Inside the editorial page

What's on the minds of TNT editorial writers

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

Posted by David Seago @ 06:38:41 pm

Spiritual descendants of legendary Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky visited with the TNT ed board today. They went away frustrated.

Not because editorial writer Kim Bradford and I were unreceptive to their broad goals – which are entirely laudable – but because we felt they didn’t have enough specifics for us to promise a supportive editorial. Their efforts may make news, however if they start getting traction.

Our visitors, which included the presidents of the teacher unions in the Bethel and Tacoma school districts, a local Teamsters leader, a Tacoma church representative and two trained community organizers, are part of an activist coalition called the Sound Alliance.

The alliance plans a “founding assembly” June 1 at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center. (Registration here). Organizers hope at least 2,000 people will turn out to hear an “Agenda for the Common Good” presented to government and business leaders.

Our visitors told us “specific action strategies” will be outlined at the Tacoma event. House Speaker Frank Chopp and other legislators, they said, have promised to attend, and they’ve invited the governor. They hope the invited leaders will publicly commit to the action items.

The Sound Alliance is a project of the Industrial Areas Foundation Northwest, an affiliate of the Chicago-based IAF founded by Alinsky in 1940. Alinsky’s trademark was forming community-based coalitions of labor groups and working-class people to “work inside the system” for justice and social change.

Viewed by critics as a radical leftist, Alinsky was actually a great believer in democracy – a view our visitors emphasized as well. Sound Alliance, they told us, wants to break down social isolation and “give people a voice in this democracy.”

One Sound Alliance priority is promoting more career training for the majority of high schools who don’t go on to earn a college degree. The alliance is working with several Pierce County school districts to make students aware of apprenticeships and job opportunities in the construction trades.

TNT education reporter Debby Abe wrote this article in February that cited the alliance’s Opportunity Works NW collaboration with the schools.

Categories: Who's visiting

UPlace school chief honored

Posted by David Seago @ 03:54:48 pm

Here's an honor I'd like to see a Tacoma school superintendent win some day: A statewide "most effective administrator" award.

That's a title University Place School District Superintendent Patti Banks now claims. She and a school official from Everett were named today as recipients, in the large-district category, of the 2008 Robert J. Handy Most Effective Administrator Award.

The award by the Washington Association of School Administrators goes to administrators whose districts most exemplify nine characteristics of high-performing schools identified by the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Banks, head of UP schools since 1999, is known for a determined focus on academic achievement. University Place test scores have gained significantly in recent years, even as the district enrollment has grown more diverse and gained more low-income students.

From the WASA announcement:

“(Banks) has engaged the entire district school community in supporting and actively carrying out the district vision of improved student achievement with a common and research-based learning focus that is shared at the primary, intermediate, and secondary levels,” cited the nomination. It also stated that she articulates a clear district-wide vision of learning improvement goals and leads buildings administrators in establishing non-negotiable instructional strategies that are supported by research.

Banks told WASA:

“I am proud of the significant student achievement gains in my district, but cannot take credit for them. Instead, that credit belongs to a strong, student centered, and supportive board of directors; an exceptionally focused and talented administrative team; an extraordinary teaching and support staff; and a community that cares deeply about its schools.

Here's a February news story about University Place's special emphasis on bolstering achievement by young black male students.

Categories: Taking notice

The enigma worm (a coming editorial)

Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 03:40:02 pm

Hands down, it's the most mysterious creature in the Pacific Northwest.

It eats dirt and it poops dirt; that much we know. It spits mucous at attackers; that much we believe. It is so elusive that few human beings have seen one.

It's the giant Palouse earthworm. Yes, earthworm – kind of a terrestrial geoduck with awful table manners and a Greta Garbo-like obsession with avoiding the limelight. The Palouse worm, which has been measured as long as three feet, just wants to be left alone.

Which creates a problem for its defenders.

Logically, the giant worm should be on its last legs, if it had legs. Its presumed habitat, the dry Palouse grasslands of Eastern Washington and Idaho, was long ago put under the plow and overrun by nightcrawlers and other wriggling, pinkish invaders of European ancestry. (Indians will find the story familiar.)

Champions of that habitat want the worm listed under the Endangered Species Act. Last October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service turned down their petition.

Why?

=> Read more!

Categories: What's coming

Goodwill green-lights $20 million building

Posted by David Seago @ 12:08:14 pm

The continuous cycle of fundraising breakfasts, lunches and dinners many local nonprofit groups stage can be hard on the wallet and the wasteline for faithful community supporters.

They can be tedious, too. But this morning's Goodwill Industries event was a good one. A good-sized crowd at the Greater Tacoma Conventer Center heard an engaging talk by "Chef Jeff" Henderson, the reformed ex-con who became a celebrity chef.

More importantly, Goodwill CEO Terry Hayes announced that supporters have raised 75 percent of the $20 million needed to build a new "work opportunity center" at its campus on South 27th Street and Tacoma Avenue South. As a result, the Goodwill board has green-lighted construction; groundbreaking is scheduled in June, with opening in the fall of 2009.

Other organizations that receive federal workforce training dollars will join Goodwill in offering education and training for people with disabilities or other disadvantages creating barriers to employment. The new center will allow Good will to triple the number of job-training clients it serves.

Kudos to John and Buzz Folsom, indefatigable community volunteers, for co-chairing the Goodwill capital campaign. Only 20 percent of the fundng is coming from government; Goodwill is financing about 30 percent, and private gifts the rest.

Categories: Taking notice

The wrong end of the turkey shoot

Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 10:59:13 am

Did this kid take his firearms safety course from Dick Cheney?

CENTRAL POINT, Ore. (AP) — A 65-year-old man escaped serious injuries when he was hit in the back and face by shotgun blasts from a teenage hunter who mistook him for a turkey.

Oregon State Police say Jerry Barrett of Central Point was hit with about 130 shotgun pellets while he was scouting for turkeys for a future hunt.
The 14-year-old Medford boy who shot him was hunting with a friend and their fathers when they realized what happened and called police.

Doctors told Barrett it would do more damage to remove the pellets so they gave him a tetanus shot and some medication, and sent him home.
Troopers decided not to issue any citations.

Now if Barrett hadn't been gobbling and scratching for crickets, things might have turned out differently.

Categories: Taking notice

That Jim Ladenburg, he's a hell of a guy

Posted by Kim Bradford @ 09:05:08 am

Here's evidence that Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, who kicked off his campaign for state attorney general Monday, has some work to do in upping his name recognition outside the South Sound.

UPDATE: The Seattle Times has now corrected the mistake.

Categories: Taking notice • 1 comment

Road-rage: The snarling ape within

Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 06:49:25 am

Albert Einstein worried about hominid apes getting their hands on nuclear weapons. Heck, I'm worried about them getting their hands on steering wheels.

David Wickert's story Sunday on the crackdown on road rage prompted an inquiry into this manifestation of the savage within us. (See our editorial.)

Most amazing was the utter pettiness of the provocations that led drivers to ram, run over, shoot and attack others with tire irons, hatchets, baseball bats, etc. (By the way, you get 10 points if you can connect this cute bichon frise to road rage. Answer below.)

Examples of ragers' complaints:

"She wouldn't let me pass." "Nobody gives me the finger." "Playing the radio too loud" (the loud radio resulted in a shooting).

Want to know if you're a rager? RoadRagers.com offers a self test. I took it, and I'll have you know that I am a "safe driver" with a 40 percent aggressiveness rating (I don't strictly adhere to the posted speed limit) and a 95 percent courtesy rating (I always signal, let people in, etc.) Such a nice guy (but don't ask me how I drove when I was 28).

How about the rest of the country? According to RoadRagers.com, 68 percent of Americans (as of 2004) said they were tail-gaters; 41 percent were headlight-flashers; 70 percent were horn-honkers; 67 percent were cell-phone drivers, 77 percent used obscene gestures – but 76 percent said they "try to be a polite and courteous driver."

Not trying too hard, it sounds like.

=> Read more!

Categories: Taking notice, Editorial outtakes • 1 comment

Losing golf balls is fun?

Posted by David Seago @ 05:56:53 am

Ouch. The New York Times carried a three-quarter-page feature recently on the rising popularity of links-style golf courses in the U.S. – and nary a word about our new Chambers Bay Golf Course.

Color photos showed links courses at Kiawah Island (S.C.), Whistling Straits (Wis.) and Carnoustie (Scotland), but Chambers Bay was a no-show. I quickly scanned the story. Bandon Dunes in Oregon was mentioned, but not a word about Pierce County Exec John Ladenburg's pride and joy.

Sigh. Anyhow, writer Bill Pennington sought to capture the essence of playing a tough links-style course in the spirit of the early Scots who established the game "on a windswept hunk of land in the Kingdom of Fife." (I don't think he meant Fife, Wash., Distribution Center and Car Lot Capital of the World.)

When you are done with your links experience, you will remember the windswept views, the peculiar terrain and the elevation changes. You will remember the blind shots and may a great shot out of a pot bunker. You may even take some wild fescue home with you wrapped around the hosel of your pitching wedge.

Chances are, you will not remember how many golf balls you lost. Or how your score was. And that is as it should be.

That fits Chambers Bay to a tee.

Categories: Taking notice

Inside the editorial page

Inside the editorial page

This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck and Executive Editor Karen Peterson.

Contributing bloggers

Chief editorial writer Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com

Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.

Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.

Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in July after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.