A7
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2019
Schools: Growth in student enrollment slowed down statewide
Continued from Page A1
The school district’s
10-year projections call for
fairly steady enrollment,
Hoppes said, although edu-
cators are seeing a sustained
increase in at-risk students
based on the number of free
and reduced-price lunches .
“I would assume that
it’s the nature of the type of
jobs that are available right
now,” he said of the growth
in lower-paying service sec-
tor positions. “I don’t think
Walmart’s paying $35 an
hour.”
Warrenton was at 1,041
students this fall, up slightly
from the previous year . The
school district has grown by
more than 22 percent since
2011, when it reported 849
students after several years
of shrinking enrollment.
Enrollment has stayed
above 1,000 since 2015, but
has plateaued. The district
estimates enrollment will
eventually peak at 1,159
students in the 2024-25
school year.
Close on the heels of
Warrenton has been Sea-
side. At 1,650 students this
fall, Seaside has grown by
4 percent from last year,
nearly 7.8 percent over the
p ast fi ve years and more
than 12 percent since 2011.
Knappa reported 499
students this fall, almost
unchanged
from
fi ve
years ago. Jewell School,
a small, rural, K-12 cam-
pus that averages around
150 students , reported 155
students.
Growth in student enroll-
ment has slowed down
statewide. After growing
by more than 2.2 percent
between 2012 and 2015,
enrollment has grown by
less than 1 percent over the
p ast three years.
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Enrollment growth in Clatsop County has been nearly twice as fast as the state, driven by
increases in Warrenton and Seaside.
Library: Council said event is an important way to encourage diversity
hold read-aloud story times
with her siblings.
Continued from Page A1
Though Rudduck, wear-
ing a red “Make America
Great Again” hat, lives-
treamed videos for his Face-
book page , proclaiming his
view that the reading was
harmful to children, none
of the men with him carried
signs or spoke openly about
their concerns. They did
not interact with a crowd
of people who supported
the event, nor did they talk
to Marco Davis, a commu-
nity volunteer who did the
reading in his drag persona,
“Miss Daylight.”
None of the men went
inside the library to try to
hear the reading .
“We used to protect the
children,” Rudduck said
on one of his livestreams,
“now we protect the men.
It’s upside down.”
N ot sure what to expect,
Spalding attended the event
himself, out of uniform,
along with Kenny Han-
sen, the police department’s
homeless liaison offi cer, and
other city leaders, includ-
ing Mayor Bruce Jones and
City Manager Brett Estes.
‘WWDD’
A dozen friends escorted
Davis to the library. Some
also made small buttons for
people to wear that asked,
“WWDD,” or “What would
Daylight do?”
“Be like Daylight,” one
friend posted on Facebook
ahead of the reading, “focus
on the love, bring the light,
don’t feed the hate.”
Adults who attended
only to support Davis and
the library waited outside
the F lag R oom to make
sure children and their par-
ents were able to get seats.
Some of the kids dressed up
as princesses and unicorns.
More
supporters
remained in the main lobby
Negative attention
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Miles Rudduck, right, livestreams commentary outside of the Astoria Library at the start of a Drag Queen Story Hour on
Saturday. He was one of four men who showed up to protest.
and outside the library for
the duration of the reading .
To protect the minors ,
the library did not allow
people to record or take pic-
tures inside. Pearson gave
parents a chance to take pic-
tures of their children with
Davis if they wanted.
Jessie Weis, of Astoria,
attended a similar event at
the library last year. She
wasn’t originally planning
to go to the reading Satur-
day until she heard people
planned to protest and were
writing about Davis and the
event in terms she consid-
ered “hate speech.”
“Hate has nothing to do
about being a Christian,”
she said.
Vivian Battjes, of Gear-
hart, and Sheila Forte,
of Astoria, were not part
of Rudduck’s protest but
attended because they
believe a man dressed as
a woman reading to chil-
dren sends a confusing and
possibly harmful message.
Sexual and gender prefer-
ence are adult decisions that
come with different health
risks, and young children
are very impressionable,
they said.
“It’s one thing to make
a choice for yourself in
regards to gender and sex-
Fierce battles near fi nal IS foothold in Syria
By BASSEM MROUE
and ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press
ual preference, it’s another
thing to include children
and infl uence them,” Forte
said, adding that she was
not judgmental of parents
who chose to let their chil-
dren attend, just concerned.
Battjes had asked the
library if a religious group
could come in and do a
story hour, perhaps with
someone dressed as a b ib-
lical character. She was
told she could not. Pearson
spoke with Battjes at the
event and plans to talk to
her again about the options .
In general, libraries cannot
host political or religious
events, he said.
Williams: Astoria’s parkland is
similar to other places he’s managed
Continued from Page A1
BEIRUT — Islamic State
group militants cornered in
their last foothold in eastern
Syria fought back with suicide
car bombs, snipers and booby
traps today, slowing Kurdish
fi ghters advancing under the
cover of U.S.-led coalition air-
strikes, Kurdish news agen-
cies and a Syrian war moni-
tor said.
An Italian photographer
was wounded in the clashes
between the U.S.-backed Syr-
ian Democratic Forces and
the militants holed up in the
village of Baghouz, near the
border with Iraq.
No one knows exactly
how many Islamic State fi ght-
ers are still holding out in
the sliver of territory under
attack, although they are esti-
mated to be in the hundreds,
most of them foreign fi ghters.
It is also unclear if civilians
are still inside, caught under
heavy bombardment.
The SDF on Saturday
launched its fi nal push to clear
the area from IS, after months
of fi ghting that saw 20,000
civilians fl eeing just in the
past few weeks. The numbers
have overwhelmed Kurd-
ish-run camps in northeast-
ern Syria, where humanitar-
ian conditions are already dire
amid a cold winter and mea-
ger resources.
The capture of the IS-held
HONS
Civilians fl ee fi ghting near Baghouz, Syria on Sunday
village of Baghouz and nearby
areas would mark the end of a
devastating four-year global
war to end the IS extremists’
territorial hold over large parts
of Syria and Iraq, where the
group established its self-pro-
claimed “caliphate” in 2014.
That in turn, would open the
way for U.S. President Don-
ald Trump to begin withdraw-
ing U.S. troops from northern
Syria as he has promised to do
once the Islamic State group
has been defeated.
“The U.S. will soon con-
trol 100% of ISIS territory in
Syria,” Trump tweeted Sun-
day. He has said repeatedly
that he doesn’t want the U.S.
to be the world’s policeman
and that he intends to bring
the 2,000 U.S. troops home.
U.S. offi cials and Trump’s
own military advisers, how-
ever, have warned that los-
ing its territorial hold does not
mean that the Islamic State
group is defeated, warning
that IS could stage a comeback
in Syria within six months to a
year if the military and coun-
terterrorism pressure on it is
eased. Gen. Joseph Votel, the
commander of U.S. forces in
the Middle East, estimated
there are between 1,000 and
1,500 IS fi ghters in the small
area they still control, but he
said others have “dispersed”
and “gone to ground.”
In recent weeks, U.S. offi -
cials have said IS has lost
99.5 percent of its territory
and is holding on to under 2
square miles, where most of
the fi ghters are concentrated
in Syria. But activists and res-
idents say IS still has sleeper
cells in Syria and Iraq and is
laying the groundwork for an
insurgency.
For Estes, the event was
a success for free speech.
“It didn’t devolve into
arguing or fi ghting on either
side,” he said afterward .
People who had concerns
were able to express them
and attend alongside the
many people who supported
the event.
“That’s what you want
— is for that dialogue to
occur,” he said.
A number of parents said
their children had attended
and enjoyed last year’s read-
ing with Davis. One woman
said her daughter dressed up
in a princess dress as Day-
light for days afterward to
Last year, the story hour
was one of the library’s
most popular events. There
was no public outcry or any
protests.
Pearson is not sure why
the reading, advertised in a
similar way as it was last
year, garnered so much neg-
ative attention this year. The
library received messages
and calls from people who
were concerned . Pearson
said the people who were
the most adamant that the
library should shut down
the reading live outside of
Astoria.
Drag queen story hours,
programs intended to pro-
mote reading and liter-
acy , are rising in popu-
larity across the country.
Many libraries have faced
pushback from some in
their communities over the
events, but most have cho-
sen to proceed anyway.
In Astoria, the City
Council defended the event,
calling it an important way
to encourage diversity.
Davis read three picture
books on Saturday, chosen
from a list of suggestions
compiled by Suzanne Har-
old, the children’s librarian :
“Julian I s A Mermaid,” by
Jessica Love, about a boy
who sees people dressed up
as mermaids and is inspired
to make his own costume;
“Neither,” by Airlie Ander-
son, about a land where
blue bunnies and yellow
birds stick to their own kind
until one day a green bird
with rabbit ears is hatched
and must fi nd a new place
to call home; and the chil-
dren’s classic “Elmer,” by
David McKee, about an
elephant with a conspicu-
ous multicolored patchwork
hide.
Manager Brett Estes
said. Also, it was the fi rst
year of “going through
and saying, ‘OK, where
are things budgeted too
high, where are they
budgeted too low?’”
Cosby herself had
planned to spend the
year focused on rebuild-
ing and evaluating the
department’s
internal
processes, until a job
possibility came up in
Colorado that she didn’t
feel she could ignore.
Her departure came at
a time when Estes was
already looking to fi ll
several other department
director vacancies .
Now Estes will look
to Williams to work with
staff to put those inter-
nal processes and proce-
dures into place , to ask,
“Are we being effi cient?
Are we being effective?”
Williams, who grew
up in rural southeast
Idaho, has experience
at different kinds of
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parks departments, includ-
ing in Roswell, New Mex-
ico, where he oversaw divi-
sions such as a zoo and a
cemetery. While Astoria is
one of the smaller depart-
ments he’s been involved
with, the parkland is sim-
ilar to other places he has
managed.
“What really intrigued
me about this was it seemed
like a great opportunity to
get more involved with the
community,” Williams said.
“There’s great leadership.
People really know their
stuff and then the altruism
of all the volunteers and
volunteer groups. The staff
is second to none.”
Williams moved here
with his wife and the three
youngest of his six children.
They had visited Astoria
before, but this is their fi rst
time living in Oregon. His
downtime is spent with his
family.
“If they have an activity,
I follow them,” he said.
As Williams becomes
more familiar with what the
department offers and what
the community wants, he
hopes to conduct an anal-
ysis of recreational pro-
viders. He plans to look at
what groups and organiza-
tions provide programs for
youth and identify gaps the
department could fi ll.
Sip, Savor & UnWined
$40 ticket
includes:
-
-
-
-
UnWined
March
2, 2019
10 wine tastes
tasting glass
appetizers
access to 140+
wines from 35
Oregon wineries
- live music
and more
An intimate WINE TASTING
TING EVENT previewing Crab,
Seafood and Wine Festival wine competition entries at
the Liberty Theatre in downtown Astoria.
Tickets available at the Chamber or at oldoregon.com
oldoregon.com.
Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce · (503) 325-6311