Washington Voices

This winter, they shoveled snow from rooftops vulnerable to collapse. They cleared sidewalks for elderly and homebound residents and dug out schools and community centers. This is the same bunch that stacks fallen trees, sets up for Hoopfest and picks up trash after baseball games. But inmate work crews shouldn’t expect praise for good deeds anytime soon. They’re just doing something useful while doing their time.

In the days of dismal budget news, there’s a bright spot at East Valley Middle School and four other local middle schools. The schools all qualified for a 21st Century Grant from the U.S. Department of Education that pays for tutoring and after-school activities. “This has been a tremendous community builder for us,” said East Valley Principal Mark Purvine.

The walls in Lee McLeron’s South Hill home are covered with framed needlework – her own creations, products of a skill she learned at the tender age of 4. “I lived with my Scottish grandmother,” she recalled. “After nap, you had tea and then you worked.” Her grandmother taught her to darn, “but I flunked tatting,” she said with a smile. However, she felt at home with needle and thread in her hands, and needlework became a lifelong passion. In the early 1990s, she grew intrigued with the ancient art of Japanese silk embroidery. Though the craft has a more than 1,000-year history, it was fairly new to the Western world at the time.

Work began this week on a project to give Valley Mission Park a new shelter, playground equipment and other amenities to go with the new beachlike swimming pool that will open in June. The $156,173 facelift is in addition to a $2.75 million project to replace the Valley Mission, Terrace View and Park Road pools. But the projects are color-coordinated.

Cheney Middle School fitness teacher Selinda Riggs is busy making fitness fun for her students, and she recently received a $500 grant in order to make fitness assessment fun, too. “We wanted it to be exciting and not boring,” Riggs said. The school knew that its students needed to complete content-based performance assessments, sort of the fitness version of the WASL, and it wanted to make it fun for the kids.