If you've been paying attention, you've probably heard about calls to end the "school to prison pipeline." In Seattle, some of the loudest advocates for shutting down this pipeline have focused their energies on fighting voter-approved improvements to the city's dilapidated juvenile detention center. Many of these activists don't believe juvies should exist, period. (Local judges, among others, say those activists are not being realistic.)

But what happens when the African-American principal of one of the most diverse high schools in the city tries to come at the problem from a different direction? Can an earlier stop on the pipeline—a public high school—be led in a way that reverses the trend?

Over the weekend, Claudia Rowe published a fascinating profile of Garfield High School principal Ted Howard that explores this and many other questions. The complex answers Rowe finds are a nice antidote to the absolutist catch-phrases that often get tossed around when this issue is discussed.

They're not exactly soothing answers. But they do begin to show the challenge in its fullness, through the compelling path of one man who's been trying to do something at Garfield High—and who has found himself doing a lot of failing and learning along the way.

(Bonus for close followers of the local juvie debate: an appearance by King County Superior Court Presiding Judge Susan Craighead, who says something that might scramble what you've heard about her and the pipeline.)