Sara Leaming

Colleen Combs started teaching Love and Logic classes to Spokane area parents 11 years ago. "Parents were coming to me with the same concerns over and over again," said Combs, a counselor at Spokane's Arlington Elementary School. "They had questions and frustrations about parenting."

A former Central Valley board member says the district is being dishonest with its patrons about the looming space issue in the school district. There is no "housing crisis," says Craig Holmes, who stepped down from the five-member school board in 2005.

While Spokane Public Schools struggles to pay for extra-curricular sports and librarians, one small school district in Eastern Washington provides laptop computers for every student. That same district, the Almira School District in Lincoln County, enjoys a student-to-teacher ratio of 5-to-1; Spokane class sizes average more than 16 students per teacher.

The Mead High School Jazz 1 Ensemble has been invited to compete in Essentially Ellington, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival in New York City. The 21-member jazz band is one of 15 selected out of 900 high school jazz bands to compete in the event May 4-6, presented by "Jazz at Lincoln Center."

Holmes Elementary School counselor Stephanie Leek remembers the first time she had to report a case of child sexual abuse. A mother had found her teenage son having sex with a child from the Spokane school.

Parent Bryce Hatch approached a mob of people while waiting for his turn Monday to grill Superintendent Brian Benzel about school budget cuts. "I wouldn't want that guy's job," Hatch said while waiting.

Washington students are more likely to feel unsafe at school but far less likely to smoke than in the past, according to a comprehensive statewide survey. The statistics are based on hundreds of questions answered by teens for the Washington State Department of Health's 2006 Healthy Youth Survey.

Tyler Wallace, an 11th-grade student at Ferris High School, has won the first-round grand prize in the online contest Step into German. Wallace answered questions about music in Germany online, and now he, his best friend and a chaperone will fly to Denver to meet the German hip-hop artist Clueso.

Like a lot of high school students, Brittinay Bell worries about bullies. She worries about the WASL. She worries about drugs. But the Rogers High School junior doesn't worry about street gangs.

Three Lewis and Clark High School Students have been accepted to the Washington Aerospace Scholars program. The program, for high school juniors, is a statewide online learning experience followed by a six-day residential summer internship for select students at The Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Students displaced by the possible closure of Pratt Elementary School likely would be sent to Sheridan and Lincoln Heights elementary schools, according to a study released by the school district last week. More than 160 Pratt students would be relocated to Lincoln Heights, and more than 50 students would be sent to Sheridan, according to a study of the impact of the possible closure of the school presented to Spokane school board members.

Some freshmen could be without sports teams, elementary libraries may be staffed only part time and classrooms may not be cleaned every day. Those are just a few of the possibilities the Spokane Public Schools board is considering to fill a projected budget gap next year.

It's time for Washington students to sharpen their pencils. On Monday the state's 10th-graders will begin taking the reading and writing portions of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, or WASL. The test will continue through March 20. The math and science exams are scheduled for April 17-20 this year.

The Spokane Public Schools Board of Directors isn't wasting any time finding a temporary replacement for Superintendent Brian Benzel. The five-member board voted Wednesday to select an interim superintendent to fill the top job. The board will begin taking letters of interest immediately and may begin interviews as early as March 12.