Jonathan Martin

Fears about infected air in the Shadle Park High School gymnasium sparked an emergency visit by top school district officials Monday. They promised a thorough investigation but urged parents, students and faculty not to panic.

Linda Sheridan coaches volleyball in the Shadle Park High School gymnasium during the fall of 1994. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

F. Scott Fitzgerald has nothing on Farwell Elementary third-grader Ashley Connell. Fitzgerald's work, after all, didn't see the light of press until he was of legal drinking age. Nine-year-old Connell can't legally swear.

Students at Shiloh Hills Elementary share breakfast with Mayor Jack Geraghty who dropped by in observance of National School Breakfast week. Photo by Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review

Earl Atkinson Family photo

A crew of car stereo thieves ripped off another band of thieves last week before police arrested both groups. Five of the seven arrested March 6 were North Side juveniles. Authorities released one 18-year-old man, but another, Matthew Lawrence, 18, is awaiting an arraignment date for charges of possession of stolen items.

Dan Bonogofski, left, his daughter, Susan McLellan, and son-in-law, Jason McLellan, train for the 100th Boston Marathon. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

News flashed in Jim Burbo's sixth-grade class last Friday: Ulysses needed help of heroic proportions. The tired, old iguana in teacher Jim Burbo's Meadow Ridge Elementary classroom looked like he had gone to sleep mid-bath, his green head submerged under water. The students ran for help, right to office aide Liz Fish. Fish, trained in CPR, didn't hesitate. She told the students to sit down, be quiet, and tried to remember her TV. "I saw this on 'Rescue 911,"' she said to herself.

Deer Park parents who let their children roam city streets at night will soon be getting hit in the pocketbook. "We wanted to put the responsibility back where it belongs - on the parents," said Mayor Bob Dano. At a meeting last month the Deer Park City Council approved a teen curfew ordinance that prohibits youths 17 and younger from being in public after 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and after midnight Friday and Saturday.

Like some of their peers preparing for basketball tournaments, a handful of Rogers High School students are sweating out the few days before the Big Competition. Junior Erik Reed has been there before - three times in fact. "Everybody gets nervous before a competition," said Reed. "Rogers is going to win."

1. Mead Educational Alternative Division school instructor Barbara Peterson shares a laugh with student Sam Rasmussen. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review 2. Sunny Merritt Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review 3. Abe Woods and Gayle Wyatt, hugging, participate in an exercise at M.E.A.D., where two people pair up and meet other new or unfamiliar students. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

A silver dollar led police to a trio of youths who they suspect burglarized dozens of West Central homes. The three boys - a 14-year-old and two 15-year-olds - have all pleaded guilty to 10 counts of burglary and are being held in Spokane's juvenile detention center. A sentencing date has not yet been set. Spokane police detective Chuck Reisenauer, who investigates burglaries in the West Central and Shadle Park neighborhoods, said there is no way of knowing how many burglaries the youths committed. But he believes they committed more than just those for which they were charged.

1. Riverside High senior Ryan Reedy releases a helium balloon like one he sent up as a first-grader. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review 2. Mary Dobrocane 3. Ryan Reedy holds a balloon like the one he released and Mary Dobrocane found 12 years ago. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

Virginia Hansen is 80 years old today. Hansen is holding a panel of pictures of herself taken for her second leap year birthday. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

Shadle Park junior Khoi Nguyen cruised the Internet in his advanced computer class, searching for inspiration on a New Jersey high school page and another for the Spokane Symphony. The class, one of a few in the area that uses the Internet daily, teaches students programming for the World Wide Web, the global computer network of pictures and text.

For four terrible days, Renee Newberry worried that her 5-year-old daughter Chellsey would grow up in the gray vacuum of a coma. Chellsey was hit by a car last Thursday evening as she ran across Driscoll Boulevard. The accident cracked the girl's skull, broke four ribs, fractured her pelvis and left friends and family wondering if the Finch Elementary kindergartner would survive.

Lakeside High School principal Larry Guenther, far left, directs traffic in what used to be the counseling center at the school. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

The new county library in Deer Park will not be built for two years, but North Side residents will see some immediate improvements at existing county library branches as a result of the $7.66 million levy approved Feb. 6. Books battered and worn from heavy use will be replaced, and access to on-line information, including that on the Internet, will be expanded. The 65 percent approval margin for the library levy surprised many, including Jim Williams, who helped run the campaign. An identical levy was rejected in September.

Nathan Fewel has won his age division at the state high school chess championship every year since the seventh grade. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

"OK, here is how we are going to do it..." With the sound of hammers falling in the background, Dale Reuschlein and Jacy Todd leaned over the blueprints and rubbed their unwrinkled foreheads. While their fellow students at the Spokane Skills Center nailed down the flooring for a house, the two were running the calculations in their heads for necessary supports for the bay window.

A lump of asbestos that fell from ceiling panels of a north Spokane elementary school posed no health risk to students, health officials said Wednesday. But the incident last week at Madison Elementary outraged parents, who weren't advised of the problem until they asked about the "hazardous materials" tape across doors. "We have the right to know about the safety of our children," complained parent Carrie Miller.

1. North Central High School security guard Walt Pegram walks the school's halls during lunch hour Friday. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review 2. Walt Pegram, the security guard at North Central High School, talks to the school office through a hand microphone. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

They say murder is easier the second time. Just ask Andrew Rowles. "Everything was getting back at Trina," said Rowles, a North Central High School senior. "She stabbed me in the heart, so I had to do the same to her." For the second consecutive year, Rowles played the killer in North Central's production of "Garbanzo High School's Class of 1976 Class Reunion: a Murder Mystery." The play is interactive, with the audience trying to solve the crime by interacting with and interrogating the student actors.

Mead school district's new $23 million high school doesn't have any walls or students yet, but it does have a name - Mount Spokane-Mead High School. The Mead school board chose the name this week from dozens of suggestions given in a district-wide survey. The district got 650 responses from the 13,000 surveys mailed to Mead residents. Mount Spokane was the most popular suggestion. The board tacked on the district name to tell people statewide that the school was part of the solid Mead educational tradition, Ostlind said.