1. When he declared a state of emergency to spend more money on homelessness earlier this month ($5 million), mayor Ed Murray noted that 45 people had died on the streets this year.

On Tuesday night, speaking at a packed event sponsored by the homeless advocacy group All Home (formerly the Committee to End Homelessness), Murray updated that number, informing the crowd at Capitol Hill's schmancy Optimism Brewery that another homeless person died this week.

The night before, the SPD told Murray that another homeless man had died in Southeast Seattle's Cheasty greenbelt. Neighbors of the greenbelt reported that the man had not moved for 24 hours and notified the police.

2. Four hundred parents and kids will be in Olympia today asking legislators to keep their charter schools open; earlier this year the state supreme court overturned the 2012 voter-approved charter schools measure, I-1240, citing state law that says only schools under “the complete control” of school districts can receive state funding.

As Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson said, when he announced that he was asking the court to reconsider (yes, you can do that), “Regardless of one’s feelings about charter schools, the court’s reasoning…raises serious concerns about other important educational programs.”

Specifically, Ferguson was referring to tribal schools, running-start programs for low-income kids, and UW programs for advanced students.

Ferguson also had a solid dig at liberals (who are typically against charters), saying the court’s reasoning, that voters would have rejected I-1240 if it had known its funding source did not exist (because it is illegal) does not jibe with voters' approval of the union-backed measure to shrink class sizes, 2014’s I-1351, which definitely did not identify a funding source.

There are currently 1,100 kids enrolled in the state’s nine charters schools, which are located in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane; nearly two-thirds of the students are from low-income families and 70 percent are students of color.

Today’s protest features an outdoor classroom on the capitol campus where kids will learn how a bill becomes a law before they testify in front of a special senate committee on education funding and meet with legislators to ask them to fix funding guidelines so their schools can remain open. A handful of Democratic legislators have already announced they support the pro-charters effort: Seattle state representative Eric Pettigrew (D-37, Southeast Seattle), suburban Seattle state representative Judy Clibborn (D-41, Mercer Island), state representative Larry Springer (D-45, Kirkland), and state senators Mark Mullet (D-5, Issaquah), and Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens).

3. The Sound Transit board is set to name its new director today. Yesterday, the board’s search committee voted unanimously to recommend Peter Rogoff. Rogoff is currently the third ranking official at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Prior to that he was head of the Federal Transit Administration where he focused on funding regional transit systems.

According to excited transit nerds at King County, Rogoff also oversaw guideline changes that allowed more federal money to be spent on bike and pedestrian projects.