WEEKEND EDITION
CBC SENDS Pouring his
FOUR TEAMS heart into
painting
TO STATE
BASKETBALL/1B
LIFESTYLES 1C
REGION:
Pendleton plans fi rst
motorcycle rally 3A
ENTERTAINMENT:
J.D. Kindle gives his
odds for the Oscars 3C
FEBRUARY 21-22, 2015
139th Year, No. 92
WINNER OF THE 2013 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
$1.50
Brown
will fund
water
project
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
First-year teacher Mariana Medina helps fourth-grader Sergio Avila with a math question on Thursday at Rocky Heights
Elementary School in Hermiston.
A teacher like me
moving made reading and writ-
ing a more dif¿ cult prospect.
Umatilla County
school districts try
to close minority
student-teacher gap
Not a unique problem
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Being a teacher of color in
Eastern Oregon makes you a mi-
nority within a minority.
Because even as the minority
population in Umatilla County
continues to grow, the number of
minority teachers has remained
stagnant.
$fter years of trying to ¿ nd
such teachers with little suc-
cess, plus continual underper-
formance in tests and graduation
rates for minority students com-
pared to their white peers, local
school districts are starting to
look at their increasingly diverse
student body for solutions.
Mariana Medina is exact-
ly the type of ¿ rst-year teacher
many Eastern Oregon school
districts are looking for.
The Rocky Heights Elemen-
tary School fourth grade teacher
is young, Latina and a product of
a Hermiston School District.
According to the Oregon De-
partment of Education, 49 per-
cent of Rocky Heights students
are Hispanic, roughly in line
with the district’s Latino popula-
tion as a whole.
Although the district boasts
the highest minority teacher
population in the county, it still
employs only 9 percent teachers
of color.
While a Hispanic student
from Hermiston has a mod-
est chance of being taught by
someone of his or her own eth-
nic background today, Medina
wasn’t one of those students.
Over her thirteen years as a
student in Hermiston, Medina
said she had no Hispanic teach-
ers.
Medina said she admired
many of her teachers, but added
that the presence of a Hispanic
teacher could have helped, espe-
cially in her early years.
From kindergarten through
second grade, Medina’s family
migrated between Hermiston
and Mexico.
Medina would spend three
to four months of the year in a
Mexican school, and while her
social skills allowed her to pick
up English quickly, the constant
While some areas of the
country do better than others,
the problem is persistent nation-
wide. About 40 percent of the
country’s students belong to a
minority, but only 17 percent of
the people who teach them are
people of color.
In Oregon, minorities com-
prise 8.5 percent of teachers
compared to 35 percent of stu-
dents.
Despite the clear disparity,
the issue hasn’t garnered nearly
as much attention as other edu-
cational topics like the Common
Core State Standards and the
Smarter Balanced assessment.
But the issue hasn’t escaped
the notice of Donald Easton-
Brooks, the dean of business
and education at Eastern Oregon
University.
According
to
research
Easton-Brooks conducted him-
self, minority students with at
least one minority teacher before
¿ fth grade score higher in math
and in reading. Other studies
have shown that minority teach-
ers generally have higher expec-
tations of minority students.
Easton-Brooks said the bias
See SCHOOL/12A
SALEM — Newly minted Gov. Kate
Brown said Friday she will pursue the $51.6
million water development fund in former
governor John Kitzhaber’s budget targeted
to help irrigators and
conservationists reach
a deal in the Umatilla
Basin.
“I anticipate we will
maintain that in the bud-
get,” Brown said during
her ¿ rst press confer-
ence since being sworn
in as governor. “I know
how critical it is to the Brown
economy in that area, so
I look forward to working with folks to make
sure we get some more resources into that
project.”
Under the Kitzhaber’s proposal, com-
munities around the state could compete for
government loans and grants to assist with
planning and development of water supply,
watershed restoration and other projects.
Oregonians outside the Portland metro-
politan area are watching to see how Brown
handles issues of importance in their com-
See BROWN/10A
Sides in ports
dispute reach
agreement
By JUSTIN PRITCHARD
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Negotiators reached a
tentative contract covering West Coast dock-
workers on Friday evening, likely ending a
protracted labor dispute that snarled interna-
tional trade at seaports handling about $1 tril-
lion worth of cargo annually.
The breakthrough came after nine months
of negotiations that turned contentious in the
fall, when dockworkers and their employers
began blaming each other for problems get-
ting imports to consumers and exports over-
seas.
The ¿ ve-year deal, con¿ rmed by Inter-
national Longshore and Warehouse Union
spokesman Craig Merrilees, still must be ap-
proved by the 13,000-member union’s rank-
See PORTS/10A
PENDLETON
Local birders await
Vaux’s swifts’ return
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
The tiny birds À itting around
Pendleton City Hall were oblivious
to the stir they caused.
Aaron Skirvin and Diana La-
Sarge spotted the black cloud as
they walked back to their car after
enjoying the carnival during the
Pendleton Round-Up week last
September. To the untrained eye,
the creatures might have looked
like dozens of bats on the wing, but
the two experienced birders recog-
nized them as Vaux’s swifts. The
tiny birds weigh less than an ounce
and depend on hollowed-out trees
and chimneys for shelter from the
cold.
Unlike most other birds, they
are unable to À uff their feathers for
warmth and they can’t wrap their
toes around branches and wires
to perch. Instead they cling to
the mortar in brick chimneys and
bunch together. Bird club members
had never seen the birds amass in
Pendleton.
Excited, Skirvin called fellow
Pendleton Bird Club member Jack
Simons and told him the happy
news.
The next night just before sun-
See BIRDS/12A
Photo by Jack Simons
About 500 Vaux’s swifts swirl around the chimney at Pendleton City Hall
in September 2014.