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147TH YEAR, NO. 89
DailyAstorian.com // THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2020
$1.50
GROCERY OUTLET
Astoria
hears
group’s
appeal
City Council could
decide next month
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
The Grocery Outlet appeal came before
the Astoria City Council on Tuesday, with
the developer asking for collaboration to
ensure an agreeable project and city staff
admonishing councilors to avoid outside
cont acts that could undercut their decision.
Main & Main Capital Group has been
trying since last year to get city permission
to build a 16,000-square-foot grocery store
on a triangular lot where Exchange Street
runs into Marine Drive. The store would be
located just north of the Astoria Mini Mart
and across 23rd Street from the new loca-
tion of the Astoria Co+o p.
The Design Review Commission
denied the proposal over several issues,
including safety concerns for pedestrians
crossing a driveway entrance to the store
on Marine Drive. After being denied, Main
& Main sought a fresh hearing from the
City Council.
Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
Astoria High School students Annalyse Steele, left, and Allyson Pritchard review their upcoming precalculus exam with
classmates in Jessica Todd’s class.
New approach to math hits stride
Tests as a learning tool
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
M
See Grocery Outlet, Page A6
Astoria OKs
rules over
downtown
development
City Council fi nishes
Urban Core standards
Colin Murphey/The Astorian
Graduation rates have improved at Astoria High School.
Grad rates continue
to go up in county
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
The Astoria City Council on Tues-
day unanimously approved new build-
ing rules in the Urban Core section of the
Riverfront Vision Plan guiding develop-
ment along the Columbia River.
The Urban Core, a swath of down-
town and waterfront properties between
Second and 16th streets, is the last of
four sections of the Riverfront Vision
Plan. City c ouncilors have approved new
development rules for Bridge Vista in
Uniontown, the Civic Greenway east of
downtown and the Neighborhood Green-
way in Alderbrook.
Graduation rates across much of
Clatsop County continue to climb .
On-time-graduation — defi ned
by the state as taking four years —
has continued to go up across Ore-
gon, according to state fi gures. The
statewide graduation rate for the
class of 2018-19 was at 80%, ahead
of last year’s rate but still below the
national high school graduation rate
of 85% recorded in the 2016-17
school year.
Astoria High School jumped to
85.8 %, up from what had been its
highest graduation rate in over a
decade recorded in the prior school
year.
The numbers follow a trend that
has held steady for several years
now in Astoria.
“That’s a big jump that we’re
very pleased to see,” said Lynn
Jackson, the principal.
He and Superintendent Craig
Hoppes credit a dedicated staff with
the rising graduation rate. They
also pointed to other measures the
high school and school district have
taken over the years, such as hiring
graduation coaches, increasing and
creating programs to engage a wide
See Grad rates, Page A6
any of the Astoria High
School students in Phil-
lip Ero’s calculus class had
struggled to answer one of the ques-
tions on a recent test.
The formulas they deployed had
only complicated the question and the
answer, Ero told them.
“The solution is very elegant,”
he promised with the air of someone
eagerly waiting for you to open a gift
he knows you will love.
Ero handed out blank copies of the
test they had already taken. The stu-
dents broke into groups of three or
four. They took turns fl ipping through
the test pages, scribbling out equations
and talking about how they reached
their answers.
Midway through class, as students
solved that one tricky problem with
Ero’s help, there were actual exclama-
tions of delight — and also frustration
that they hadn’t seen the solution at the
time.
Astoria High School is entering its
fourth year of using a curriculum and
teaching method that fl ips traditional
math instruction and student assess-
ment on their heads, and the new
approach is working, administrators
and teachers say.
Before switching to the College
Preparatory Mathematics curriculum
in 2016, too many students were strug-
gling in math, said Liane Donovan, the
vice principal.
The Common Core standards
for math and English language arts
adopted in Oregon a decade ago
require students to get further in their
understanding of math than they ever
had before, she said.
See Math, Page A6
See Downtown, Page A6
Marlantes novel inspired by family history
Author spoke at
Columbia Forum
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
Karl Marlantes, a bestselling
author who grew up in Seaside ,
was inspired by his family history
when writing his latest novel, “Deep
River.”
Marlantes grew up in a multi-
lingual household hearing Finn-
ish, Greek, English, Norwegian and
Swedish. He said the cultural, reli-
gious and political differences cre-
ated a sense of “cultural schizophre-
‘IT’S ALMOST ALLEGORICAL IN
WHAT WE FACE IN OUR COUNTRY TODAY.
WE HAVE THE INDIVIDUAL AND WE
HAVE THE COLLECTIVE.’
Karl Marlantes | author
nia,” which in many ways inspired
the central themes of the novel.
He discussed his family’s history,
their background in the forestry and
fi shing industries and his reasons for
writing the novel to nearly 200 peo-
ple during a Columbia Forum talk
Tuesday night at t he Liberty Theatre
in Astoria.
The novel is about three Finn-
ish siblings who fl ed to the United
States in the early 1900s and settled
in a logging community in south-
west Washington state. Each of the
siblings grow to express and repre-
sent different perspectives — one
is deeply religious, the other is an
entrepreneur and fearless logger
and their sister, Aino, is an idealis-
tic communist.
Aino, the heroine and princi-
pal character in the novel , begins
her story arc as a fanatical commu-
nist who was a leader in the effort
Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
See Forum, Page A6
Bestselling author Karl Marlantes discussed his latest novel, ‘Deep River,’ at
Columbia Forum at the Liberty Theatre on Tuesday night.