North Notes
Spokane-North Rotary Club Bulletin
April 18, 2022
Calendar:
April 25: Rotary lunch, Noon at the Bark. Topic: Results of club survey and board for 2022-23.
Happy Buck$:
Sandy Fink contributed $1 for having an April birthday.
Steve Bergman added $1 because he “left Bill Simer hanging” for meeting duties the week before.
Ron Noble was happy “because I’m glad I’m here.”
John Mailliard paid to note April anniversary dates – the 24th, when he joined the FBI and the 31st, when he retired from the FBI (many years later).
Briefly:
Club member donations reached $11,000 for the Rotary year toward the $15,000 goal to support projects at Holmes Elementary School and other efforts.
Treasurer Bill Simer, displaying the continued growth on a large fiscal thermometer, said that even as we near the target, it is equally important that all members contribute something.
Now a retired accountant and financial guru, it was nice to have Bill at a “tax day” meeting, after many years of having to miss club meetings because of mid-April IRS deadlines.
Lumen is a light at the end of a learning path
Basically, Lumen High School provides a safety net for kids with their own kids.
Lumen, named for “light,” is a public charter school for high school students who need help raising their own babies and tots.
Shauna Edwards, founder and executive director,
and
Melissa Pettey, school principal,
shared Lumen’s story at the club luncheon April 18.
The downtown school now has 40 high school students, including 10 teen boys, and operates out of the Lerner Building at 718 W. Riverside.
That location, adjacent to the central bus depot, is important because many of Lumen’s students bring their youngsters on the bus to attend school, Edwards said.
In 2016 Edwards connected with retired West Valley superintendent Gene Sementi to discuss how students with their own kids could continue high school. Plans evolved to launch in 2019, “but then Covid happened,” Edwards said. That delayed the starting date until last fall.
A Spokesman-Review story on Lumen last year noted that teens younger than 18 years old with kids get a diploma just 38 percent of the time. Another 19 percent eventually get a GED.
Edwards worked with Mike Dunn, superintendent of Northeast Washington Education Service District 101 to help clear the hurdles for accreditation of the program. Dunn, a former Mead administrator and Cheney District Superintendent, was a former Spokane-North Rotary club member.
Pettey said the public charter path “is our own independent school district. We’re like a Washtucna, a small district which hires its own teachers.” Students from all of Spokane County can enroll.
Lumen’s plan, tied in with the national Communities In Schools program, emphasizes assessment, planning, student support, monitoring and evaluation. The school needs to meet the requirements of all standard levels.
Pettey, who has worked more than 20 years in classrooms, said, “We want the working teens to have normal experiences, with every day, full-day school and other things, like a prom.”
Lumen teachers cover wide curricula. For example, a math teacher deals with everything from basic arithmetic to calculus.
One difference, is a daily hour of parenting classes for the teens.
“Our kids are enterprising, and they are exceptional,” Pettey said.
Edwards said Lumen would like to have 60 students in its ranks and could expand to 75 in its current facilities.
The Lumen values are “belonging, flexibility, empowerment, discovery and tenacity.
As Edwards said, “At LHS you don’t have to choose between being a parent and being a student; you can do both.”
Bulletin editors: Chuck Rehberg and Sandy Fink