Five area schools have been listed among the worst performing in the state, David Horsey is moseying south, and a piece of glass fell seven stories in Bellevue. more ›

Claims of gender discrimination in Washington schools, yet another bad day for the SPD, and movie-induced traffic crime. All this and more in today's headlines. more ›

Via our friends at Chicagoist Chicago-born Savage Love columnist and author Dan Savage (now firmly a Seattle-dweller) and his husband Terry Miller have a message for all the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth out there: Whatever you're experiencing now, be it family rejection, bullying and harassment in schools or even thoughts of suicide, it gets better. more ›

Kids must be smarter than we give them credit--those little stinkers might be pulling a "Oh, I'm sick, I have swine flu and can't go to school" after hearing Madrona K-8 closed for an entire week. Currently, seven of King County's ten suspected cases of Swine flu H1N1 flu have infected children and teens. More local schools where a "suspected case" has attended classes are now closed as a precaution. Schools include: Madrona (Seattle) K-8, Aki Kurose Middle School (Seattle), and Stevens Elementary (Seattle) are all currently closed and set to re-open May 8; Woodmont K-8 (Des Moines) closed through May 11; Lakes High School (Tacoma) closed Friday, only pending three case results; Odyssey Elementary (Everett) closed only on Friday.
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• Considering doing the CSA thing this year? CookLocal has a great list of what you should consider when choosing which program to join.
• Farmers markets and schools are a match made in heaven, especially in the Southend. Rainier Valley Post reports on a new partnership.
• The Seattle Transit Blog lets you in on how to divorce your car and get a life.

In announcing his run for mayor of Seattle [video], Michael McGinn wanted to say three things: schools, broadband, buses. But staying on message isn't easy when you have a whole press conference to fill, and McGinn, despite his Greenwood Community Council and Sierra Club past, looked like a rookie early on. He whiffed on what should have been softball questions in the Q&A: "Why are you running against Greg Nickels?" and and had no public safety plank. more ›

The School Board voted last night to approve proposed changes to school start times. In the fall, elementary schools will begin class at 9:30 a.m. and K-8, junior high, and high schools will begin at 8:15 a.m. We've heard from usually reliable sources both that kids learn better in the mornings and that mornings are bad for learning, so since that one's apparently still up in the air, we'll whine about what an ill thought-through decision this is with regards to working parents. more ›

• Oh no! That horrible flu everyone seems to have been getting lately has hit the schools, KOMO reports.
• In the most unsurprising news item of the day, West Seattle Blog reports that a high school has been vandalized.
• Lake City finally got its day in the sun when the Stranger wrote about the neighborhood's effort to clean up and fight crime. Lake City Live has the details.

High school league and district boys basketball playoffs start this week, with games all over the city. We created a handy-dandy map of the 20-some games happening this week--click the blue dealies to see info about each game. If you haven't gone to a game this year, now's the time. Tickets are $6 (door only), and parking is usually plentiful. Games typically last about 90 minutes. more ›

Amanda Knox testified (in fluent Italian!) that she's innocent and, perhaps even less convincingly, that the pink rabbit-shaped vibrator was a joke. On the PG-13 side of the news, the envelope goes to the West Seattle blog for revealing that recent Mateo Messina, who won a Grammy for the Juno soundtrack, turns out to be a native son. Native sons and daughters of Ballard residents may be torn asunder, if Seattle school boundary changes take effect, according to MyBallard. more ›

A teacher friend of ours, who is in fact National Board certified, is all hot under the collar about HB 1410 and SB 5444, two bills that are touted as steps toward education reform elsewhere. more ›

This test seemed so all-fired important at one point in our life. SATs: outdated? Insensitive to the strong creative potential of our students' delicate, possibly-bad-at-testing souls? A great idea? Regardless, way to go, Washington state seniors! You rocked that test. more ›

Photo by Grundlepuck from the Seattlest Flickr pool

Worried about rising material costs, the Seattle school district has sped ahead with construction of new schools without waiting to get input from parents. more ›

The most unfortunate victims of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--which happened 66 years ago today--were surely the 2,333 military personnel who lost their lives. more ›

A few weeks ago, singer/raconteur Jenny Owen Youngs was in town, playing at the High Dive the same time as the Fremont Bridge was being closed evenings, which led to our arriving mid-set in a state of high dudgeon. We decided to skip a half-assed review, and afterwards fired off some impertinent questions via email. We just heard back, and as you'll see, Jenny schools us a bit. Now we adore her even more. If you buy her new album, Batten the Hatches, tell her we sent you. more ›

All mass transit is not created equal; here in Seattle, a city with buses and, well, nothing else, unless you're specifically talking with someone about monorail or lightrail or streetcars (you know, mass transit), when you're talking about supporting mass transit, you're talking about supporting buses. more ›

It's not that development in itself sucks; it's that our county and city government doesn't believe in development for art's sake, despite all those studies about the half billion the arts return to the community. When we look around, we don't see a lot of public investment in the single most expensive thing that artists and smaller arts organizations have to face: a place to work, rehearse, show, perform. more ›

Outfit called Not For Tourists has just published a guide to Seattle. It's a handsome book, looks just like Moleskine journal, complete with oilcloth cover, fat elastic closure, gorgeous paper. The Seattle version is tenth in a series, cobbled together by a design staff in faraway Noo Yawk with input by a locally based "city editor" named Fred Beldin, who contributes occasional music reviews to The Stranger. more ›

Seriously, a 14-minute commute by bus to downtown Seattle? That’s lucky, you must live in Seattle city limits, you are probably thinking. Well, we would like to inform you that thanks to Seattle’s improved underground roadway and the Eastgate Park & Ride, (which is a place we hold dear to our hearts) you can get from Bellevue to downtown Seattle in 14 minutes or less. We did it this morning and even had enough time for a frittata breakfast sandwich at Frontier Café. It doesn’t get better. more ›

Other than the Apple Cup, Garfield High vs. Franklin High is the best sports rivalry this area has to offer. more ›

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. more ›

The City Council finally got around to passing "adult cabaret" zoning laws that just might let Seattle develop a strip club scene worthy of a would-be world-class city. more ›

Over in Ballard, Archie McPhee sells a cheerful Lunch Lady action figure for $9.95. Tell the disgruntled lunch ladies in Chicago, who are demanding respect from a school system that pays them peanuts (well, $10.46 an hour) and expects them to serve slop to thousands of kids. more ›

Last Friday we had that nightmare where we go back to high school, only we were awake and wearing clothes. From what we read in the papers, high school is a nightmare that has to do with standardized tests leaving kids behind, but that's not the impression we left with. more ›

--Hegelian dialectics are no problem for the Stranger's Charles Mudede, but Doobie Brothers lyrics are Greek to him. more ›

a job that brought him back to Seattle's Fairview Club this week to rustle up an importer and local distributor. The Sautejeau family domaines produce 17,000 cases of Muscadet; the company also does export marketing for half a dozen other Loire Valley wineries. more ›

because it comes from obese geese. Elsewhere, they're trying to get rid of junk food in schools because it causes the kids to become obese. more ›

The Huskies released their spring depth chart today, and oh-so-highly touted quarterback Jake Locker is listed as the #1 QB. Locker is expected by the type of Husky fan who spends a lot of time on message boards to lead the program back to excellence. He's 6-2, 210, and fast. Scout.com calls him "a bigger Marques Tuiasosopo with a stronger arm." more ›

Seattlest's former elementary school, Madrona, is the leading edge of a terrifying movement in Seattle Public Schools. more ›