KUOW Blog
News, factoids, and insights from KUOW's newsroom. And maybe some peeks behind the scenes. Check back daily for updates.
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Stories
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Seattle elementary one of two in Washington state named Blue Ribbon school
F
or the first time in 12 years, a Seattle public school has won a national award for academic achievement.
Thurgood Marshall Elementary is one of two schools in Washington state recently named a Blue Ribbon school. The other is Apple Valley Elementary in Yakima.
Katie May, who has been Thurgood Marshall’s principal for a decade, said the school’s heightened focus on early literacy in recent years has been key to its success.
That focus not only makes children better readers, but also helps them in other subjects, May said.
“We’ve seen kids before where they struggle with math, not because they don’t have good number sense, but because math is also really language based,” May said. “And if you can’t read, you just don’t have the confidence for the problem solving.”
And literacy sets students up for long-term success — studies show children who can’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to not graduate from high school on time.
Thurgood Marshall is one of 13 schools in the Seattle school district’s Early Literacy Collaborative. It’s focused on improving reading skills at schools with the largest percentages of African American boys, who the district has prioritized in its academic goals because they are “furthest from educational justice.”
Another success May highlighted is the school’s ongoing parent engagement efforts. A couple years ago, Thurgood Marshall started hosting regular parent meetings focused on how they can support their kids from home.
“Parents would say, ‘That was the most useful school event I’ve ever been to,’ because they really are learning how they can help their child at home,” May said. “Of course, reading with your child at home is critical and important. And there’s other things that parents can do, too, but they don’t always know.”
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Partnerships to help asylum-seekers at Tukwila church take shape amid city's state of emergency
The growing number of migrants looking for asylum at a church in Tukwila prompted the city to declare a state of emergency on Friday.
The city is asking for help from state, county, and federal governments, and hopes to meet other priorities at the local level.
“The Tukwila community has always been welcoming to refugees and immigrants from around the world. Many new arrivals to the United States have called Tukwila home in their pathway to citizenship,” said Mayor Allan Ekberg.
Jan Bolerjack is a pastor at the Riverton Park United Methodist Church in Tukwila, where roughly 180 to 200 migrants are currently taking shelter. She said there’s a lack of regional infrastructure to help asylum-seekers like them.
“We promote ourselves as welcoming in the Pacific Northwest, and yet we've forgotten this whole group of people that are our new neighbors,” she said.
Bolerjack added that roughly two families arrive each day. To her, this is a racial equity issue — the majority of migrants seeking asylum at the church are brown and Black people.
“The question would be, if these were white bodies, would we not be responding the way we are? I think that's the question.”
On Monday each week, Riverton Park offers asylum-seekers legal consultations about their immigration cases — and there’s always a line. Accessing a consultation requires planning in advance.
The waiting around at Riverton Park also extends to handling basic housekeeping needs, like cooking a meal or drying one’s laundry.
Bolerjack said local nonprofits have been helping out, but they have limited capacity.
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Tacoma Rail to buy Northwest’s first electric locomotives
City-owned Tacoma Rail is buying the Northwest’s first electric locomotives.
You might have played with electric trains as a child, but most life-size trains in the United States run on diesel, and the rail sector is far behind the automobile sector in moving to less-polluting energy sources like electricity.
Diesel exhaust contains lung-damaging particulates and, like all fossil fuel exhaust, contributes to overheating the planet.
Tacoma Rail has received federal and state funding to replace two of its 14 diesel “switcher” locomotives with battery-powered ones that emit zero pollution.
Switchers maneuver railcars around the tight curves of the rail lines at the Port of Tacoma before handing them off to the larger locomotives that haul freight around the country.
“These are brand new in the industry, so it's exciting to have those in the Northwest, especially with our sister utility Tacoma Power that uses hydroelectric power,” McCabe said. “So, these are about as green as they can possibly be.”
McCabe said each locomotive’s battery would hold more than 2 megawatt-hours of energy, about as much as 29 electric car batteries. Tacoma Rail estimates the two short-haul locomotives and charging infrastructure at the Port of Tacoma will cost nearly $13 million.
McCabe said the funding for the purchase should be available by 2025, when the diesel switchers being replaced will be 60 years old.
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King County Metro beefs up security after fatal bus shooting in White Center
King County Metro is beefing up security after a recent fatal shooting on a bus in White Center that left one person dead.
“While this was a tragic incident, it was an isolated incident," said Al Sanders with King County Metro. "It's rare, and we're grateful that no one else was was injured."
Still, Metro is responding by adding two teams of security officers to ride the Rapid Ride H bus line for the “foreseeable future.” The agency will accomplish this by transferring four security officers from other areas to patrol this line. Sanders said that the security will be there to protect riders and bus drivers.
RELATED: There's meth on that. Study finds drug traces on Seattle transit rides
“Their job is to drive the bus," he said. "If there are things that involve law enforcement or transit security officers, there are steps and procedures they can take to make sure that those people who can enforce and can enact, get there as quickly as possible.”
The shooting on a metro bus also happened days after another mass transit incident, when a man assaulted riders with a hammer at a Sound Transit train station.
Sanders notes that there is a difference between security officers and Metro Transit Officers. Security is employed by Metro and officers are unarmed. There are about 140 security personnel on the job with Metro. There are also Metro Transit Officers, who are part of the King County Sheriff's Office and are armed.
"Metro currently has 200 security staff across our system between the Metro Transit Police and our ... security officers," Sanders said. "They are spread throughout our system. They give a presence wherever they are assigned."
"The H line, we are adding security; security is put where it is needed. If there are issues that have come up, that is where they will put the transit safety officers and also the Metro Transit Police."
RELATED: King County Metro creates a fast-track to bring back workers
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Washington state child care providers are struggling to survive. Sen. Murray calls for feds to help
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, is calling for the federal government to renew its historic investment in the child care industry.
When the pandemic first hit, the Child Care Stabilization Act gave struggling providers across the country $24 billion to help them keep their doors open through Covid.
But that funding expired Sept. 30, and providers across Washington state are already worried they won’t be able to make ends meet.
Since child care providers started receiving those funds, Deeann Puffert said Friday that her organization has heard from providers “every day, every week” that the investment enabled them to recruit and retain staff through bonuses and increased compensation.
“Without those additional funds, they’re going to struggle,” said Puffert, CEO of Child Care Aware of Washington, a nonprofit that helps families connect with child care providers. “That’s just the truth of the matter.”
Puffert shared her concerns with Murray at a roundtable event Friday at Shoreline Community College.
Despite being a critical backbone of the United States’ economy and education, the nation’s child care system has long been broken. For parents, high-quality day care is often difficult to find.
According to the Center for American Progress, about 63% of Washingtonians live in what’s considered a child care desert, which is any census tract with more than 50 kids under the age of 5 that contains either no child care providers, or has more than three times as many children as spots for licensed child care.
Even when child care is available, it's often too expensive for families to afford. In Washington state, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual “KIDS COUNT” report released this summer found the average cost to send a toddler to a child care center had risen to more than $14,000. That amounts to nearly 40% of the median income for single mothers, or 12% of the median income for a married couple.
Laurie Carlsson is among the many mothers in Washington state who has struggled to find and afford child care. Her oldest daughter, JoJo, was born right before she got her bachelor’s degree as a nontraditional student, and she struggled to find affordable options.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to start my new career because of the cost of care,” Carlsson told Murray and other attendees at Friday’s roundtable.
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Seattle tastes the feeling of Coca-Cola on this ferry route
Hate it or just don't care. Either way, it's the real thing. Those seem to be the common reactions to a Coca-Cola advertisement that recently popped up on a Washington State Ferry route.
It may be difficult to miss the bright red display painted across the face of the Seattle-Bainbridge Island boat, but according to Washington State Ferries, this is not the first time an ad has been given prime Puget Sound real estate.
"Historically, exterior advertising on vessels has been done in the distant past ... and to a lesser extent recently," said Ian Sterling with Washington State Ferries. "We worked with a healthcare provider to place a large mask graphic on front of one of the Seattle-based boats during the pandemic, and with the non-profit Movember to place mustaches on the exterior of some boats in the last few years."
The Seattle Times also notes that 40-foot banners were placed on ferries in 1962 to advertise the World's Fair.
Coca-Cola's ad campaign was not only able to catch a wave on the exterior of a ferry, but also inside the boat, and at the Seattle and Bainbridge Island ferry terminals. The main message, aside from hyping Coke, is that its bottles are recycled.
Not since 2014, when Jägermeister painted a mural in Capitol Hill has an ad placement prompted so much local attention. X, formerly known as Twitter, was ablaze with commentary. An entire Reddit thread got a taste of the feeling from locals, which ranged from "tacky" to "my eyes feel violated," and also the sentiment that WSF can paint the entire boat with ads as long as it pays to keep the ferries on time and in service. Would that be: I'd like to buy Seattle a coke ... and an operational ferry.
"The ad is on a busy route and it's red," Sterling said. "Perhaps that is why it is getting noticed. Revenue from the ad helps offset the price to taxpayers across the state who pay to subsidize ferry ticket prices. The cost to operate ferries is only partially paid by the customers who use ferries, much of the rest is from taxpayers."
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Small 4.3 earthquake gives Seattle area little shake
An earthquake with preliminary 4.3 magnitude shook beneath Marrowstone Island in the Salish Sea at 7:21 p.m. on Sunday.
The earthquake was shallow -- 35 miles deep, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
"We know it was widely felt around the Puget Sound - many of us at PNSN felt it ourselves," the seismic network wrote on Twitter.
There have been small earthquakes registered in that area going back decades, although most are small, almost imperceptible.
There was a 4.9 earthquake in 2009 in Indianola, just south. In 1976, there was a 4.7 earthquake due north, closer to Whidbey Island.
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Washington counties win initial legal victory over scarce mental health beds
In the battle with state officials over who which populations should receive scarce mental health beds, a group of Washington counties say they won an initial legal victory Friday.
A majority of Washington counties sued the state’s Department of Social and Health Services in August, over the agency’s abrupt release of patients with mental illnesses.
These people had been charged with crimes but deemed incompetent to stand trial. State officials said they needed to make bed space for people who were still awaiting trial.
Now Pierce County Superior Court Judge Michael Schwartz has granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the counties, forcing DSHS to adhere to its previous practices.
That decision means the state must now notify prosecutors and victims before releasing these patients. The state will also have to evaluate their mental health and whether they are likely to reengage in criminal activity, according to David Hackett, general counsel to King County Executive Dow Constantine.
Hackett said the vast majority of those evaluations have typically indicated a need for further mental health services.
“The order doesn’t require treatment, but the evaluation will be there,” Hackett said. He said the ruling will “make sure people aren’t lost in the paperwork” and will receive help.
“We want to collaborate with DSHS and the state to put resources in place to make sure the legal obligations are being met in terms of funding and staffing facilities,” Hackett said. He noted that six more counties will be joining the lawsuit, for a total of 28 plaintiff counties.
DSHS spokesperson Tyler Hemstreet said in a statement that the department is “disappointed” in the latest ruling, which “puts us at odds with the federal court order to limit admissions to the state hospitals.”
The federal court order is focused on speeding up access to mental health services for another population — people in jail facing criminal charges who are in need of "competency restoration" services.
However, Hemstreet said said the agency will continue to seek more “bed capacity” for these complex patients.
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2023 set to be deadliest year yet for overdoses in King County
King County is headed towards a somber milestone. This year is slated to become the deadliest on record for overdoses in the county.
"The amount of people who have died of overdose death in 2023 looks like it's definitely going to surpass that of 2022,” said Brad Finegood, strategic advisor on behavioral health for Public Health – Seattle & King County.
There were 1,001 overdose deaths recorded in King County in 2022. This year, as of Friday afternoon, that number sits at 997. Given the rate of overdoses, it won’t be long before the county surpasses last year’s total.
The number of people dying of overdose has risen dramatically in recent years. The spike has largely been driven by the rise in fentanyl — a deadly, synthetic opioid that's widely available and very cheap.
Finegood said roughly 80% of overdose deaths so far in 2023 are fentanyl-related, up from about 70% last year, and 50% in 2021.
In 2015, King County saw only three fentanyl-related deaths. In 2023, 816 people, so far, have died from fentanyl-related overdoses, already eclipsing last year's total attributed to the opioid.
Finegood said fentanyl was relatively late to hit King County compared to other communities, especially on the East Coast, which saw deaths spiking earlier.
Part of the reason, he said, is that the drug supply here was different.
“We had a form of heroin that was really tough to mix fentanyl in and so what we’ve seen in our community is an inundation of products that were only fentanyl,” he said.
Finegood said the county is keeping a close eye on the drug supply in order to alert the community if new threats arise. He said one thing people can do is carry the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan.
Finegood said the county continues to work to lower barriers to treatment, medications, and services to help keep people alive.
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Port Angeles pharmacy becomes first in Washington state approved for abortion drug mifepristone
A pharmacy in Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula just became the first in the state to be publicly listed as a location that will begin dispensing mifepristone — the first of two drugs used in most medication abortions.
This marks a big change for a drug most people once had to go to a doctor’s office to get.
RELATED: Health care providers travel to WA for abortion training they can’t get at home
People seeking an abortion, or managing a miscarriage, used to have to go to the office of a certified provider — usually a doctor — to get mifepristone. In January, the FDA ended that requirement and said patients could get the pills at a regular pharmacy, as long as that pharmacy was certified.
A full list of pharmacies approved to distribute mifepristone can be found here. Jim’s Pharmacy in Port Angeles just became the first in Washington state to be publicly listed as a location that has fulfilled the requirements and can dispense the drug.
That means a doctor could call in a Mifepristone prescription to Jim's Pharmacy, and a patient could go pick it up.
Big chains like Walgreens and CVS are still in the process of becoming certified.
RELATED: Abortion billboards going up around Washington state
Many people receive the pills for a medication abortion in the mail. But some people can’t wait for a shipment — either for medical reasons, because they don’t have a reliable address, or because they live with an abusive partner.
These pharmacy rules are just part of the ongoing legal and political fight about medication abortions. A case that seeks to overturn Mifepristone’s FDA approval entirely has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
10/12/23: This story has been updated. A previous version of this story stated that Jim's Pharmacy announced publicly that it would dispense Mifepristone; however, the drug manufacturer, GenBioPro, included Jim's on a public list of pharmacies that would dispense the drug. Also, the article has been updated to clarify that Mifepristone is still a prescription drug.
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NW tribes push for removal of Snake River dams
Northwest tribes continue their push to remove dams along the Snake River with a series of events held throughout the region in recent weeks.
The events were held in Olympia, Portland, Pasco, Spokane, Lewiston, and Seattle.
RELATED: Biden calls for ‘abundant’ salmon populations, directs agencies to honor tribal treaty rights
“We’re here because the Biden administration needs to understand. This is a majority opinion: Breach those dams, save the salmon, and restore our relationship with the Snake River. That’s what we want the Biden administration to do,” Judith LeBlanc recently said at an event in Lewiston, Idaho.
LeBlanc is the executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance. The organization serves as a national network to mobilize Indigenous people around political issues.
This has been a years-long battle. Supporters of removing the dams say it’s the only way to save the salmon that rely on the waterway.
Opponents say the dams are still used for energy and agriculture.
An update is expected at the end of the month on the court case involving the dams.
RELATED: Federal report recommends removing four Lower Snake River dams to protect salmon
Northwest Public Broadcasting's Lauren Patterson has the full story here.
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Washington state gets $1 billion boost for roadwork, including EV infrastructure
The Federal Highway Administration is giving the Washington State Department of Transportation $1.08 billion in "formula funding" to pay for upgrades to state highways, bridges, and new EV charging infrastructure — the latest in a series of new funding for charging and EV infrastructure in the state.
“Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, more funding is on its way to Northwest Washington to create more jobs and build a cleaner, greener, safer and more accessible transportation system,” Rep. Rick Larsen said in a statement. “This historic investment will enable local communities to get more shovels in the ground and put people to work to reduce congestion and pollution, improve safety, and keep people and the economy moving.”
RELATED: Getting a $7,500 tax credit for an electric car will soon get a lot easier
Rep. Larsen, a Democrat, represents Washington's Congressional District 2 (Bellingham, Whidbey Island, San Juan Islands) and sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The money is coming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Most of the funding, $934.4 million, is going to projects on state highways. Just over $130 million is for bridges.
While it's not the largest share of the funding, Washington is also getting $15.1 million to fund new EV charging infrastructure. That's just the latest chunk of a total of $71 million slated to fund EV projects in Washington state, according to the White House.
The state is going to need the new EV stations, too. Demand and electric vehicle sales have been on the rise in Washington state. Currently, about 1 out of 6 cars on state roads are EVs. That's double the number from a couple years ago. The state is still shy of its overall goal to have about a third of car sales be for EVs by 2026, and to require that all new cars have zero emissions by 2035.
Most of the new EVs are being sold to residents of San Juan County (25%) and King County (23%). Washington ranks third in the U.S. for EV sales (behind California and Washington, D.C.).
Despite the rise in EVs, taking a road trip across Washington state requires some planning. KUOW's John Ryan took a summer trek across the state, and documented the ups and downs of navigating a sparse network of charging stations. Ryan concluded that EV roadtrips come with both range anxiety as well as charger anxiety.
With new funding, such anxieties could soon run out of gas. The new money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is not the only funding, or effort, pouring into Washington. The state's Department of Ecology has targeted $16 million toward local governments, ports, and tribes to convert their fleets to EV vehicles and for charging stations. The money comes from a settlement agreement with Volkswagen, and Ecology aims to fund more EV projects.
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