clark says the Youth Town Hall is scheduled to be televised by Seattle Channel – cable 21 – at 10 pm Wednesday (April 11th), 9:30 am Thursday (April 12th), and 1 pm next Sunday (April 15th). We’ll also keep an eye out for its appearance on the Seattle Channel website, so we can add that video to this story.
At one elementary school in West Seattle, dozens of students have been attending six days a week for the past three months – to get an extra educational boost. It’s the Roxhill Elementary Saturday Academy, and principal Carmela Dellino shares photos and a report on this weekend’s “graduation” ceremony:
More than 150 students, teachers, family members and volunteers packed the Roxhill Elementary School cafeteria Saturday for a celebration of knowledge and community. The 12-week program concluded with 44 students from grades 3-5 graduating and receiving a diploma.
Saturday Academy is a program introduced by third-year Principal Carmela Dellino in an effort to offer extended learning time in mathematics and reading for students grades 3 – 5. The Academy started last year, but grew even bigger thanks to a $20,000 infusion of cash from the school’s fundraising auction last May and from a grant from the Symetra Foundation.
The day started off like every other Saturday Academy with a breakfast snack at 9:00 am for all participants. All students then attended 2 separate sessions reviewing what they had learned, giving each other positive compliments and preparing their mini-speech for the graduation ceremony. Each student prepared a binder of their work over the 12-week course.
At 10:30, family and friends joined the scholars for brunch of eggs, pancakes, waffles, and bacon.
After the brunch Principal Dellino gathered everyone to attention and started the graduation proceedings.
Ms. Dellino started out by thanking the scholars, the “Stars” of the day, and led them on the 3 Saturday School chants. She then thanked the essential Saturday Academy teachers, City Year volunteers, and family members for their commitment to their children. Four young people were singled out for their tireless volunteer work, sometimes arriving at 7:30 am to help set up.
Each student was called up individually and one of the eight teachers read a statement about the work and improvement that specific student had demonstrated. The intelligence, dedication and enthusiasm to be life-long learners were reflected in the mini-speeches. Then the scholar said a few comments about what they had learned and improved on over the 12 week period.
After the scholars presented their comments, they shook hands with the principal and received their graduation certificate while ‘pomp and circumstance’ played over the speakers in the cafeteria.
It was a great day of celebration for the scholars and their families.
You can help make Saturday Academy a reality for the 2012-2013 school year by either donating to or attending the annual ‘Night for the Stars’ fundraising auction, 6:30 pm May 4th, at 415 Westlake in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle. Please see the link on the school’s website for further information.
As a follow-up to our spotlight story at noontime Friday about the undefeated Chief Sealth International High School boys-varsity soccer team, we headed over to the Southwest Athletic Complex on Friday afternoon to roll video as Sealth faced Rainier Beach. The game turned out to be win #8, with a final score of 5-0 (here’s the scoring summary, as published by our partners at the Seattle Times). Above, video of the first half; second half video is after the jump:Read More
(UPDATE: Sealth won this afternoon’s game, 5-0, and remains undefeated. Video later.)
By Tracy Record and Patrick Sand
West Seattle Blog co-publishers
It’s not all glamour being an undefeated, state-ranked high-school varsity-sports team.
No band, no cheerleaders, no confetti thrown as they arrive at school each day.
Not that the members of Chief Sealth International High School‘s boys-varsity soccer team (7-0-1) are complaining. Not at all.
Too much fuss would be weird, concur the five student athletes with whom we spoke on Thursday morning, as they looked ahead to their next game, 4 pm today at Southwest Athletic Complex vs. Rainier Beach.
All five are upperclassmen – in our top photo, front row from left, Aden Fidow (senior, forward); Simon Crean (senior, outside midfielder); Kristian Nilssen (junior, goalkeeper); back, from left, Brandon Rosario (senior, center midfielder, a team captain), Mori Tsuchiya (junior, center midfielder).
We won’t get into the “Cinderella story” clichés, because that’s not the case here – years of hard work, by players and coaches – including veteran Head Coach Ron Johnson – are simply paying off, as the season reaches the midpoint.
“We saw a good year coming – but didn’t know HOW good,” Simon allows.
Just getting Arbor Heights Elementary rebuilt isn’t enough, community members told Seattle Public Schools officials during the BEX IV levy community briefing/comment meeting Thursday night at Denny International Middle School – it needs to be rebuilt sooner than the possible 2018 date mentioned in draft proposals. “We can’t wait,” said one mom. (District officials acknowledged that capacity issues are taking precedence over school-condition issues in planning of this levy.)
If you’re looking for touchpoints in the video – the first 26 minutes were taken up by procedural points and backstory; then there were 8 minutes of presentation about the 3 currently proposed options (see them here), bringing the video to the 34-minute mark, at which point the district officials on hand began answering questions, first written, then, at 48 minutes into the meeting, open-mike.
Following up on the Tuesday night meeting at Arbor Heights (WSB coverage here) at which AH and Roxhill Elementary‘s principals expressed surprise that two of the three first-draft “options” call for closing Roxhill and “merging” it into AH, assistant superintendent Pegi McEvoy acknowledged that what started as an idea in casual conversation was “moving fast.”
In case you haven’t heard (we’ll admit, we hadn’t) – the Seattle School Board voted unanimously last night to NOT ask the state to waive two makeup days looming because of this winter’s snow. That means the last day of the school year will be June 22nd (one day was made up on January 27th).
P.S. Here’s the district news release sent around this morning.
8:48 AM: You can’t miss it along busy SW Thistle outside Chief Sealth International High School right now – a bus wrapped with C-SPAN ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE cable-channel promotion. We stopped and went into the school office to ask why. No, not there to cover a candidate visit – the bus is there for social-studies students to tour today, as a lesson about the election process, as they approach (or reach! for many seniors) voting age.
11:41 AM UPDATE: After publishing this photo, we got word of a chance for anyone and everyone to tour it tomorrow in High Point:
Hi all, we are fortunate to have the C-SPAN bus at High Point Center tomorrow, April 6th, from 2:30 until 4:30pm. The bus is equipped with the latest interactive technology, including Touchsmart computer kiosks to access C-SPAN resources, a public affairs quiz, and equipment needed to create television programming and web content. We are excited to invite all youth to come tour the bus!
HP Center is at 6400 Sylvan Way SW.
The scene from the Arbor Heights Cooperative Preschool class of “Teacher Karen” may look like your everyday “kids dyeing Easter eggs” class – but there’s more than meets the eye. It starts with the story published here last week about Paul West and his request for people to give them their hard-boiled Easter eggs post-Easter so he could turn them into fertilizer for an “urban nitrogen project. That resonated with Karen, who explained via e-mail:
I have been wanting to dye eggs with my preschool class but I don’t want to “waste” the eggs, although they will not be edible after a day in a class full of three-year-olds. Then I read your story about Paul and gardening with urban nitrogen. I contacted Paul and talked to him about it. He very generously donated 5 dozen eggs to our class, and our class agreed to return at least double that many after we’d colored them.
So this morning, she invited us to drop by her classroom as the kids worked studiously on the task at hand.
P.S. If you’re interested in donating Easter eggs to the fertilizer project, Paul explains it on his website.
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
The principals of Arbor Heights and Roxhill Elementary Schools say the emergence of a proposal to merge the two into a rebuilt AH was as much a “big surprise” to them as it was to their schools’ communities.
That’s part of what they told a gathering of more than 50 people last night at a quickly organized community meeting, less than a week after the merger proposal debuted in the package of possibilities that district staff is circulating (as reported here) as the first round of community meetings begins about what should be in next February’s 4th edition of the every-six-years BEX (“Building Excellence”) levy.
The meeting, led by AH principal Christy Collins, with Roxhill principal Carmela Dellino speaking from the audience, unfolded while the first of those meetings played out across the city at Eckstein Middle School (West Seattle’s school-board director Marty McLaren had sent her regrets to AH and Roxhill, saying she had to be at that meeting instead of theirs). West Seattle’s version of the levy-input meeting is set for 6:30 pm Thursday at Denny International Middle School, and the meeting materials are now on the district website, if you’d like a preview – PowerPoint overview here and “the 3 options” here (which includes the merger proposal).
In addition to answering questions, the two principals sought to explain their side of how this idea might have sprung up, and Collins explained in a show-and-tell why it’s imperative that a new building replacing the 64-year-old AH becomes part of the levy, some way, some how.
The biggest spring-sports success story so far in West Seattle this year is the Chief Sealth International High School boys’ varsity soccer team. They are undefeated after another win this afternoon, on the road against division rival Nathan Hale, 4-0. That puts their record at 7-0-1, and even before today’s big win, the Seattle Times ranked them 9th in the state. Their next scheduled game is Friday afternoon at home – 4 pm, hosting Rainier Beach at Southwest Athletic Complex (across SW Thistle from CSIHS).
(Photo by West Seattleite Frank MacDonald, from Ruffneck Scarves, which made the custom scarves)
Scarves up! Chief Sealth International High School was the host today for the festivities starting the second season of the Seattle Unified Soccer League – bringing together athletes with and without intellectual disabilities, in a partnership between Seattle Public Schools and Special Olympics Washington. And as any good host would do, they offered a fight-song serenade:
(The rest of this story’s video & photos are by WSB’s Patrick Sand)
The morning began with a rally in the Sealth gym. It included a pep talk from former Seattle Sounders FC star Kasey Keller, and Sounders VP Gary Wright:
Then, the morning rain didn’t get in the way of the March to the Match (crossing SW Thistle from the gym to the Southwest Athletic Complex):
Unified Soccer has expanded to more schools this year, adding elementary and middle school teams. The peninsula’s two public high schools were part of it last year and are back this year – here’s the West Seattle High School team:
And the home team, Sealth:
Schedule links, and more info on the league, can be found here.
A literary week at Alki Elementary – not only did one of their Global Reading Challenge teams come home from the citywide final with medals (as reported here), but Thursday was Young Authors Day. Teacher Anna Coghill shares photos and this report:
(Thursday) Alki Elementary celebrated student writing with a Young Authors Day. The day included visiting author Paul Owen Lewis. Mr. Lewis started the day off with an assembly about his personal experience with writing. Later he met with smaller groups to continue the conversation.
Students celebrated their own writing by sharing in groups throughout the school day. It was a wonderful way to recognize the hard work students have done this year.
Last month, author Lewis (a Northwestern Washington resident) spent a day at Arbor Heights Elementary, as reported here.
Out of the WSB inbox, from Rosslyn:
Arbor Heights Community Meeting on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012 at 7:00 pm at Arbor Heights Elementary School Cafeteria.
Purpose: To talk about the district’s proposal to combine Arbor Heights Elementary and Roxhill.
As reported here yesterday, that proposal is part of what’s being circulated for possible inclusion in the Seattle Public Schools Building Excellence (BEX) IV levy next year – but had not been brought up for community discussion prior to turning up in a district PowerPoint at a School Board work session this past Wednesday.
ADDED EARLY SATURDAY: We had sent School Board director Marty McLaren a request for comment on this and other possible BEX IV proposals for this area, and she replied regarding this one that district-headquarters staff “is supportive because it solves the problem of two deteriorated buildings at once and results in a school with significantly reduced operating costs than two schools.” She also has the caveat regarding everything proposed so far, “none of this is set in stone.”
Athletes from three West Seattle schools are participating this year in the Seattle Unified Soccer League, part of the Unified Sports program in conjunction with Special Olympics Washington, and the kickoff event, with an opening ceremony, is set for tomorrow morning at Chief Sealth International High School (last year it was in Interbay). Unified Sports includes players described as being “with and without intellectual disabilities,” bringing them together to train and play. This year, there are 23 teams around the district – as listed on the official flyer – including two teams from West Seattle High School as well as one each from Sealth and adjacent Denny International Middle School. You’re invited to cheer them on as a “march to the match” heads from Sealth to the Southwest Athletic Complex at 9 am, followed by the opening ceremony at 9:15. More info about this year’s season is here.
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