Recent Stories with tag sea

There is one very important feature about your Washington State Enhanced Driver's License that you should know. It's good for crossing the border into Canada and Mexico (and Bermuda and the Caribbean)--but only by land or sea. Not by air. If you're flying there, make sure your passport is ready to fly with you. 

Don't have an EDL? See my previous story, "So You Want an Enhanced Washington Driver's License": 

Seattle residents have two EDL choices: the downtown DMV office or what's charmingly known to the DMV as Seattle-West. At the Seattle-West (known to locals as "West Seattle") location, they only take walk-ins for EDL applications, and stop taking applications 30 minutes before closing (closing weekdays is 5 p.m., Saturday, 2:30 p.m.).

The subtitle of this story is, "I ruin my vacation so you don't have to," since I discovered this useful fact while failing to fly into Mazatlan this past weekend. I thought about renewing my passport by appointment (which you can do if you have proof you're traveling in 14 days or less), but I was also sick with the flu. As it happens, I was sick with the flu when I got my last passport pictures taken, so I've been officially red-eyed and pasty for a full decade, and couldn't face another ten years of that. It was also a courtesy to my fellow travelers. ... (more)

One-on-one instruction, a hallmark of public education

From the Research, Evaluation, and Assessment page of the Seattle School District site, I learn the Seattle school district has a Director of Research, Evaluation & Assessment; a Gates Data Fellow; a Senior Data Analyst; a Program Evaluator/Data Steward; a Assessment Systems Analyst, a Student Information Systems Analyst; and a Lead Education Systems Analyst.

None of these people, I'm told, can tell me how many students are in classrooms, and whether class size has grown over the past ten years.

The district can tell me that in October of 2009, Ballard, Garfield, and Roosevelt all had enrollment of over 1,600 students, but they claim that until this year tracking classroom size was done by principals at each school, and the district did not compile those statistics centrally. (They also can't seem to provide an Excel spreadsheet measuring enrollment against school capacity.)

This is surprising to me because in the district's 2009-10 collective bargaining agreement with the Seattle Education Association (SEA), the district agrees that it will "take actions to limit class size to thirty-two (32) students for core classes in grades 6-12." It would seem odd to agree to that without tracking class sizes. Maybe this can be addressed if and when the SEA goes on strike this fall. As Melinda French Gates says, "Evidence gives you an argument for action."... (more)

Our SunBreak HQ squirrel has been trying various sun-maximizing set-ups.

A sea gull "takes the waters" at Cal Anderson park.