Snowy weather comes to western Washington, grocery workers reach a tentative contract agreement, and Seattle Schools sudden improvement in graduate's college readiness.
Snow Threat Affects Schools, Commuters
The snow is falling in Seattle and Tacoma this morning, along with many other other western Washington communities. The threat of slick roads hasdelayed school openings and is forcing early closures, including for Seattle schools. Local transit lines, including Metro buses, are running on snow routes today.
The snow may fall through the afternoon hours. The National Weather Service warnsit may last until 4 pm today and leave a trace to three inches or more in southwest Washington through the south and central Puget Sound. Then the temperatures will drop quickly this evening, with overnight lows tonight in the upper teens to low 20's.
What snowy scene did you wake up to this morning? Share your snow photos with us, by emailing them to photos@kplu.org.
Here's the view outside in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood this morning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_rYFu5VOlk
Grocery Workers Reach Tentative Contract
There'll be no pre-Thanksgiving grocery workers srike. Union employees with the Big 4 chains in the central Puget Sound have reached a tentative agreement. United Food & Commerical Workersmembers will vote on the deal over the coming week. Details of the proposal were not released, but workers rejected a previous offerover pay and benefits.
Seattle Schools: a Bad Statistic
The statistic has been widely discussed for the past couple years: a meagre amount of Seattle's high school graduates meet college entrance requirements. The district placed the number at 17%. Turns out the figure is incorrect: closer to 46% of grads meet the college-entry goal. Still, humbling figures., but they tell a vastly different story.
The Seattle Times uncovered the discrepency, and details how a bad statistic has been widely used, inside and outside the district. The lower figure was intended to show how many graduates were likely to succeed at a four-year college, not just gain entry. Why the statistic was so long misused is still unclear, and it remained on the district's website, according a staffer.
Times' education reporter Linda Shaw writes:
What is clear: At least one School Board member raised questions about the figure from the beginning. And the district didn't publicly correct it, even after it pulled the figure from some of its own reports. Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson says that was a mistake. "We should have changed the public conversation," Goodloe-Johnson said Friday.
School board member Michael DeBell had asked staff to investigate whether the original low number was accurate, according to the story:
"I knew it was way too low. We were doing much better than that. I couldn't understand why we were putting that kind of data out," DeBell told the Times.
