Support comes from Washington's National Park Fund, fundraising partner to Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic National Parks.

With donor support, WNPF funds research, youth and volunteer programs, and projects designed to help keep parks strong and vital now and for the future.

More information at WNPF.org.

These days, there's so much news. It can be hard to keep up with what it all means for you, your family, and your community.

The Consider This podcast from NPR features our award-winning journalism.

Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a news story and provide the context and analysis that

helps you make sense of the news. We get behind the headlines. We get to the truth. Listen to the

Consider This podcast from NPR. Good afternoon from the KUOW Newsroom.

This is Seattle now.

I'm Paige Browning.

The morning started with a solar eclipse in the southern hemisphere, and tonight begins Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

We have got a packed local news show for you today, including it's well-past time to clean up Puget Sound. We check in

on the polluted estuary. That's in a few minutes. But first, here are today's top stories

from our region. It's Wednesday, October 2nd. There's a new plan for how many schools

could close in Seattle next year.

Five schools instead of 21.

Seattle School Board members were among those who pushed back against the larger school cuts.

Board member Gina Topp says she's happy the district listened to community concerns and scaled back to five.

I think that trying to close 20 schools all at once

left a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of chaos, and it makes a lot more sense to do a scaled

back approach and make sure that we get this right. School board members had questioned whether

widespread closures were feasible in such a short time, but Topp also acknowledges fewer closures mean more and deeper financial cuts.

...