The big cheese at Tacoma Public Schools is one smart cookie. Once in a while, he might outsmart himself.
When he closed Wainwright Elementary School for budget reasons this year, Superintendent Art Jarvis stopped the clock on its future. As if that weren't a big enough trick, he recently found a way to blot out part of its past.
He bent the space-time continuum, a risky move that brings to mind Marty McFly and friends in the "Back to the Future" movies.
Except Doc Jarvis, unlike Doc Brown, didn't need a flux capacitor or a souped-up DeLorean.
Allow us to explain.
The mystery of the vanishing school: Last month, a Redmond-based think tank, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, named its annual state Schools of Distinction.
To make the elite list, a school must record improving test scores over a five-year period. This year, four Tacoma campuses fit the bill: Wilson High, Lowell Elementary, Washington-Hoyt Elementary and – drumroll, please – Wainwright, the jewel of Fircrest.
School boosters busted their buttons with pride when word started circulating. The Tacoma Weekly printed an Oct. 27 item mentioning all four schools after receiving what turned out to be a premature press release issued by a regional education group.
The TNT missed that but later received a different press release from Tacoma Public Schools. Based on that, the paper published a news brief on Nov. 7 with the names of only three Tacoma schools.
Guess who was missing?
When a flood of readers (OK, two) called to ask why we'd snubbed Wainwright, our sniffer started twitching.
You can't say "Schools of Distinction" without "Stink," and suddenly this thing smelled funkier than Rhubarb's locker at Cheney Stadium.
Wainwronged: As it turns out, the Center for Educational Effectiveness each year gives a preliminary copy of its list to every school district that has winners. The idea is to allow local officials to screen it, since they have the inside scoop about individual schools.
On the rare occasion a district vetoes a school, the think tank removes it from the list – no questions asked.
That's how Super Art swooped in.
The Tacoma district's spokesman confirmed to us that Jarvis contacted the think tank to say Wainwright no longer exists. Therefore, A.J. said, it wouldn't be appropriate to list it among the honorees.
Those five years of improving test scores? Poof, it's like they never happened.
Natch, Wainwright teachers and students might feel they were denied one last curtain call.
Next time, Doc Jarvis – or his replacement, Doc Santorno – should heed the words of Doc Brown from "Back to the Future."
Messing around with the past might cause a chain reaction that could annihilate the universe, he warned. "Granted, that's the worst-case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy."
This time, the damage could be even more localized than that.
Like, say, school morale.
They grow up so fast: Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium this week sent Taji and Lisu, one of its mating pairs of clouded leopard cubs, to the Denver Zoo to get their groove on. The last pair are destined for Florida in a few weeks.
Maybe the zoobahs heard our prudish pleas to make Point D less of red-light district of underage feline seduction, walrus harems and the like.
Let's see, leopard sex and Denver … Does that mean Taji and Lisu will become members of the mile high club?
Egg on our Schnoz: Two weeks ago, we poked CNBC for ignoring Tacoma and reporting that Metronome Coffee, at North Union and Sixth avenues, was "very near Seattle." We chalked it up to a rounding error committed by a clueless national cable network.
Karla Cody of Spanaway called us out.
"I'm sure the good folks at Metronome Coffee appreciate the attempt to give their establishment that certain cachet that ‘North Tacoma' addresses garner. But alas, they are on the southeast corner of Sixth and Union, which gives them a (sorry folks) South End designation.
"Is this what you would call a rounding error, too?"
Touché, Karla. We earned that.
In hindsight, we should've given the location as "very, very near North Tacoma."
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