Education » News Lincoln County

Oregon legislative leadership: More $$ for schools, reduce the costs of PERS and the prison system.

Mar 042013

The Oregonian photo

Oregon legislative leaders and Governor Kitzhaber seem to agree that the state budget for the next two fiscal years should invest more revenues in K-12 education while reducing the costs of the state retirement system and for prisons. Oregon, like Washington and many other states around the country, have watched public investment in K-12, and even college level education shrink to some of the lowest levels per student in decades.

But any attempt to trim benefits for PERS retirees or start turning prison inmates free earlier than planned, will be strongly opposed by PERS advocates and others who believe, “You do the crime, you do the time.”

The story is in the Oregonian. Click here.

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Many jobs in Oregon go begging – shortage of health care, skilled trades and manufacturing employees

Education No Responses »

Mar 032013

Portland State University
Portland

With unemployment still hovering around 8% in the Beaver State, you’d think good jobs would be hard to find. Not so, according to the Editorial Board at the Oregonian. They’ve been poking around and discovered that there are plenty of openings in health care, skilled trades and manufacturing. But companies can’t find enough workers. Here’s the story. Click here.

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In Siletz, get good grades – Hit the buffet!

Education, Siletz No Responses »

Feb 272013

Siletz High School students have been honored at an assembly in the gymnasium for their good grades this past quarter. Siletz High School teacher Ms. Syms presented the students with a dinner for two ticket at the Chinook Winds Buffet and they were all pleased to receive them.

Pictured left to right are: Cecelia DeAnda(13), San Poil Whitehead(14), Daniel Lindstrom(16), Marita Nash(16), Morgan Crawford(15), and Windy Hill(15). Steven Lindstrom(13) and Jordan Chavez (14) are not pictured.

Students won these awards for their good grades and high quarterly GPA’s. The Academic awards will continue each quarter. Prizes are based on each quarter’s GPA so students will get a chance to start fresh with each new quarter. All students are eligible and could be honored with an award of their own at the end of the quarter if they keep their grades up.

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Isaac Newton and Newport Middle to possibly get clearer learning boundaries

Education No Responses »

Feb 272013

Newport Intermediate Students

Isaac Newton Magnet School and Newport Intermediate School may have a grade reconfiguration during the coming school year, pending approval by the Lincoln County School Board.

Isaac Newton/Newport Middle School Principal Majalise Tolan is proposing to combine all sixth-grade students into one level at the intermediate school, with the advanced county-wide Isaac Newton program to be offered to seventh- and eighth-grade students only.

The primary reason for the proposed change is the adoption of Common Core State Standards in Oregon, which demands increased rigor for all students. Having all sixth grade students combined would help build their skill level using the middle school model, and would equalize the expectations for students in the same grade at the same school building.

Isaac Newton is a magnet school for all Lincoln County students in grades 6-8 geared toward integrated arts and sciences. Isaac Newton staff and students approach learning as a creative endeavor in which students prepare for the future through an integrated project-based approach and academically rigorous environment. Newport Intermediate serves students in grades 4-6. Both Isaac Newton and Newport Middle share facilities in the same school building in Newport.

The school board will discuss this proposal at their next meeting on March 12. Meanwhile, community informational meetings to answer questions about the proposal are scheduled throughout the county:

* Friday, March 1, 8 a.m. at Newport Intermediate School.
* Monday, March 4, 6 p.m. at Lincoln City Community Center.
* Tuesday, March 5, 8:30 a.m. at Crestview Heights School in Waldport.
* Tuesday, March 5, 6:00 p.m. at Crestview Heights School in Waldport.
* Wednesday, March 6, 3:30 p.m. at Newport Intermediate School.
* Thursday, March 7, 6:30 p.m. at Toledo Elementary School.

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Parents: No shots, no school…starting in about a week!

Education No Responses »

Feb 142013

Oregonian photo

Starting the middle of next week, if a child has not had its shots, the child will be sent home. State law requires that all children (with few exceptions) get their vaccinations to keep students healthy and ready to learn rather than getting sick. The story is in the Oregonian. Click here.

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Lincoln County School Funding issues – in one simple graphic

Education No Responses »

Feb 132013

The graphic distributed as Tuesday night’s school board meeting gives a very direct tally of what’s at stake with state support for K-12 education in Oregon. Governor Kitzhaber is hoping that the legislature will find a way toward some sort of PERS reform as well as limiting tax deductions for the state’s wealthiest tax payers to provide enhanced revenues for K-12 education. To whatever extent he is successful will determine where funding levels will be for the upcoming two year school funding period.

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Science is no trivial matter – but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun!

Education No Responses »

Feb 042013

Aaron Williams, Connor Price, Kiana Murray and Ariana Morris

NHS Students Compete in Nation’s Largest Regional Science Bowl

Do you enjoy local trivia competitions and playing along with televised quiz shows? Well, we dare you to even begin to match smarts with a team of Newport High School seniors who participated in the BPA Regional Science Bowl on Feb. 2.

For the eighth consecutive year, NHS sent a team to the regional competition. This year’s team was comprised of four seniors: Aaron Williams, Connor Price, Kiana Murray and Ariana Morris. Their sponsor, Talented and Gifted (TAG) teacher Kathi Downing, says all four are top students at NHS.

“The NHS kids may not have won the competition, but they certainly won the Congeniality Award! They were always friendly and positive toward their opponents, and brought humor to the often rather tense atmosphere in the room,” Downing said. “The judges in our last round commented on how that was the most fun they had had all morning.”

This was the best attended regional competition yet, with 65 teams competing. There were four rounds in the preliminary competition. The NHS team was pitted against big city schools, including some that have a heavy focus on science and technology — yet they won one of the four rounds and did respectably in the other three.

Here are some sample questions from the Science Bowl:
Which two of the following five amino acids are classified as “basic”because of the structure of their side chains? A) arginine. B) glycine. C) glutamic acid. D) phenylalanine. E) lysine. Answer: A & E

Which of the following is NOT used in determining relative geologic time? A) Principle of superposition. B) Principle of original horizontality. C) Principle of cross-cutting. D) Radioisotope half-lives. Answer: D

Which of the following is NOT true? A) Electrons are directly affected by the strong nuclear force. B) General relativity predicts the existence of black holes. C) A deuterium atom has two nucleons. D) Many cosmologists believe that neutrinos make up about as much mass as all the stars in the universe. Answer: A.

The top winning regional teams were from high schools in Portland and Vancouver, Wash. The top finishing team will travel all-expenses paid to Washington, D.C., to compete in the Department of Energy’s National Science Bowl April 25-29.

Beyond the prestige of winning and the prospects of the national competition, qualifying members of the top three high school teams will receive offers of $85,000 in scholarships from Oregon and Washington colleges and universities.

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Graduation/Drop Out rates released for the 2011-12 school year in Oregon – and just like last year, the numbers don’t add up due to different evaluation methods

Editorial, Education No Responses »

Jan 312013

Caught in the middle
of dueling report cards

Warning: The story migrated into an editorial.

Here we go again. The state Department of Education has just released another report tabulating graduation as well as drop out rates for schools in Oregon. And just like last year, the numbers don’t add up due to conflicting methods of how noses are counted for graduation versus dropping out.

According to the report, Lincoln County Schools have a collective drop out rate of 4.3%. Individually the schools show Eddyville 0%, Waldport High .5%, Lincoln City Career Tech 1.6%, Newport High 1.9%, Toledo High 3.4%, Taft High 3.5% and Siletz Valley Charter 3.7%. Drop outs are described as students who did not attend any kind of state approved education program and who did not earn an alternative degree, like through an adult education or GED program.

Now for graduation rates.

State evaluators operate under the assumption that graduation rates are determined by following all 9th graders, as a distinct group of 14 year olds, moving through all four years of high school at the same rate – all in one clump. A 9th grade class that starts in 2013 is expected to graduate with caps and gowns in June of 2017. But many of them don’t; not because they don’t graduate, they just take more time. But the way the state tallies the graduation rates, every high school in Oregon would have to cope with a ballooning average daily population of tens of thousands, mostly from under-performing undergraduates milling around waiting for lunch because, on paper, they haven’t dropped out.

So with common sense thrown out the window, the state proceeds to claim that this is a tally of Lincoln County graduation rates: Taft High 48%, Lincoln City Career Tech 52%, Toledo High 58%, Waldport High 65%, Newport High 71%, Siletz Valley Charter 86% and Eddyville Charter 100%.

So what’s going on here?

In short, one group of state education tabulators track kids based on whether they ACTUALLY graduate from SOME state approved education program SOMEwhere. However, another group of state education tabulators don’t; preferring to use a method that groups specific students in specific time lines. It’s arbitrary to say the least. Or in this case, the right pencil doesn’t know what the left sheet of paper is doing. And everytime they crank out these kinds of press releases they mislead Oregonians as to the quality of job our schools are doing to prepare our kids for the rest of their lives.

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Newport High Robotics Team to compete in regional “Ultimate Ascent”

Education No Responses »

Jan 212013

NHS Robotics Team
Working on robot chassis

Team members Ben Capshaw and Jordan Colmenero
fine-tune robot equipment

Provided by Liz Fox, Mentor YAK Attack
Newport High School

How do you make a robot climb a jungle gym and toss frisbees? How do you manage a team of nearly 30 members, half of them rookies? How do you raise $10,000 in 5 months to finance the cost of sending your team to the competition? These are just some of the challenging questions facing the Newport High School robotics team. The team, otherwise known as “YAK Attack” (for Yaquina Applied Kinetics) learned of this year’s challenge on January 5th, at the FIRST Robotics kickoff hosted by Oregon State University. The team, along with thousands of other high school teams across the country will have six weeks to design and build robots for regional competitions. The Portland regional competition will take place in the Memorial Coliseum on March 7th through 9th.

This year’s competition features the “Ultimate Ascent” game, played between two Alliances of three teams each. Each Alliance competes by trying to toss the frisbees into scoring slots during each match. Teams are awarded even more points if they are climb up a tower at the end of the match. After numerous matches, a wining alliance emerges and those teams win an invitation to the World Competition in St. Louis in April. The game animation can be viewed by clicking here.

Newport High School robotics team’s first year of competition was 2007, and the team has quadrupled since then. This year’s officers are: Tanner Lovin, President; Ben Capshaw, Chief Engineer; Steven Haller, Secretary; and Tyler Teich, Treasurer. Team sponsors this year include the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Georgia Pacific, Confederated Tribe of Siletz Indians, Figaro’s Pizza, and Barrelhead Supply. Students write the grants, run the meetings, and design and build the robot, and receive assistance from NHS staff, team parents, and mentors Bob Maccoone and Damian Manda.

Accomplished inventor Dean Kamen founded FIRST ® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people. Based in Manchester, N.H., FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology, and engineering. With support from three out of every five Fortune 500 companies and nearly $15 million in college scholarships, the not-for-profit organization hosts the FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC® ) and FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC®) for high-school students, FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®) for 9 to 14-year-olds, and Junior FIRST® LEGO® League (Jr.FLL®) for 6 to 9-year-olds. To learn more about FIRST click here.

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Look who’s going to the UN!

Education No Responses »

Jan 212013

Sophia Solano
Jr, Newport High School

Maria Alvarado
Jr, Waldport High School

Two Local Teens Selected to Attend United Nations Pilgrimage of Youth
Story from Lincoln County School District

Two local high school students have been selected to attend the 2013 United Nations Pilgrimage for Youth this summer. Sophia Solano, a junior at Newport High, and Maria Alvarado, a junior at Waldport High, will be joining hundreds of other teens from throughout the United States, Canada and other nations to study and learn about the United Nations.

Both promising young students were selected by the Lincoln City Odd Fellows Lodge after submitting winning essays about the U.N.’s role in protecting the health and welfare of children, and then participating in a speech competition. Each lodge chooses its own winners and pays their expenses.

“Originally we were only going to send one student, but as we got closer to the deadline we decided we needed to send two of these girls,” explains Babe Bogart, leader of this year’s search. “It is just a blessing to see the ability of these young kids. They are so bright; we just want them to get the chance to see more of the world at an early age.”

Both girls are top students in their classes. Solano is an accomplished musician, playing both piano and clarinet. She also is helping to organize a Model United Nations group at Newport High. Alvarado is editor of the school yearbook as well as being a member of the soccer and basketball teams.

According to Kathi Downing, Talented and Gifted (TAG) program teacher, eight TAG students from Taft, Newport and Waldport high schools participated in the competition. Zach Colbert, a sophomore at Taft High School, wrote an essay that was chosen to go to the district level. Even though he did not advance to the state level, he plans to try again next year, Downing says.

The U.N. Pilgrimage was established by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Rebekahs in 1949. On average, about 300 students per year earn a place on the trip.

For young adults interested in world affairs, international relations, economics and/or political sciences, the U.N. Pilgrimage offers the opportunity to observe the United Nations in person while exchanging views on education, politics and religion. Students tour the United Nations building and listen to behind-the-scenes briefings conducted by specialized United Nations agencies and departments. Each student delegate will participate in in-depth discussions with other young people from around the world, as well as experience one of the greatest cities in the world, New York. The 10-day trip also includes tours of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Ottawa, Canada.

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