BREAKING NEWS :

The Renton School District plans to open two more Emotional/Behavioral Disorder (EBD) classes within comprehensive schools next year with soft openings.

Black River High School has two EBD classes, totaling about 20 students. Those classes will be closed along with the school come summer.

The district now plans to open classes at Lindbergh High School and Nelsen Middle School, said Rebecca Lockhart, director of special education services, at a Renton School Board study session Wednesday.

The idea with Lindbergh and Nelsen is to keep the classes as close to the comprehensive schools as possible to make moving out of the program easier, she said.

The EBD programs are expensive, costing about $32,000 per student annually, she said.

A regular student costs about $5,000 annually.

It wasn’t made known whether the 20 students at Black River would be transferred into the Lindbergh program, but it was said that the classes will start small. A full EBD class has 10-12 students, that ratio is smaller at Renton Academy.

Currently Renton Academy has the largest concentration of EBD students. It opened in the 2006-07 school year with 28 students and four sessions, now it has about 53 and six sessions.

The Academy was opened to save the cost of transporting students outside of the district for EBD classes.

It was also announced at the meeting that next year the whole district will all adopt the ReEd program for EBD students, after a successful run at the Renton Academy. About 60 teachers will receive training, Lockhart said.

(EBD is an academic term that works as an umbrella for several different disorders. Students with it may have anything from development disorders like autism to something like ADHD.)

I attended the Renton School Board meeting last night to check in on the directors, when I was surprised to find a cafeteria packed with parents supporting their students’ band and orchestra programs.
The band teacher did a particularly impressive job with the brass and woodwind students. Below are some pictures.

Left: seventh-grader David Grieve. Right: Wife Shami and David Grieve now live in Marion Indiana.

A Midwest pastor sent the Renton School District a letter of confession and a $100 check of contrition for stealing food from a student store when he was a seventh-grader at Nelsen Middle School.

In 1988, David Grieve was navigating life as a bespectacled preteen and trying to fit in with the cool kids.
That year Grieve got his big chance: he was assigned to the student store, selling food and school supplies to students during the school day.
The big-selling items at the store were beef jerky and pepperoni sticks. His adviser instructed him and others that if any food items fell on the floor, they were to be tossed out.
The boys soon began to crave the pepperoni sticks and eventually succumbed to the allure of meaty goods. They began eating the food, claiming that the jerky and pepperoni would mysteriously and without help unwrap and fall to the ground. The boys also started to pocket some of the money from sales.
Now, fast-forward more than 20 years. Grieve has moved to the Midwest and become a pastor at New Life
Community Church in Marion, Indiana.
Recently, while talking to fellow church members about having a clear conscience with God, Grieve remembered his time in the student store at Nelsen Middle School and all of the food he and the cool kids consumed, along with the change they pocketed.
Guided by faith, he wrote a letter of contrition to the staff at Nelsen, confessing his transgressions. To make amends, he also included a check for $100 to replace the lost income.
Grieve told the district he now feels better after confessing his antics. Even more though, he says, it was the right thing to do. He learned to practice what he preaches.

There were three incidences were Renton students were arrested in the past two weeks.
A Renton High School Freshman was charged with second and third degree assault after beating up a bus driver yesterday.
Then we found out Jan. 23 that three Liberty High School students (in the Issaquah School District) were arrested for possessing marijuana.
Today we reported that a Nelsen Middle School student was arrested for selling marijuana to four other students.

It’s unusual for both school districts to catch students selling pot on campus.

Putting together the Renton police blotter each week, I can say youth committing serious crime in Renton is far from unusual. However, crime isn’t often this heavily connected with the teens’ schools.

In both cases, law enforcement commended the school administrators for their investigations.

Still, it’s been a bad couple of weeks for Renton area youth.

The Benson Hill Fred Meyer’s store plans to donate $2,800 to Nelsen Middle School Jan. 27.
The Money comes from the 1 percent the store receives when it sells a winning lottery ticket.
In late January, a customer purchased a lottery ticket and won $280,000.
The state lottery provides stores that sell winning lottery tickets with one percent of the winnings, said Bettina Sopke with human resources.
It’s the company policy to donate that money to a youth or hunger organization, she said. “For us giving back into the community is a big part about how we do business.”
Sopke receives several requests for donations, but remembered a persistent parent with the PTSA from Nelsen Middle School, and decided to give the money to the school.
A check will be awarded at a staff meeting Wednesday, Jan. 27 at the school library.