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18 Wednesday, May 20, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Boater deaths Clark and Smith step into board positions has worked in the St. Charles on decline By Jim Cornelius Medical Center’s emergency room lab. in oregon; Amanda Clark and Jeff She has done a lot of study Smith were unopposed in in early childhood develop- the May 19 election for the ment, and she has watched the education Sisters School Board. That community debate over the News Editor SALEM (AP) — Seven people were killed during recreational boating accidents in Oregon last year, the low- est number since 1990. Six of the fatal accidents took place on a river, one was on a lake, while four involved motorized boats and three were related to non- motorized craft, the Salem Statesman-Journal reported. The numbers come from data released by the Oregon State Marine Board and the U.S. Coast Guard. A number of factors likely contributed to the falling number of fatalities in Oregon, marine board spokeswoman Ashley Massey said. The number of regis- tered motorboats has dropped to 166,664 from over 197,000 in 1997. Massey also pointed to a mandatory education require- ment that since 2009 has required everyone operating a motorboat with an engine over 10 horsepower to take a safety course. “We’ve seen a nice little decrease in accidents in that time period,” Massey said. “What we’re seeing is that education is working, and we want that to continue.” While the number of fatal accidents in motorized boats has been steadily dropping, the number of people killed in accidents involving non- motorized craft has been rising. means that Smith will retain the seat to which he was appointed last year, and Clark will take on Position No. 5. Clark has wasted no time ramping up for her new job, familiarizing herself with the policy issues that will con- front the district in the years to come. One of those is the implementation of Common Core standards. “Common Core is here, and that’s something I’m spending a lot of my time learning about,” she said. The mother of a kinder- gartner and a second-grader, Clark got involved in discus- sions at regular informal “cof- fees” with Superintendent Jim Golden. “I started going to the superintendent meetings and I just really enjoyed the interac- tion that I had there,” she said. From that interaction, she has been part of a group working on developing a consistent, holistic home- work philosophy across all three schools. And that led to throwing her hat in the ring for a school board seat. She’s also working on the superin- tendent selection committee working on finding Golden’s successor. Clark grew up in Eddyville as her father served as a dis- trict attorney on the coast. She worked for an ambulance service, where she met her firefighter husband. He took a job in Central Oregon and they moved here. Amanda HAVE A SAFE & HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND! 541-549-1026 DAVIS TIRE recently failed school bond with considerable interest. “I’m passionate about this stuff,” she said. “I love this community. We’ve been here three-and-a-half years and one of the things that I love about this community is how invested they are in the schools.” She doesn’t believe that the failure of the bond means the community is losing that willingness to invest in the schools, and she thinks the district should consider going out for a bond again — but with a different configuration. “I think we need to pick and choose a little,” she said. “I think it needs to be on a smaller level.” She notes that, as a par- ent of elementary school stu- dents, she can attest that the needs at that facility are real. “There’s a lot of issues there,” she said. “I think we’re really going to have to look at scaling down (a bond ask) a little more,” Clark said. “If we listen, we can put together a bond that will pass.” That’s pretty much Smith’s take, too. “I think we go out for a bond asking for fewer dol- lars — and a bond that sup- ports activities that are central to the core (of education in Sisters),” he told The Nugget. Smith served for more than a decade on the school board previously and stepped back into the arena in part to photo provided Jeff Smith. bring institutional memory to the school board. “I think the district needs better connection with the past, to the history,” he said. “Not that we follow the past, but that we learn from it and understand how we got where we are.” Smith is optimistic that the toughest times associated with the recession and a decline in enrollment are behind the dis- trict. He believes that enroll- ment will pick up with the economy. However, he noted, there are caveats. He notes that online and other alternative forms of education are com- peting for enrollment. He believes the schools need to focus on student retention. “Students are more technologically mobile than in the past,” he said. “I think we need to improve our deliv- ery of online options … inte- grate classrooms with more online opportunities.” Smith observes that Sisters Country has a wealth of human capital, and he would like to see the district do more to leverage the kind of involvement seen with the Sisters Folk Festival and the Sisters Science Club. “We need to be welcoming to the community,” he said. “We need to create opportuni- ties for the community to be involved in school activities. I think we need to encourage people to be in our buildings. 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