(Image: Alex Garland with permission)

The situation at Horace Mann isn’t exactly a stand-off but the tension has risen as supporters of the Africa Town Center for Education & Innovation put out a call Friday night for a community rally at the 23rd and Cherry school:

Seattle Police Department threatens raid of Horace Mann building today at 6pm. Stand in support of justice, equity and MORE for MANN. Bring your cameras.

As of Saturday night, police efforts to remove any people inside the Mann building had not taken place. Seattle City Light arrived at the scene Saturday — later, one person providing details via Twitter said generator power was now available.

Earlier, CDN reported on the ongoing tension around the situation for Seattle Public Schools which owns the building and plans a major renovation of the facility. Wednesday night, the school board voted to delay an action vote on the situation at the request of Superintendent Jose Banda.

Thursday, Banda again issued an order to vacate:

The groups in Horace Mann have been told to vacate multiple times since summer so renovations could begin to make way for a planned return of the Nova Alternative High School return next fall. While Seattle Schools has been mostly patient with the talks, there’s been a greater push for a solution as the construction schedule looms. The Seattle Times called More 4 Mann “squatters” and called for the groups to be removed from the building.

More 4 Mann, however, says it is doing much more than squatting in the building:

We want to continue to show the unified community of African-American parents, educators and students working together to take responsibility for the education of our children.

Now is the time to rectify the past inequities and ineffective methods to educate our children.

We will no longer accept and allow sub-standard resources, results, programs and policies directed to our young scholars.

A woman was found struck over the head and bleeding after an attempted car jacking in an International District restaurant’s parking lot Friday night. The incident was captured on surveillance video and a suspect familiar to police has been identified.

Police were called to the scene in the 1000 block of S. Jackson just after 5:30 PM Friday after a 911 caller reported there had been a struggle and a collision in the parking lot and a woman was bleeding from the head.

Police reviewed surveillance video and identified a known mentally ill man who frequents the area between the ID and 12th and Jackson and is often seen panhandling. The heavyset, near-200 pound Asian male shed his bloody jacket nearby. Police also found the club used in the attack at the scene.

An immediate search for the suspect came up empty.

Turns out Seattle Schools was listening when parents at Capitol Hill public school Stevens Elementary “strongly opposed” proposed attendance boundaries — the latest draft of the new attendance boundaries looks a lot like the old boundaries. You can see the updated map, below.

The new boundary plan will be presented to the School Board Wednesday afternoon in a session expected to be jam packed with public comment as neighborhood issues with the latest boundary proposal from across the city get worked out.

The same session will also include the board’s consideration of a proposal to provide district facilities to the Central District community groups that have taken over the Horace Mann school at 23rd and Cherry.

While the school district seems ready to meet the demands that Stevens attendance zone south of Madison be maintained, we haven’t yet heard back from officials about how maintaining the same borders will address overcrowding at the school.

In a letter sent to school families, members of the Stevens attendance committee said they “strongly oppose the proposed expansion of our boundaries to the north and east.” “These expansions would displace the south-of-Madison group of families and siblings that are already integral to our community and who bring Stevens much of its diversity, only to replace them with other families,” the letter read. “Our community does not welcome this solution, which does not appear to solve our capacity issue while negatively affecting diversity at Stevens.”

More on Wednesday’s board meeting and agenda here (PDF).

implementation maps.pdf

A battle over inequality and “sub-standard” resources that has a community group taking over a Central District schoolhouse slated for a significant construction project may finally have reached a point of solution. Wednesday night the Seattle School Board will consider and vote on a proposal that will give community groups currently in control of the district’s Horace Mann building at 23rd and Cherry access to Seattle Schools-funded portables on the Mann campus and rooms at another district facility.

In September, Seattle Public Schools told us it was working out a deal with the Central District community groups using the Horace Mann building. It’s November and the old school house lined up for a major renovation is still filled with community groups who said they’re not going anywhere — even if it puts a major wrinkle in the SPS plans to move programs there to make way for the $14.2 million project to rebuild Capitol Hill’s Meany Middle School.

The groups were told to vacate multiple times since summer so renovations could begin to make way for a planned return of the Nova Alternative High School return next fall, Central District News reports. Grassroots community group More 4 Mann continues to operate out of the building, according to CDN. The revelation prompted the Seattle Times to go on the offensive as the paper called More 4 Mann “squatters” and called for the groups to be removed from the building.

More 4 Mann, however, says it is doing much more than squatting in the building:

We want to continue to show the unified community of African-American parents, educators and students working together to take responsibility for the education of our children.

Now is the time to rectify the past inequities and ineffective methods to educate our children.

We will no longer accept and allow sub-standard resources, results, programs and policies directed to our young scholars.

Saturday, More 4 Mann scheduled an afternoon press conference “to announce the positive educational outcomes and programs that our community will offer and our exciting forthcoming partnership with Seattle Public Schools.”

The proposal to be considered by the board later this week would cost approximately $1,120, according to Seattle Schools staff.

The proposal also describes how the situation played out over the summer:

Seattle Police with the assistance of a K9 unit and King County Sheriff’s Guardian 1 helicopter pursued one burglary suspect who attempted a roof to roof escape after a caller reported a break-in underway in the 400 block of 21st Ave.

Just after 9 PM a 911 caller reported the sound of breaking glass at a 21st Ave house. Police responded and began chasing suspects through the area.

One suspect was taken into custody in an alley of E Alder.

Guardian 1 spotted a second suspect shortly thereafter on a roof of a nearby house.

“He’s [lying] on the roof next to the chimney,” the chopper’s unit reported via East Precinct radio.

The suspect proceeded to leap across the roof of multiple houses in the area as police on the ground pursued the man. After a warning from police, the suspect was removed from the roof and taken into custody, according to police radio.

A Seattle University student told police a male attacker pushed her to the ground and threatened to sexually assault her as she attempted to escape through campus early Saturday morning. A campus security bulletin about the 3:45 AM attack is below. The student told police she was followed from Pike/Pine by the aggressive male who grabbed her, threw her to the ground and threatened her with sexual assault if she didn’t hand over her phone. The student was able to break free and run away to call police. The suspect is described as a black male, 25 to 35 and was wearing a red jacket with gray stripes on the sleeves. According to SPD radio dispatches, the suspect was not immediately located. If you saw any of the incident or have information that may assist the investigation, call 911.

At approximately 3:45 am, a suspect assaulted, and then threatened to sexually assault a Seattle University student on the north side of Campion hall, in the planted area near James Street.  The student was able to break free from the suspect and was able to then notify the Seattle Police Department.  The suspect was described as having dark skin, was 25-35 years old, clean cut (no facial hair), and was approximately 5’9″-5’11″ tall, wearing a Red rain jacket with Grey stripes down the sleeves, and Blue jeans.

The suspect began following the victim at Broadway and Pine.  The suspect made several attempts to converse with victim who described telling the male to leave them alone and stop following. The victim then crossed Broadway to the east side of the street, and the suspect followed. The victim cut through the wooded area north of Campion Tower where they were they were grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground. The suspect told the victim to give them their phone, or they would be sexually assaulted. The victim was able to break free and run onto campus where they called the Seattle Police Department. The suspect was last seen running west on E. James Street towards Broadway. The Seattle Police and DPS searched the area, but the suspect was not located.

A CDN reader shares this picture and a note about the aftermath of an overnight two-vehicle collision that claimed the life of a woman near 23rd Ave S and S King Saturday:

…there was a bad crash on 23rd AVE S between King and Lane this morning. Here is a pic of the totaled Acura. Don’t know if there was a second car involved. Police and fire blocked off 2 streets from Jackson to Lane. Don’t know of any injuries but I cant imagine that the person(s) in the Acura escaped unscathed.

SPD reports that the driver initially fled the scene but was brought back to police by her mother. The 29-year-old has been booked for investigation of vehicular homicide and hit and run.

See something others should know about? Email Central District News.

• Boylston/Madison rent robbery: Police were called to a Central District residence Saturday night where a man told him he had been robbed of his rent money 90 minutes earlier while sitting in his vehicle in a parking lot at Boylston and E Madison around 4:30 PM:The victim told police his assailant ran from the scene westbound on Seneca. He described the attacker as a black male in his 30s, 5’11″ and wearing a red sweatshirt with white Nike logo on it along with dark pants and red shoes with white soles. The man told police he lost $411 cash in the robbery.
• 22/Union mugging: A female victim had her phone yanked from her hands in a street robbery last Saturday night just before 7 PM at 22nd and Union:
  
• SPD — First Hill shooting was robbery: Tuesday’s shooting inside a First Hill apartment near Harborview involved drugs and cash, SPD says the victim told arriving officers:The male victim suffered a non-life threatening gunshot wound to the shoulder in the incident that involved SPD searching the 300-unit building floor by floor and, for a time, unit by unit. No arrests have been announced.
• Car part ripoffs — This particular report comes from a reader who lives in the CD but we’ve heard about other incidents on and around the Hill — unfortunately, not much to do about preventing the crime. But at least you’ll know you have company. The incident below occurred on October 6th:
  

  Last night on the 25th block of Jefferson street (right next to the Garfield play field) my Catalytic Converter in my Toyota Tacoma was stolen. The catalytic converter is a vehicle emissions control device which converts toxic emissions into less harmful byproducts. I immediately reported it to the police and my insurance company. Then I decided to shop around for a muffler repair man. The repair man informed me that this is a pretty common occurrence. Every week or so, he gets a call from someone with very similar stories to mine. He also told me that most of these thieves strike very close to the previous site. He concluded from this that the thieves will scope out a car, steal a converter, and then the next week move a block or two away. I have very little faith that the police will be able to catch these perps, mainly because they work in the middle of the night, will be underneath your car so even if you do look out to check, they will be undetectable. They also don’t need to pop the hood, break windows, or break into the bed of the truck to steal what they want. The only way to keep these thieves away, would be to have a motion sensing alarm put on your car.