For the Bellevue School District’s high schools, last year’s biggest news items were the national rankings by Newsweek and US News that put every BSD high school in the top 100 nationwide, and, by different measure, both Interlake and International in the top 10. For BSD students, the last two weeks were the climax of the academic year — AP and IB testing.
Medina’s former police chief, Jeffrey Chen, spoke publicly Thursday for the first time since he was fired in April.
Chen was terminated on April 27 under accusations of misuse of company e-mail, destroying public records, and improper use of city resources. He had not previously discussed his case publicly, although he released a 51-page rebuttal of the investigation’s findings.
Consider this vision of the future: you’re using a dial to scroll through a list of channels on your TV, and you’re feeling a slight bump every time you move down the list. You turn it off, and then take apart your remote (why not?) piece by piece, looking for the battery. But wait, – there is none. Akash Badshah, in essence, made that.
Interlake took second place after tying with Lakeside at 21 points from 25 matches (in chess, a win nets one point, a draw half a point, and a loss zero). Newport High School’s team took 7th with 14 points, followed by Interlake’s B team and Bellevue High School at 14th and 15th, respectively, out of 23 teams.
Goodwill’s brand, given its long history, often carries a mild connotation of used and dingy.
That stigma, though, is patently untrue in Bellevue.
“This is not your mother’s Goodwill,” said Bellevue store manager, Gary Foy. “It looks like a place where people want to shop.”
Nothing drives that point home more than Goodwill’s Bellevue Designer Label Sale, held May 1-2. Brand-name items typically priced upwards of one or two hundred dollars wore refreshing Goodwill price tags: Hugo Boss suits for $30, Coach and Gucci handbags as inexpensive as street-vendor knockoffs, and Seven jeans dropped from $129 to $25. And these deals were the rule, not the exceptions.
Along with another Goodwill “fashionista,” Foy tries to set the store’s prices at “what we would buy [the clothes] for,” he said.
Customers seemed to agree with the prices; during peak hours, shoppers found themselves elbow to elbow. In the sale’s second year, Bellevue Goodwill brought out an expanded sale floor and over 10,000 items, all donated, with which they kept the racks constantly replenished.
In addition, the second year brought a much more comprehensive stock.
“This year, we have head-to-toe shopping,” said Foy, pointing out shoe racks, hat stands, and rows of belts and ties.
The idea for the sale, he continued, came from the fact that “we just had so many designer labels.” For that, he repeated often, “thank you to our donors!”
Both first-time shoppers and regulars were out en masse. Some shoppers were too busy shopping to talk – and who can blame them? – while others expressed an affection for the store and a pleasure with the prices.
“I like it here,” concluded one regular simply; “the clothes are great, the prices are great,” reasoned another.
Goodwill’s normal operations, though, weren’t lost amid the din. Behind and around the majority of the shoppers were a significant number checking out the rest of Goodwill’s stock – books, furniture, and vintage clothing – and every now and again, loudspeakers reminded customers that their dollars bought more than clothes; one hundred percent of the proceeds from the event, just as with all of Goodwill’s sales, went towards Goodwill’s free job training and education programs.
Goodwill offers classes such as ESL, computer skills, and so on to teach disadvantaged job hunters basic skills they need in the market. In the North Puget Sound, “we’ve helped over 4,000 people in the last year,” said Foy.
Bellevue Goodwill unloaded a significant portion of their designer stock over the course of the two days – figures aren’t yet available, but the eye test boded well for the sale’s prospects
Shoppers who missed the sale needn’t fret. Designer labels are scattered throughout Goodwill’s racks every day, all year long.
Derek Tsang is an intern at the Bellevue Reporter. He attends Interlake High School.
Interlake High School’s Saints Robotics designed their robot to whir from side to side, grabbing oddly shaped rings on command with a pneumatic arm and hanging them almost a dozen feet in the air. They did so only with sanctioned parts, and with minimal help from mentors.
And they did it better than almost everybody else.
When four generations of education converge, only good things can happen.
In celebration of Read Across America day March 3, Interlake High School teachers and Seattle University graduate students led about 300 Interlake students in an effort to match every student at Sherwood Forest Elementary with a high school reading buddy for a short session.
Towards the end of the Fifth Grade Lottery, one of the volunteers slipped up while reading a number. She called out “Four zero eight” instead of 480. If it had been a few hundred numbers earlier, it might have mattered. Luckily, it didn’t. Bellevue’s International School took the first step toward its next crop of students at their Feb. 16 Fifth Grade Lottery. The lottery narrowed down a record 591 applicants to a fortunate 81.
Barefoot Ted McDonald, a 46-year-old Seattle resident, qualified for the Boston Marathon just two years after picking up running. Living up to his name and cementing his reputation, he did it barefoot. But that’s hardly the most interesting thing about him.
Bold, bald, with a tribal monkey medallion hanging around his neck and a scattered entrepreneur past, Barefoot Ted teaches running technique, preaches running philosophy, and organizes and participates in long-distance runs worldwide. Now, along with Dan Fairbank, McDonald is the cofounder of the new Born to Run store in downtown Bellevue.
Every Friday, against the backdrop of evening quiet, the Highland Community Center is filled with an irregular cadence. As wood hits wood and bare feet stomp the ground, the Bellevue Kendo Club’s members shout in with every strike, “kiai!”
Are you an average driver? If so, you spend two weeks out of the year cooped up in your car, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. For those who prefer not to whittle away the hours jamming to NPR on the 520 bridge, it’s safe to say that they’d like to see that number go down.
The Bellevue Hyatt played host to Junior State of America’s Fall State Convention for the Pacific Northwest where the participants – all students – played politics,
Newport students held a break-dancing battle on fundraising on Nov. 5, raising more than $6,000 as part of a greater campaign.
It almost goes without saying that a substantial number of people work because they have to, not because they want…
The Hamomi Children’s Center in Nairobi, Kenya, supports over 120 orphaned children with education and other basic necessities. Helping to do this is a group of volunteers on the Eastside who coordinate fundraising and long-term planning.
Pop rock band treats school to musical assembly
‘Tis the season to be jolly and if Nintendo has its way, to be jolly playing its video games. Nintendo has a good number of big-name games on the shelves or on the way this season, and I had the opportunity to play several of the new games at a Nintendo trailer at the Redmond Town Center. I’ll break them down one by one.
We all have some concept of them – huddled over papers, calculators and pens, with glasses or with shaggy hair, negligently dressed. Matheletes.
In the spirit of Halloween, the Bellevue Youth Theater is putting on on their original production “Dracula” from Nov. 5-7.
