On Thursday (Mar. 4), Highline Community College’s Center of Excellence for International Trade, Transportation and Logistics (ITTL) announced that it had received $250,000 to provide additional job training opportunities for positions in the international trade sector.
“As our economy continues to change and adjust so too must our workforce,” said U.S. Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA). “This funding will help do just that by training Washington state workers for a career in a growing sector of our local economy – international trade.”
The project — part of the final version of the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act signed by President Obama on Dec. 16, 2009 — will lead to a 20 percent increase in the number of trained ITTL workers in Washington state.
U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Smith secured funding for the project that will also improve the image of international trade throughout Washington state and create awareness of career and training opportunities that lead to family wage jobs.
“In these tough economic times, it is more important than ever to ensure that our workers have the skills they need to compete in the 21st century economy,” Murray said.
Positions in the ITTL sector include managers, logisticians, cargo and freight agents, shipping and receiving clerks, locomotive engineers, drivers and warehouse workers. Washington state will need nearly 77,000 new employees in ITTL by 2018, according to estimates based on data from the state’s Employment Security Department.
For more information about the Center of Excellence for International Trade, Transportation and Logistics, visit www.ittlwa.com.
Located in Des Moines, Highline Community College was founded in 1961 as the first community college in King County. With approximately 18,300 students and 350,000 alumni, it is one of the state’s largest institutions of higher education. The college offers a wide range of academic transfer and professional-technical education programs, with day, evening and weekend classes. Alumni include:
- Former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice
- Entrepreneur Junki Yoshida
- Washington state poet laureate Sam Green
- And yes, even BTB Publisher/Editor Scott Schaefer
The Highline Community College Foundation received a $60,000 donation from Des Moines resident Justine Richards to help provide emergency assistance to Highline students who are struggling to pay for their college education.
Emergency assistance may include funds to pay for books, supplies, child care or transportation. Funds will be distributed through Highline’s Financial Aid office based on a student’s need.
The endowment is named in honor of donors Justine Richards, of Des Moines, and her deceased husband, Gene J. Newman.
Richards is a lifelong resident of the Des Moines area and taught business classes for the Highline School District for 40 years. She has been a longtime supporter of Highline Community College.
Newman graduated from Lynden High School in Lynden, Wash., and the University of Washington. He served in the 10th Mountain Division (86th Infantry Regiment) during World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal at Monte della Torraccia Ridge in Italy on Feb. 27, 1945.
He spent 60 years as an electrical engineer building cranes, designing hydroelectric plants and other projects. His ashes are interred at the Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Wash.
For more information on the HCC Foundation and how to donate to help needy students, call (200) 870-3774 or visit www.funds4highline.org.
Highline Community College was founded in 1961 as the first community college in King County. With approximately 18,300 students and 350,000 alumni, it is one of the state’s largest institutions of higher education. The college offers a wide range of academic transfer and professional-technical education programs, with day, evening and weekend classes.
Alumni include former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, entrepreneur Junki Yoshida, Washington state poet laureate Sam Green as well as Scott Schaefer, Publisher/Editor of this here blog.
The Washington State Department of Ecology awarded grants of $50,000 each to four South King County communities that will help them comply with federal regulations regarding toxic runoff from streets and other surfaces.
The grant money will be applied toward anything from equipment purchases and storm drain cleaning to public education and outreach.
Recipient cities include:
- Des Moines
- Kent
- Normandy Park
- SeaTac
Rep. Dave Upthegrove (D – Des Moines), who chairs the state House Ecology and Parks Committee, says the timing of the awards couldn’t be better.
Rep. Dave Upthegrove
“Toxic runoff is one of the major causes of pollution to Puget Sound,” Upthegrove said. “Research clearly shows it is a threat both to drinking water and marine life. These grants will help communities that are already operating on lean budgets still meet federal requirements to address this very serious environmental health issue.”
About 14 million pounds of toxic pollutants – including petroleum, pesticides, and heavy metals – enter Puget Sound each year. This constant influx of hazardous substances kills fish, closes beaches to swimming, and threatens drinking water supplies. It imperils the region’s economy, not only because of the state’s reliance on water resources, but because cash-strapped municipalities lack sufficient funding to pay for cleanup efforts.
All four cities plan to use part of the grant money for detection of pollutants within their stormwater systems. By pinpointing the source sites where pollutants enter these systems, they can take the necessary steps to address the problem. Public education efforts will also be undertaken, to help teach people how they can help prevent toxic runoff from their homes and businesses.
“The clock is ticking for us to save Puget Sound, and how cities deal with toxic runoff is going to determine whether or not we’ll be successful,” Upthegrove said. “This extra boost in state funds will help these communities move forward with pollution prevention efforts.”
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Renewal and enrollment for the City of Burien’s Utility Tax Relief Program for Low Income Households has begun, with an application deadline of Dec. 8th.
The program provides some relief to low income Burien residents on the local utility taxes paid for telephone (not including cellular), cable services, and gas/electricity provided by Puget Sound Energy.
Last year, 64 Burien households participated with an average reimbursement of $35.
The application and guidelines are available online at the City’s website or by calling Lori Fleming at (206) 248-5518.
The application is due by December 8, 2009, and an application is also available in Spanish at www.burienwa.gov/espanol.
The Highline School District has been awarded $200,000 towards a five-year $1 million grant to expand community schools programs at Chinook and Cascade middle schools and establish programs at Sylvester and Pacific middle schools.
The grant is funded by The Seattle Foundation and the Raikes Foundation.
According to a press release:
Highline partners with the non-profit Community Schools Collaboration to provide academic and enrichment programs to students after school, as well as other support services to student and their families. The partnership will use the grant funds to create a support system that will help students achieve their maximum potential in school, work and life, including programs that ease the elementary school-to-middle school and middle school-to-high school transitions.
“This initiative helps schools connect to nonprofits and other neighborhood resources in ways that really make a difference for middle-schoolers in our community,” said Michael Brown, vice president of community leadership at The Seattle Foundation.
“We are grateful for the Seattle Foundation’s investment in Highline and the prospect of a long-term partnership,” said John Welch, superintendent of Highline Public Schools. “Thanks to the Foundation’s funding, many of our students will benefit from academic support and enrichment programs that will effectively extend their school day and their opportunities for learning.”
The Seattle Foundation is the oldest and largest community foundation in the region. It’s mission is create a healthy community through engaged philanthropy, community knowledge and leadership.
The Raikes Foundation is a private family foundation focused on support for young adolescents so that they can grow up to be healthy, contributing members of society.
More information on the Highline School District available at their website.
The City of Burien has been awarded a $117,600 grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology for its Shoreline Master Program.
This grant is part of a $6.3 million award to 70 Puget Sound communities, and is meant to modernize local shoreline regulations.
The neighboring city of Des Moines was awarded $133,000.
“From the San Juans to the Sound’s southern tip, 120 of the 130 local governments in the Puget Sound region are still using largely the same shoreline master programs they adopted in the 1970s,” said Ecology’s Gordon White, who oversees statewide shorelands activities. “Yet in the past 30 years, the area’s population has ballooned by nearly 60 percent. If we hope to restore, protect and preserve the Sound, we’ve got to start by managing our shoreline areas wisely.”
According to the city’s website:
Under the state Shoreline Management Act, each city and county with “shorelines of the state” must adopt a Shoreline Master Program (SMP) that is based on state laws and rules while tailored to the specific geographic, economic and environmental needs of the community.
Burien must update its current SMP by December 1, 2009, and this grant will be used for this purpose. The City and its consultants are well into updating the master program with the aid of the City’s Shoreline Advisory Committee.
For more information on Burien’s Shoreline Master Program, click here.
To view a draft of the Shoreline Jurisdiction map, click here (PDF).
To view the full list of Department of Ecology grants, click here (PDF).
“I Am Highline,” a new film/DVD, has received a 4Culture Special Project grant to fund the development, filming and production of a promotional film about the Highline area.
The new high-definition film will be Directed by B-Town Blog Publisher Scott Schaefer, a three-time National Emmy Award winner for work on “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” an acclaimed kids’ educational show that aired on PBS. His other credits include “Penn & Teller: BS!,” “The Arsenio Hall Show,” “Almost Live!” and many others over a 23+ year career in media ranging from Seattle’s KING-TV to six years in Hollywood and much more.
Filming will be begin in the late summer and early fall and will feature diverse residents of Highline.
Schaefer will work with longtime collaborator, Director of Photography Mike Boydstun, a Grammy-nominated cinematographer on this Highline Historical Society project which will celebrate the ethnic composition of Highline. The film will focus on people representing 30 cultures that have moved here to live, work and raise their families, and will feature conversations in English and their own languages, talking about reasons for coming, and what living here means to them.
One early and important use of the footage will be to document these individuals and their contributions for the society’s collections. The DVD produced will be used for informational and fundraising purposes at area festivals and events. Another use will be to include pieces of these interviews that celebrate our local ethnic groups and their contribution to the region in the permanent exhibits of the new Highline Heritage Museum. And finally, parts of this film footage will be placed on the society’s website for everyone to see, and will provide the basis for expanding these stories into a documentary film that can be shown in the new museum theater as an introduction to Highline.
“The historical significance of this film is to continue documenting the heritage of the people of Highline,” said Cyndi Upthegrove, Executive Director of the Highline Historical Society. “We believe that we are among the first in Highline to provide this broad documentation, and we want to provide a baseline of information for the community to use for many purposes and for an extended period of time.”
The Highline Historical Society is a local non-profit organization undertaking a capital campaign to fund development of the Highline Heritage Museum on its site in Olde Burien. Community participation is welcomed and memberships are available.
For more information, check the Society’s web site at www.highlinehistory.org.
Nearly $12 million dollars will soon flow into White Center for schools, courtesy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the public-private partnership Thrive by Five.
The long-awaited investment was announced Wednesdday.
The Gates Foundation alone will spend $9 million this year — $7 million on a new early learning center and another $2 million on services. The initiative is one of the newest and biggest anti-poverty programs to hit the Seattle area in recent years, based on the idea of narrowing the skills gap between kindergartners from low-income and higher-income families.
Other programs have certainly tackled early learning, but the pilot project is striking for its ambition in such a small area. It will offer families support from the time a mother learns she is pregnant to the final step before kindergarten.
“It is kind of like we are a little fishbowl experiment,” said Jeri Finch, director of the Learning Way School and Day Care in White Center. “What we do will impact education for the whole state.”
That’s because White Center is one of only two neighborhoods that will initially receive millions of dollars under the initiative. The idea is to build two models — the other will be in Yakima — for educating infants, toddlers, preschoolers and prekindergarten students in the rest of the state.
After trailing much of the country in early learning programs, the state has been trying to catch up in recent years, and Wednesday’s announcement represents the most dramatic step of that effort to improve the state’s care and education of its youngest children.
For example, less than two years ago, Gov. Chris Gregoire created the Department of Early Learning and this year she asked the Legislature for $2 million to support Wednesday’s initiative.
With all of this new money and attention, Washington now sits among the more progressive states, according to Libby Doggett, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Pre-K Now.
“I think people are excited, but there is also some caution,” Doggett added, suggesting the state needs to improve its overall standards for early learning.
Another question is how much money will be consumed by administration and how much will go directly to help families.
Wednesday’s announcement is actually the result of more than a year of meetings among neighborhood groups, providers, nurses, public officials and staff from Thrive by Five and the Gates Foundation.
Later this year, construction crews plan to break ground on the 30,000-square-foot Greenbridge Early Learning Center, which will have two Head Start programs, parenting classrooms, teacher-training rooms, play groups, community dinners and English classes.The center is slated to open next year.
The initiative, though, will also spend money reaching out to families in their homes, paying for prenatal care, doulas who speak Somali, Spanish, Mandarin and Vietnamese to help with childbirth and for home visits by nurses and teachers. “They tell us what will best support them, and we want to give them a menu of choices, not a one size fits all,” said John Bancroft, who oversees the development of the new learning site.
The money won’t stop flowing after this year. Overall, the Gates Foundation has committed to spending $90 million on early education in Washington state over 10 years, and some of that money is sure to land in White Center.
Separately, Thrive by Five plans to use federal and state money, private donations and parenting fees to pay for its future work, with a goal of creating a self-sustaining model for children from infancy to age 5 similar to the existing K-12 school network.
In White Center, though, the greatest need may be the most simple: more spots at quality child care centers.
For example, the founders of the Learning Way School recently bought a neighboring house in the hopes of meeting growing demand. All this new grant money will help the school with staff training, and perhaps support more slots to move families off the waiting list.
In 2008, the initiative will create 32 new slots for babies and toddlers, though at the new learning hub, not at private providers.
“I think it is going to allow some of us a little breathing room” financially, the school’s director Finch said.
In the last few years, research has piled up confirming that preschool and early education matter. Studies have linked top quality child care to lower incarceration rates, higher home ownership and lower drug use.
Basically, the research argues that $1 invested in child care now saves society more than $1 later in that child’s life.
“We know that the first five years are critically important in shaping the rest of the life of this child,” said Graciela Italiano-Thomas, head of Thrive by Five.
Now the hard work begins: building a $13 million center, spreading support to a community that is home to more than 30 languages, getting the 3,000 kids from newborns to 5-year-olds in White Center ready for kindergarten, and proving what works.
Program planners already have asked one critical group what works.
“It is the first time anyone asked our opinion,” said Finch, who has worked in child care for the last quarter century.
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The Highline School District has received a $600,000 grant to help immigrant students and their families at three elementary schools: White Center Heights, Beverly Park and Mount View.
At White Center Heights, for example, parents can come to school three mornings a week, where they attend English-language classes, spend time in their child’s class, learn what’s happening at school and receive parenting tips.
The program is limited to families with students in kindergarten through third grade.
Highline is one of five school districts to receive grants this year.
The program is funded by Toyota and coordinated by the National Center for Family Literacy.
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