A new school year and a new interim police chief, this week

Marcie Sillman discusses the week's news with Kevin Schofield of Seattle City Council Insight, and David Kroman and Manola Secaira of Crosscut.

Classes begin again for Seattle public schools this Friday. The first week of school will be dedicated to teaching students how to use the new technology schools are distributing, and building community through the online platform. Regular instruction is supposed to start Sept. 14. Are we better prepared for virtual schooling now than we were in the spring?

Plus, Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best has officially retired from the SPD, with interim Chief Adrian Diaz taking over. And changes are already coming to the department. How will protesters, or the city council respond to these changes?

Speaking of law enforcement, there have been updates to two ongoing cases of deaths at the hands of police officers. A newly released systemic review of Tommy Le’s shooting by a King County deputy in 2017 blasts the Sheriff’s Office for its handling of the case. And a lawsuit for the death of Che Taylor at the hands of an SPD officer has just been given approval to proceed with a jury trial. How will these findings and new trial effect conversations around defunding the SPD, or the King County Sheriff's office?

Also, President Trump has ordered a federal review of ways to defund the City of Seattle and other cities he deemed "lawless." But how much power do democrats really have in our city, or the other cities named in his memo?

Finally, the November elections are officially less than three months away. Bloomberg’s data-analysis group this week pointed out that because of mail-in voting, early returns may make it look like President Trump is winning, but in the days or weeks to follow as the rest of the ballots are counted it could flip to Biden. We’re already familiar here in Seattle with a shift to the left in the days following an election, but the rest of the country is not. How do we get the country comfortable with the notion that there’s a very good chance we won’t know the next President on election night, and that the most important statistic the first night will be “percentage of ballots counted”?