DOWNSIZED SCHOOL LIBRARY RANKLES SOME IN WARRENTON • PAGE 3A
DailyAstorian.com // WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016
143RD YEAR, NO. 200
ONE DOLLAR
Accused murderer Smith is on suicide watch
Defense lawyers
describe ‘dire
mental state’
Jessica Smith is
taken to her seat
in the Clatsop
County Court-
house for a status
hearing in May.
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
Accused murderer Jes-
sica Smith is on suicide watch
Joshua Bessex
The Daily Astorian
after trying to kill herself in
jail following her last court
appearance in March.
Smith, whose mental state
is a key element in her trial,
apparently made a serious sui-
cide attempt by ripping open
the veins of one of her wrists,
her lawyers reported in a court
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Court records show Tilla-
mook County Jail staff found
Smith March 30 in a pool
of her own blood. She was
taken to a hospital, where she
received medical treatment.
When she returned to jail, she
tried to tear out her stitches
and cause additional injury to
her other wrist.
Last week, Smith was
transferred back to Clat-
sop County Jail, where she
remains on suicide watch.
Smith, 42, of Vancou-
ver, Washington, is accused
of drugging and drowning
her toddler and attempting to
kill her teenager in a Cannon
Beach resort in 2014.
See SMITH, Page 9A
WARRENTON STUDENTS READY THE
‘SALMON CANNON’
Fisheries class has
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for the river
The Daily Astorian
The Warrenton-Hammond School Board
could vote next month on whether to re-
move Native American imagery entirely
from the Warrior mascot or to remove
the feather and spear running through
the redesigned logo.
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
W
ARRENTON — Clip-
pers in hand, a line of
Warrenton High School
students spent their last class
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gerlings out of plastic buckets
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the ubiquitous mark of a hatch-
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The students, part of Steve
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are preparing more than 20,000
salmon for release in the Ski-
panon River starting next month
from Warrenton High Fisher-
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mostly student-operated hatchery.
Warrenton’s hatchery received
20,000 Chinook, 6,000 coho and
500 steelhead eggs late last year
from Big Creek Fish Hatchery
near Knappa through the Salmon
Trout Enhancement Program.
After losing between 3,000 to
4,000 as eggs early on, students
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a day, hoping to release them all
between community events next
month and graduation in June.
Warrior
mascot
changes,
more to
come?
Warrenton School
Board to vote on Native
American images
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Salmon assignment
“If you screw up in this class,
things die,” said Porter, who puts
prospective students through a
panel interview and essay the
year before they can enter the
yearlong program at the Fisheries
Research and Rearing Facility.
Porter puts his trust and the
operation of the hatchery mostly
in the hands of those students,
whose assignment is fairly
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alive as they grow from incubat-
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lings ready to be released into the
wild, where they will face numer-
ous wild and man-made threats
during their life’s quest to return
upstream to spawn.
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
'XULQJ WKH ¿UVW SDUW RI IDOO Gabe Karr tosses a salmon into a tank after clipping its fin at the Warrenton High School Fisheries
semester, before the salmon Research and Rearing Facility Monday.
eggs come from the hatchery, he
takes younger students through
‘If you screw up in this class, things die.’
the biology of salmon and their
habitats. Meanwhile, veteran
Steve Porter
See SALMON, Page 12A
teacher of fisheries biology class who puts prospective students through a panel interview and essay the
year before they can enter the yearlong program at the Fisheries Research and Rearing Facility
‘Tired’ convention center seeks upgrades
After 25 years,
director says the
center must grow
to compete
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
WARRENTON — The Warrenton-Ham-
mond School District could remove all Native
American imagery from the district’s Warrior
mascot.
Superintendent Mark Jeffery recommended
Tuesday that the school board vote on the issue
at next month’s meeting.
The move comes in advance of a Native
American mascot ban enacted in 2012 by the
state Board of Education that becomes effec-
tive next calendar year.
The district has already been removing the
more offensive imagery on campuses, elimi-
nating a man in a headdress that used to adorn
some merchandise and replacing a basket-
ball-dribbling caricature in the Warrenton High
School gym with a mural of Clatsop-Nehalem
tribal members rowing a canoe on the Colum-
bia River.
Still standing are such relics as Native
American-themed pads at Warrenton Grade
School, where the mascot is the Braves, and a
purple statue in front of the high school com-
prised of 1,000 fused warriors made by stu-
dents in the 1970s.
The Board of Education passed an excep-
tion to the ban, allowing districts to pursue
sponsorship agreements with the nearest fed-
erally recognized tribe, which Warrenton had
pursued with the Confederated Tribes of Grand
Ronde.
But Jeffery said the issue was unsettled at
the state level, and that Grand Ronde could
cancel a sponsorship agreement with two
weeks notice. In February, he recommended
the district avoid jumping through the hoops to
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remove Native American imagery entirely and
go with the Warriors mascot and purple-and-
white color scheme for all schools.
More than a name
Seaside Civic and Convention
Center General Manager Russell Van-
denberg went before the Seaside City
Council Tuesday to present a nearly
$15 million dollar renovation plan.
Another plan at more than twice
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idents and businesses objected to a
proposed sales tax to fund its pur-
chase. A sales tax is “off the table,”
according to Vandenberg, who said
The center, which holds 1,200
people, was built in 1971 and reno-
vated in 1991.
But for some people who spoke at
Tuesday’s board meeting, changing the imag-
ery is not enough.
Theresa Enyart, a former employee of the
district for eight years and part Native Amer-
ican, said her family was offended by the
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which she said should uproot the entire War-
rior nickname.
See CENTER, Page 12A
See MASCOT, Page 9A
Steele Associates Architects LLC
Proposed renovation plans for the exterior of the Seaside Civic and
Convention Center.
funding options would be discussed
at future meetings.
The need for a renovation is a
result of the center’s age and to keep
up with the times, he said.