For years, school officials have been lamenting the state's underfunding of transportation.

Without adequate funding from the state, they say, districts must devote more and more of their local levy dollars to get kids to school.

One of their loudest charges: the state doesn't reimburse districts for transporting students whose homes or daycares lie outside a one-mile radius from school. And instead of calculating the actual route mileage, the distance is measured as a direct line from school to home or daycare. Or, in the colloquial, "as the crow flies."

Actually, says Allan Jones with the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, the state does provide some money to bus kids within the one-mile radius. But not much.

Jones, director of pupil transportation, says the state gives districts some funding based on the total number of kids in kindergarten through through fifth grade within the one-mile radius.

The original intent was to help districts defray the cost of transporting youngsters who faced hazardous walking conditions, even though they lived close to school.

But it's a lower rate than what the state funds for students living outside the one-mile minimum. And the districts don't have to have hazardous walking conditions to get the money. They don't even have to use the money to transport kids within that radius.

Here's how Jones explains it, and the "crow flies" business in an e-mail to The News Tribune.

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Drivers heading to Seattle this weekend, including fans going to the Seahawks game on Saturday night, should plan for backups on Interstate 5, the Washington State Department of Transportation advises.

A lane and a ramp in downtown Seattle will be closed almost all day Saturday and half of Sunday.

On Saturday WSDOT is expecting southbound delays of up to 60 minutes through downtown and delays of up to 20 minutes on Sunday.

The I-5 express lanes will be open southbound all day and that means northbound drivers heading into Seattle on Saturday afternoon and evening should expect backups up to mid-Boeing Field.

WSDOT advises that anyone coming to Seattle from Tacoma and south King County should take Highway 99, Highway 509 or Airport Way to avoid delays.

Mark Kirsch paced the concrete expanses adjacent to the runways at Seattle’s Boeing Field. Every few feet, he leaned over and placed a level on the ground.

The Tacoma resident and owner of World Strongman Entertainment was trying to find the perfect patch of ground, a perfect mix of hard asphalt and a favorable slope, to set a world record and complete the centerpiece event of a fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound on Saturday.

Three times he tried to pull a 200,000-pound Boeing 767. Two times, the jet didn’t move. A third time, it didn’t get very far – maybe 15 feet, and only after others pushed on the plane’s wheels. But he wasn’t going to give up.

“It’s frustrating,” he said after his third attempt. “It’s really frustrating. I wanted to put on a show for everyone here.”

The hundreds in attendance at the charity’s largest community of event of the year didn’t seem to mind. They cheered Kirsch, a 1998 graduate of Wilson High School, during his attempts. And after his three tries, he turned the fun over to them.

Twelve teams, most with about 10-15 people, took turns pulling on a tow rope attached to the jet. Each attempt followed the same form: The participants looked as if they weren’t making any progress for the first few seconds. Slowly, the jet began rolling. Once it did, the task became markedly easier.

“I was actually surprised how easy it was once we got that thing moving,” said Puyallup’s Jeff Ernst.

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I've reported about the Flight of Hope program that sends boxes of relief supplies on empty planes from Boeing Field in Seattle to China, where they're distributed to ailing Sichuan Province.

Yesterday I received some e-mails from people on the ground (via organizer Jimmy Chen and state Sen. Jim Kastama). Check 'em out:

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I've tweaked (OK, overhauled) my story about Boeing's Flight of Hope program. It should run this weekend.

Click below to read an early edition:

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The folks at Boeing sent these snapshots from Saturday's relief flight to China.

Jimmy Chen (from left), vice chair of the Washington-Sichuan Friendship Association; Qing Ai, managing director of China Aviation Supplies Import and Export Group Corporation American Office; James Kwong, Commercial Airplanes sales program manager for China and East Asia; and Jiang Pan, vice general manager of Shenzhen Airlines Flight Department, assist Boeing employees as they load Shenzhen Airlines' new 737-800 with cone masks to help people in the earthquake-stricken areas of Sichuan Province in China.

The Boeing Company, Shenzhen Airlines and the Washington-Sichuan Friendship Association gathered with several of Washington state's elected officials and others from the Pierce County schools at Boeing Field in Seattle on Saturday.

Jimmy Chen entered the lounge with a white bag slung over his right shoulder and a wide smile on his face.

Everyone inside the room quieted and gravitated toward Chen. The man exerted a contagious energy; soon, most of the bleary-eyed 20 or so people sitting around tables perked up.

Chen displayed the contents of the bag: stacks of multicolored paper. One had ribbon glued to it. Another a crayon drawing of the Chinese and American flags. Chen nodded as he showed off the boxes and folders full of cards and letters – more than 800, all written by Pierce County elementary- and middle-school students destined for the earthquake-damaged areas of southwestern China.

Outside, a much larger shipment destined for Sichuan province sat on the Boeing Field tarmac.

A new 737-800 bearing the white, gold and red livery of Shenzhen Airlines was jammed with 6,000 pounds of facemasks and coveralls. Boxes filled the cargo holds and overhead bins.

When the jet finishes its delivery flight into Shenzhen, the supplies will be distributed via aid workers to those who need it the most almost a month after the quake killed more than 70,000 people and displaced millions.

The flight is the second in a new Boeing program dubbed Flight of Hope. The aviation manufacturer is partnering with Chinese airlines to pack new jets with supplies as they head from the south Seattle airport to their destinations.

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Clipboard in hand, Jack Jensen stood atop the South 72nd Street overpass in Tacoma and grappled with a Sisyphean task: recording the number of drivers who were following too closely on Interstate 5.

Each time he witnessed a dangerous distance between two cars during the morning rush, he made a tally mark on the paper. Blue marks soon were scribbled all over the page. He ran out of room to make marks in the box for the 7-7:15 a.m. period, so he was marking down transgressors well into the left margin of the sheet.

“There are almost too many to write down,” the Bothell resident laughed. “There’s a real sense of community out there – everyone wants to be close to one another.”

Jensen and nine other judges in the Drive Nice Day City Challenge assessed driving habits at busy intersections in Tacoma and Seattle during the morning rush Thursday. They tagged drivers for several judgment errors that can lead to auto wrecks: talking on a cell phone, not using a turn signal, not stopping for yellow and red lights and not wearing a seatbelt.

And apparently Seattle residents drive nicer. Judges penalized 10 percent of motorists there for their behavior behind the wheel. Sixteen percent of Tacoma’s drivers received negative marks.

Teams in Tacoma set up at the overpass and a few blocks away at the intersection of South 72nd and South Hosmer streets. Seattle teams set up at the intersection of Boren Avenue and Pike Street and Boren Avenue and Interstate 5.

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Stop for pedestrians. Turn off the cell phone if you’re behind the wheel. Allow other cars to merge. People will be watching and judging you Thursday.

You wouldn’t want Tacoma to lose out to Seattle, would you?

It’s all part of the Drive Nice Day City Challenge. Washington State Patrol officers, instructors and students from a driver-training school and volunteers from the community will be posted all over Tacoma and Seattle. They’ll record the nice and not-so-nice drivers on score sheets throughout the day.

It’s the second Drive Nice Day and the first time the competition has expanded outside King County. Up for grabs is $10,000 for the winning city.

So remember: Go the speed limit. Don’t zoom around school buses when they’re stopped. And Running a red light or yakking on your cell phone could mean Tacoma loses out on 10 large.

Exercise is nice, but that’s not why Kurt Fritts rides his bike to work. The 37-year-old Tacoma man rides to downtown Tacoma every morning, loads his bike onto a bus and then pedals to his office at Washington Conservation Voters in Seattle. Environmental, financial and mental-health concerns encouraged him to ditch his car on the commute.

“Doing the Seattle-Tacoma drive by myself every day would drive me insane,” he said.

“I much prefer to work/read/sleep on the bus than to drive by myself with nothing to do but stare at the car in front of me, even if it takes me an additional 20 minutes,” adding that the bus is often faster during rush-hour commutes.

Fritts also calls driving to and from Seattle every day a non-starter, citing global-warming concerns. And using a bicycle saves gas money, parking money in Seattle and has allowed his family to get by with one car – which means they pay less on insurance and maintenance costs.

Here’s a good example of a TNT team effort. This audio slideshow is the work of four people: photogs Peter Haley and Janet Jensen, yours truly grabbing audio and Joe Barrentine, who put it all together and made it look good.

Even little kids know why teams head south for spring training.

“It’s cold here!” said 9-year-old Breanna Wagner of Bellevue. But even though the temperature at first pitch was 50 degrees (and it dropped from there), she was more than willing to unzip her jacket to show off her pink Mariners jersey.

She and her brother, 8-year-old Colton, attended a few spring training games at the Mariners’ complex in Arizona last month with their father, Robert. Breanna’s favorite player is Ichiro Suzuki; Colton’s is Kenji Johjima.

“I’ve been a fan of them ever since I first saw them play,” Breanna said.

Colton was a bit more precise: “Umm, I’ve liked them for two years now.”

Robert smiled.

“They’re big fans,” Robert said. “They love the game.”