Each week on Sound Effect we invite a panel a journalists to talk about local stories they feel didn't get sufficient attention.
Joining host Gabriel Spitzer this week are Sarah Anne Lloyd of Seattlish, Ansel Herz of The Stranger and Aaron Burkhalter of Real Change.
Lloyd said a Washington State Supreme Court decision about the future of charter schools seems to have gotten lost amid the hubbub of the Seattle schools strike.
"It struck down many parts of the charter school law we voted in a few years back," Lloyd said. "Most notably, the state funding for charter schools."
Lloyd said the decision forces existing charter school into becoming private schools if they want to keep operating -- effectively ending charter schools as they currently exist in Washington.
The effect of the decision has been a national story, she said, that has received more coverage in the New York Timesthan in Seattle.
Reaction from the groups affected by the decision is, she said, "the one thing I'm not seeing in pretty much everyone's reporting on this."
Burkhalter said also getting scant attention are school funding issues as they relate to homeless students and students in foster care. He said studies show that kids without a permanent homemove from school to school and this has a dramatic effect on the student's quality of education and likelihood of success later in life.
"The more a student moves the less likely they are going to succeed in school," he said. State lawmakers tried to address the issue in this year's legislative session, he said, by linking housing funding to educational stability for homeless and foster children and teens.
On a small scale, it has proven effective in Tacomaand in King County where school districts and housing authorities and created stable "neighborhoods" of homeless and foster kids so they don't have to move as much. The state legislation would have expanded the approach across Washington, he said.
"It just didn't get very far," he said. " I think (the issue) is really important when you consider that we have 30,000 homeless students in the schools and 9,000 foster kids."
Herz said the ongoing housing affordability crisis, specifically Seattle Mayor Ed Murray's housing plan, warrants ongoing coverage. "Rents are skyrocketing, people are being displaced week in and week out," he said.
One year ago, the mayor formed a committee called the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda. The group -- comprised of developers, housing advocates and city officials -- met behind closed doors and hatched an agreement that would require developers to include a small percentage affordable housing in every new housing development.
But that HALA agreement seems to be unraveling, Herz said. "There are now fracture emerging in this coalition."
Smaller developers, Herz said, say they were left out of the discussions. Requiring that a major developer build a percentage of affordable housing is pretty different math than forcing the same requirement on a small company building a handful of townhomes or mid-rise buildings.
If the small developers sue, the lawsuit could scuttle or delay the whole HALA agreement. "The point is that it only takes one lawsuit to hold up this whole process," he said.
