A6
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2021
Preschool: Program is expensive to run Port: Will likely
Continued from Page A1
ilies who have come to rely
on the program.
Shelby Gosser, a hospital
nurse administrator, relies on
Charis Kids for child care but
also appreciates the education
her daughters received. She
had been looking forward to
sending her third child to the
program soon.
“For me, it was the amaz-
ing light at the end of the tun-
nel,” she said.
The closure will not just
impact her, she said : “Mov-
ing forward, it will severely
impact working families that
would be the ones growing
this community.”
Like other parents and for-
mer teachers who heard the
news, Nelson said she is in
shock. She doesn’t under-
stand why Charis Kids is
closing. A letter sent to par-
ents and a subsequent conver-
sation with Marc Hagman,
the conference center’s exec-
utive director, left her with
only more questions.
The letter to parents pro-
vides no concrete reason
for the preschool’s closure,
but Hagman told The Asto-
rian a combination of fac-
tors — including the corona-
virus pandemic — led to the
decision.
Charis Kids
Stresses and strains
The conference center is
not in a bad fi nancial state and
the closure of Charis Kids is
not an indicator of tough
times ahead, he said. Still,
the pandemic brought cer-
tain stresses and strains, espe-
cially when it came to operat-
ing a preschool. The center’s
leadership has been look-
ing more closely at its over-
all mission. When confer-
ence center leadership began
reexamining its programs and
off erings last year, Charis did
not seem to fi t, Hagman said.
“If we hadn’t gone through
COVID,” he said, “I don’t
think we’d be at this point.”
The program is expensive
to run and, given the center’s
primary responsibilities to
conference and retreat guests,
“it can’t just be a break-even
sort of thing,” Hagman said.
But, he added, the deci-
sion to close the preschool
was not easy.
“Charis Kids has had great
impact in the work they do,”
Hagman said. “Not just in
reaching kids, but their fam-
ilies and their extended fam-
ilies, too. For me, there’s
nothing that minimizes their
compassion and their skill.
What we’re doing is not a
comment or commentary on
them. It’s just this is what we
need to do at this point.”
Hagman said they will
look to fi nd other job options
Kids play with colorful blocks at Charis Kids.
within center operations
for the teachers and staff of
Charis Kids who want to
continue at the conference
center.
Since the announcement,
former teachers have reached
out to Hagman and the con-
ference center leadership,
asking them to reconsider
their decision.
Dana Jones, a former
employee at the preschool
whose children attended the
program when they were
young, said communities
would be left without reliable
and aff ordable child care if
the preschool closes for good.
“I understand that COVID
has forced businesses to
reevaluate, but I don’t under-
stand why you’d take away
a ministry and outreach to
our community that pro-
vides jobs and meets such a
critical need,” she wrote in a
Facebook post addressed to
Hagman.
“As Oregon goes back to
work, our community needs
child care options. Parents are
scrambling, sacrifi cing their
careers and asking 10-year-
old siblings to watch their
infants because there aren’t
enough child care options in
our community.”
Clatsop County — along
with every county in Oregon
— is considered a child care
desert. Many centers and pre-
schools operate with lengthy
waitlists. Parents who might
want a particular program for
their children struggle to fi nd
something that fi ts their needs
and their budgets.
Preschool programs often
function as a form of day
care for working families
and are touted by education
experts as a key way to pre-
pare young children for k in-
dergarten, as well as establish
a foundation for the rest of
their school careers. Admin-
istrators with the Knappa
School District pointed to
these benefi ts when they
recently announced plans to
open a public preschool later
this year.
But day cares and pre-
schools are rarely profi table
ventures. Programs often
struggle to fi nd and retain
qualifi ed staff and keep prices
aff ordable for families. With
the pandemic, centers faced
restrictions on how many
children they could accom-
modate and other costs and
hurdles. Before the pandemic,
Clatsop County had 12 state
certifi ed child care centers.
After shutting down tempo-
rarily last spring because of
the pandemic, only a handful
had reopened by July.
Which makes Charis Kids
even more special to the fam-
‘Shocked,
saddened and sick’
Gretchen Corbin taught
at the preschool for 13 years
before being laid off in March
2020 because of the pan-
demic. She had previously
let administrators know she
would be leaving the program
to move to Seattle. T he pan-
demic and the layoff hastened
her timeline.
Now she feels “shocked,
saddened and sick.”
She respects Hagman and
knows it was a diffi cult deci-
sion, but she hopes the con-
ference center will reconsider.
“We got so much feedback
that we were meeting a cru-
cial need in the community
for families of every social
and economic level,” she
said. “We served them all and
we worked with them all to
make sure everybody could
come.”
During Corbin’s time at
Charis Kids, the preschool
served students from Asto-
ria to Nehalem. It had also
adjusted operations to make
it through diffi cult years.
Nelson wishes the com-
munity had a chance to work
with the conference center
to fi gure out a way to keep
Charis Kids.
“If it was a funding issue,
why not give the community
a chance to help?” she said.
“If there was an issue we
could have helped you solve,
why couldn’t we have been
given an opportunity?”
Graduation: Seaside will replicate drive-thru ceremony
Continued from Page A1
pandemic, some administra-
tors are waiting to see what
conditions — and Clatsop
County’s case metrics — are
like closer to the date before
they lay concrete plans. Oth-
ers anticipate graduation
events similar to last year’s
socially distanced, drive-thru
ceremonies.
Clatsop Community Col-
lege recently announced it
would hold a commence-
ment ceremony at CMH
Field in Astoria on June 18.
The fi eld will also likely
be the site of the Astoria High
School graduation, Superin-
tendent Craig Hoppes said,
though he isn’t sure yet
exactly what the ceremony
will look like. He hopes it
can be a bit more intimate
than last year’s graduation,
a drive-in ceremony where
students and their families
spent much of the time in
their cars and at a great dis-
tance from each other.
Still, Hoppes expects
some social distancing will
still be necessary in June,
too.
Seaside School District
will replicate the drive-thru
ceremony it held last year,
complete with a parade down
Broadway Street to a vehi-
cle turnaround at the beach
where graduates received
their diplomas. The district
will then hold a formal cer-
emony at the Seaside Civic
and Convention Center park-
ing lot.
“We know that is doable
under any metrics that we
see,” said Jeff Roberts, the
Seaside H igh S chool prin-
cipal. Also, he added, the
drive-thru event was “incred-
ibly well-received by gradu-
ates last year.”
Students this year specif-
ically requested it for their
commencement ceremony.
In other school districts,
there have been preliminary
discussions about what grad-
uation ceremonies might
look like this year but noth-
ing fi nal.
The rural Jewell School
District is considering diff er-
ent possible graduation cer-
emony scenarios for a June
19 event depending on the
county’s risk level.
While specifi cs are still
hazy, Principal Jon Wood
said, “We are going to do
something and it’s going to
be more traditional than last
year.”
The hope is to be back in
the low-risk category again
and have a “more normal”
event, he said.
Last year, the gradua-
tion ceremony for Warren-
ton High School students
required months of planning.
In a normal year, the cere-
mony would not take nearly
so much preparation: there
would be a rehearsal the day
before and then the actual
event.
Fortunately, high school
staff told The Astorian,
they’ve gone through a pan-
demic graduation once and
have a better idea now of
what to do.
“Worst-case scenario is
we do what we did last year,”
said Josh Jannusch, the War-
renton High School principal.
The pre graduation parade
through downtown Warren-
ton and then the drive-thru
ceremony were successful,
he said, and well-received by
families and students.
In Knappa, the high
school is looking at using,
ideally, the gym — for a
more traditional ceremony
— or the high school foot-
ball fi eld — if capacity is an
issue and case numbers are
high . It is possible to lives-
tream events at both loca-
tions, noted Laurel Smalley,
high school administrator.
Still, what the ceremony
looks like, where it is held
and how many people can
attend will depend on the
situation in the county just
ahead of the June event,
Smalley added.
“We’re trying to think
ahead,” she said. “If
COVID’s done anything, it’s
made us think ahead.”
Gearhart: Highlands site is 10 feet higher than High Point site
Continued from Page A1
“If our land is brought
into the urban growth bound-
ary and annexed into the city,
we will end up with addi-
tional buildable lots, given
the city’s zoning,” Steve
Olstedt, of the Cottages at
Gearhart LLC, wrote in a let-
ter to the city. “It will also
allow the city to ‘loop’ the
city’s water adding redun-
dancy to the system. If the
property can be brought into
the UGB and city, we are
willing to donate land for
the fi re station and a public
park. This will save the city
over $3 million as well as all
the legal expenses associated
with the other site.”
Land within the city’s
urban growth boundary
could be exchanged for land
outside the urban growth
boundary on an acre-to-acre
ratio, Watts said.
The exchange would
allow the developer to
go from 1-acre zoning to
10,000-square-foot or four
units per acre.
City lots in the exchange
could come from a portion
of the “no-build” area along
Gearhart’s western edge.
The proposal comes at
a time when the High Point
site for a resiliency station
faces legal challenges from
the Palisades Homeowners
Association and a reluctant
seller in landowner Edward
Murphy.
“In your presentation
accompanying the ‘new
public feedback survey’ it
is implied that the Murphy
family is agreeing to sell
the property for $3 million,”
Murphy said in a letter to the
city delivered at the meeting.
“Two years ago we would
have agreed in order to avoid
litigation but since then,
assuming that the city was
no longer trying to take our
property, we have planned on
listing and sale for residential
purposes.”
Murphy asked the city
to sign an agreement waiv-
ing its right to condemn
their property. “We hope you
will let the voters know that
you will need to litigate to
acquire our property if they
are in favor of a bond,” Mur-
phy wrote.
Even without the home-
owners
association’s
approval, the city could
pursue eminent domain to
demonstrate public need for
the new station at the High
Point site, Watts said. Rezon-
ing, annexation and other
legal issues could complicate
the process.
The Highlands site pres-
ents an outcome where
everyone wins, Watts said.
“The win to the city is we
would save $3 million to $3
1/2 million, so we would be
off ering our citizens a great
amenity with a fi re station at
an even higher location than
the High Point station.”
The elevation at the site
is between 72 feet to 75 feet,
City Administrator Chad
Sweet said, 10 feet higher
than the High Point site.
“Given all the positives, it
seems to be likely public sup-
port for this location,” Watts
said.
The next step, Sweet said,
would be a visit to the loca-
tion with councilors, negoti-
ations with developers and a
survey of public interest.
A geotechnical study, at
an estimated $25,000, would
follow.
“I think the site is a very
good site for our fi re hall,”
City Councilor Dan Jesse
said. “I think we should pur-
sue it.”
receive another
yearlong deferment of
loans through the state
Continued from Page A1
a very simple transaction,”
he said. “And I’m excited
as much as you folks are,
because when we are
able to save our members
money in the process and
get them good fi nancing,
then we’re doing our job.”
The Port moved out of
its third-fl oor offi ces in the
Taggart Building in 2019
to save money, return-
ing to the former head-
quarters on Gateway Ave-
nue. The agency has since
leased most of the upstairs
of the Taggart Building to
medical offi ces, includ-
ing Watershed Wellness
and Dr. Kevin Baxter,
who left Columbia Memo-
rial Hospital in September
and restarted his former
practice, Baxter Family
Medicine.
Will Isom, the Port’s
executive director, said
the Port will also likely
receive another yearlong
deferment of loans through
the state’s Infrastructure
Finance Authority.
Business Oregon, the
state’s economic devel-
opment agency, gave the
Port one year off of prin-
cipal and interest pay-
ments starting last spring
in response to the coro-
navirus pandemic. Isom
estimated the one-year
deferment saved the Port
$900,000 in principal and
$300,000 in interest.
“Depending on the
loan, we had various pay-
ments that were going to
start coming due between
April of ’21 and June of
’21, and those will be
extended for an additional
12 months,” Isom said.
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