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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 29, 2015)
Page 6A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian BLIZZARD: Won’t get above freezing in Boston for a week ed Friday and again over the weekend. other statement as to what Boston is accustomed to our event means not only to big snowstorms, and with runners but also to Ameri- ample warning that a bliz- cans,” said Tom Grilk, exec- ]DUG ZDV FRPLQJ RI¿FLDOV utive director of the Boston mobilized thousands of Athletic Association, which snowplows and called up the oversees the marathon. National Guard. Meteorologists had Early on, Gov. Charlie warned that Boston would Baker, who has been in of- get more than 2 feet of snow ¿FH MXVW WKUHH ZHHNV PDGH by Tuesday night, and the a key decision, ordering a National Weather Service driving ban to give crews a said the city ended up with chance to clear the mounting 24.4 inches, the sixth-highest snow off roadways. Baker total on record. Other areas said he wrestled with that received around 2 to 3 feet, but it “worked pretty much pretty much as predicted. as we hoped.” “They actually got it “We’ve come out of this right,” James Hansen said in relatively good shape,” as he cleared a Boston side- he said Wednesday before walk. visiting the hard-hit South There was no gloating Shore area, where the storm among the forecasters, who breached a seawall and just seemed relieved they FDXVHGÀRRGLQJ were on the money. ,Q 0DUVK¿HOG RI¿FLDOV Pointing up the guess- said at least four homes like- work factor, the weather ly will be condemned and at team at Boston’s WHDH-TV least a dozen more sustained WZHHWHGDSKRWRRIWKHRI¿FH substantial damage after two snow pool, with pre-storm 80-foot sections of seawall predictions ranging from 22 were smashed. to 25.5 inches. /RFDO ¿VKHUPDQ 7LP As the storm gathered Mannix was trying to move earlier in the week, forecast- furniture to secure a sliding ers had warned that Phila- door at his home when the delphia, New York and New ocean struck. Jersey could get 1 to 2 feet “A wave hit at that mo- of snow. But in the end, they ment, and bang! Like light- didn’t even see a foot. ning it hit me right in the With snow removal in face,” he said, his nose show- Boston well underway, com- ing the damage from the en- muters high-stepped their counter: six fractures, which way through a warren of required numerous stitches. snowy paths and towering “It was so fast I couldn’t be- snowbanks that gave the lieve it, and down I went.” capital an almost alpine feel. He said the water came Still, bitter cold threat- in from the back of his ened to complicate efforts house, knocked down his to clear clogged streets and back deck, washed through restore power. Forecast- the house and destroyed his ers warned that it won’t get front deck. above freezing in Boston for “The house is wrecked,” a week, and several more he said, “75 percent inches of snow are expect- wrecked.” Continued from 1A BRIEFLY Montana oil spill cleanup to slow as river gets dangerous BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The struggle to recover 30,000 gallons of oil from a pipeline spill into Montana’s Yellowstone River is expected to grind to a near-halt in coming days as warmer weather makes ice on the river increasingly dangerous, state regulators and a company spokesman said Wednesday. Because of brittle ice, crews trying to recover oil trapped beneath the Yellowstone could be pulled off the river as early as Thursday, said Bonnie Lovelace with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. Monitoring of the river would continue, and any oil that washes up along the riverbank still could be cleaned up, said Bill Salvin, spokesman for pipeline owner Bridger Pipeline LLC of Wyoming. The monitoring area includes a 90 mile-stretch of the river between the spill site south of Glendive to just across the North Dakota border. Roughly 1,200 gallons of oil have been recovered from the river so far, Salvin said. The 12-inch pipeline broke Jan. 17 after a section of the line became exposed beneath the river for undetermined reasons. Thursday, January 29, 2015 GRADUATION: None of Hawthorne’s 11 American Indian students graduated Continued from 1A “The best situation is when we establish a relation- ship right when they come in, in seventh grade, and then revisit that relationship each year,” Grant said. “We’ve had real good success clos- ing some of the communica- tion gaps we had.” Closing that communi- cation gap, he said, keeps students from playing their teachers and parents off of each other or falling through the cracks. Principal Matt Combe said the school district has provided the resources for Heppner to provide plenty of interventions if a student begins to fall behind. Students who aren’t on track to graduate have a four- hour block of time on Fri- days to work with teachers. The school also calls parents and asks them to bring their child to school early or in- forms them that they will be spending less time at football practice until they get their grades up. Combe said a smaller school like Heppner has an advantage because students get so much one-on-one at- tention. “The kids that don’t grad- uate, a lot of time there are outside factors,” he said. Umatilla County Hermiston School Dis- trict, Umatilla County’s largest district, posted a dis- trict-wide graduation rate of 68 percent, down from 70 in 2013. Hermiston High School posted a much higher graduation rate of 85 percent, but only eight of the district’s 81 alternative school students graduated in four years. Pendleton School District declined from the previous year, was about one percent lower than the state’s 72 per- cent mark and several points lower than the previous year, when the district graduated 75 percent of its seniors. The high school itself boasted a robust 86 percent graduation rate, and under- served ethnicities and races — an area of focus for the district in recent years — graduated at an 80 percent clip, more than 15 points higher than Oregon as a whole. But the rest of the dis- trict’s high schoolers didn’t fare as well, especially American Indian students, one of the district’s largest minority groups. Hawthorne Alternative High School graduated just 10 percent of its 39-student senior class. Of that class, none of Hawthorne’s 11 American Indian students graduated or completed their high school diploma. And no male students or students from underserved ethnicities graduated from there either. In comparison, Pendleton High School graduated 79 percent of its 14 American Indian seniors. Nixyaawii Community Charter School performed better than Hawthorne, but still only graduated half of its 12-student class, which is entirely comprised of Ameri- can Indians. Pilot Rock posted an im- pressive 96 percent gradu- ation rate and Echo, which graduated 76 percent of its seniors the year before, grad- uated 95 percent. Umatilla School District was slightly below the state average this year at 67 percent, but it did improve from the previous year, when only 61 percent of the class of 2013 gradu- ated on time with a regular diploma. 6WDQ¿HOG 6FKRRO 'LVWULFW saw a drop in graduation rates from 87 percent in 2013 to 79 percent in 2014 but still received praise from state schools superintendent Rob Saxton for beating the state average, and for its unusually high graduation rate for His- panic students. Eighty-four percent of the district’s 22 Hispanic students graduat- ed, a full 19 points above the state average. “There is remarkable work going on in districts across our state from Wood- EXUQ WR 6WDQ¿HOG´ 6D[WRQ said in a news release. “Dis- tricts offering multiple path- ways for student success are pulling their students through high school and allowing them to imagine what they are capable of as an adult.” HANSELL: ‘No matter what you do, you’ll be attacked by somebody’ Hansell said. “My predeces- sors have had this as a prior- dictatorship to democracy. ity for years. It’s my turn to He said “the hit came totally carry the ball.” out of the blue.” Possible transportation Nye said he had gotten a projects in District 29 in- call before the meeting from clude an upgrade of Ott Road Kropf, who said “we are not in Hermiston to give better trying to undo Bill — we’re access to the Eastern Oregon just trying to get his atten- Trade and Event Center from tion.” Highway 395 and upgrading Hansell, who answered of the Tum-a-Lum Bridge Kropf in a recent East Ore- on the Walla Walla River in gonian op-ed, said, “I would Umatilla County. say to Jeff, ‘Why don’t you Hansell may have the VWRSLQP\RI¿FHDQGWDONWR chance to serve on a Ways me?’” and Means transportation Topics during the long task force. He is consider- evening meeting drifted to ing the opportunity to make water and transportation, sure Eastern Oregon is at the two subjects on Hansell’s table, but he is unsure how mind. He said the legislature District 29 would respond if is on the brink of allowing the overall package includes the removal of more water such things as a user tax for from the Columbia River for electric and hybrid vehicles Northeast Oregon agricul- that in recommendations. If ture. he fought against new taxes “The hundreds of mil- but the task force recom- lions of dollars that will pro- mended them anyway, some- duce — it is mind boggling,” one like Kropf could still ac- Continued from 1A cuse him of supporting new taxes. Eli Stephens, Pendleton Tea Party Chairman, urged Hansell to be a voice for Eastern Oregon on the trans- portation task force, but to stand against any new taxes. “Be that shining star so you’ll be our hero instead of our zero,” Stephens said. “No matter what you do, you’ll be attacked by some- ERG\´ VDLG DQ XQLGHQWL¿HG man in the crowd. +DQVHOO VDLG WKDW ¿QGLQJ ways to work with Demo- crats is a must these days because the Senate consists of 18 Democrats and 12 Re- publicans. “We are in a super-mi- nority,” Hansell said. “That’s part of the reality.” 7KH GLVFXVVLRQ ÀRZHG from topic to topic, from Obamacare to the forests. Granella Thompson, of Weston, summed it up to ap- plause. “I want my freedom back,” Thompson said. “I don’t want regulations up the ying-yang telling me and my husband how to farm. I want lower cost of government and less regulation.” Roy Woodward, of Mil- ton-Freewater, got more ap- plause when he told Hansell, “I’d like to see a legislative session where no new bills were passed ... just rip out the old ones.” Hansell listened closely, promising to consider every- thing he had heard. Had Jeff Kropf been sitting in one of the chairs listening, he likely would have been disappoint- ed in the lack of backlash in the wake of his ad. Local right-wingers seemed intent on supporting their senator — as long as he continues to listen. ——— Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-0810 Measles outbreak with Disney origins grows to 95 cases LOS ANGELES (AP) — A measles outbreak whose spread originated at Disneyland has grown to 95 cases. The California Department of Public Health told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that 79 of those in infections are in California and 52 of them can be linked directly to Disney Parks. The rest are in Michigan, Arizona, Utah, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Nebraska and Mexico. 7KHQHZRYHUDOO¿JXUH shows eight more cases FRQ¿UPHGWKLVZHHN Measles has been spreading since an outbreak last month. Most of those infected were not vaccinated RI¿FLDOVKDYHXUJHGSHRSOH to get the measles shot. The U.S. experienced a record number of measles cases last year, with 644 infections from 27 states despite being largely eliminated in 2000. Carriers Needed in Pendleton Route 39 SW 24th Looking for substitute on call carriers Each year the employees of Pendleton Sanitary Service, Inc. (PSSI) nominate several commercial busin esses or institutions for the Commercial Recycler of the Year award. The winning recipient is determined by a vote of PSSI employees, as they are the individuals who deal directly with the recycled materials, and ar e impacted by the quality of those materials. This award is given to a commercial recycler that does an outstanding job in recycling, and/or has made significant improvements to their recycling efforts ov er the past year. The employees of Pendleton Sanitary Service voted unanimously to choose Interpath Laboratory (Interp ath) as Pendleton’s Commercial Recycler of the Year for 2014. In February 2014, Interpath approached PSSI about how to reduce waste, reuse, and recycle more items . Through a cooperative effort, they built a plan under Interpath Laboratory’s internal process improv ement program called “Interpath Quality” or IQ. This effort was lead by Mitchell Hernandez of Interpath. According to Interpath, the IQ program: “Is a program that all employees are encouraged to participate in through department level projects that improve the quality and services of our organization. Typically each IQ project has a “lead”and orc hestrates the activity of the team to analyze how improvements can be made based on the expertise of our emplo yees, implementation of the solution, and then validation of our efforts by continuing to measure the outcome(s). This project that Mitch led is the outcome of an IQ project that touched all of our empl oyees and their willingness to buy-in to reducing the waste that was being sent to the landfill from our campu s. This recognition from Pendleton Sanitary Service is reflective of the quality employees here at Interpath Laboratory and their service to our organization and community.” The cooperative effort is ongoing, looking for additional ways to recycle more items, and further re duce waste. During 2014, Interpath recycled approximately 53 tons of cardboard, 8 tons of office paper, and 2.3 tons of plastic bottles through PSSI. Not only does Interpath do an outstanding job of recycling with the significant volume of recycled materials they produce, the quality control in their recycling effort is extraordinary, which makes a significant impact on reducing waste going to the landfill. Pendleton Sanitary Service would like to congratulate and thank Interpath Laboratory for their outstanding efforts in recycling! 211 SE Byers Ave., Pendleton 541-276-2211 or 1-800-522-0255 5500 NW Rieth Road PO Box 1405 Pendleton, OR 97801 Telephone: 541-276-1271 Fax: 541-276-1927
