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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 13, 2015)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, August 13, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON Advertising Director TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW OTHER VIEWS Can we interest you in teaching? Jerry McBride/The Durango Herald via AP People kayak in the Animas River near Durango, Colo., on Aug. 6 in water colored from a mine waste spill. When EPA pollutes, usual critics remain silent Imagine the poor dairy farmer have been shut down. The long-term who accidentally breaches his impact of the disaster is unknown. manure lagoon, sending its contents For its part, the EPA has taken down the nearby creek. blame and has promised to clean up Environmentalists would want the mess. his head on a platter, and state and Outside local outrage — which federal agencies would land on has been considerable — the him with both reaction from feet with ¿nes and national potential criminal environmental Outside local prosecution. If it groups and the were bad enough, outrage, reaction political class that and politically usually capitalizes from national advantageous, there on such events might be comment has been muted. environmental from the White cries for an groups has been No House. investigation, But what no calls for muted. happens when resignations or the polluter is the prosecutions. The Environmental Protection Agency? White House, which seldom lets a Last week EPA contractors local crisis it can blame on its critics working to stabilize an abandoned go unnoticed, has been surprisingly gold mine in Southern Colorado silent. caused 3 million gallons of mine Accidents, after all, happen. water contaminated with lead, As we say, the locals are a bit arsenic, cadmium, aluminum, copper more outspoken. and calcium to Àow into the Animas “If a mining operator or other River 60 miles north of Durango. private business caused the spill to A mustard-yellow plume has now occur, the EPA would be all over made its way into 1ew Me[ico. them,” U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, The previously pristine river, a huge R-Cortez, said in a statement. “The draw for the tourists who are the EPA admits fault, and as such must lifeblood of the region’s economy, be accountable and held to the same has been closed to ¿shing, rafting standard.” and kayaking. Irrigation pumps Sauce for the goose. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS Will Obama’s plan to reduce carbon emissions work? The (Medford) Mail-Tribune When Oregon legislators were debating measures designed to reduce carbon emissions in the state, opponents of those bills frequently argued that nothing Oregon does, with a population of just 3 million people, would make any real difference in combating climate change. Solutions, critics said, needed to be national in scope. Don’t look now, but President Obama announced a plan last week that takes just such a nationwide approach. And, as a result of steps Oregon lawmakers have already taken, this state is well positioned to comply with the president’s Clean Power Plan, if it survives court challenges and is fully implemented. Oregon is not among the worst offenders among the states when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. There is only one coal-¿red power plant in Oregon, the Portland General Electric facility at Boardman, which is the state’s largest emitter of CO2. PGE already has committed to stop burning coal at that plant by 2020. But that doesn’t mean Oregon is off the hook. Paci¿c Power gets appro[imately 60 percent of its power from coal-¿red plants in other states. The utility has pledged to close 10 coal plants by 202 or convert them to natural gas. Carbon-reduction goals the state has set for itself are far more stringent than those in the Clean Power Plan, although slashing carbon dio[ide outputs may be delayed if coal plant outputs are replaced with natural gas. Gas emits about half the carbon of coal, but methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dio[ide, and leakage of gas into the atmosphere from plants or pipelines can increase the state’s carbon footprint. Ultimately, replacing fossil fuel power generation with renewable sources such as solar and wind — to the degree that’s possible — will have the greatest impact on carbon emissions, and Oregon already requires its large utilities to get 25 percent of their power from renewables by 2025. It’s true that Oregon’s efforts, laudable as they are, won’t have much effect on global carbon emissions by themselves. But combined with the other West Coast states and ultimately with the entire country, our state’s contribution will be part of something much larger. Oregon is not among the worst offenders when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. T eaching can’t compete. reason not to implement promising When the economy improves new approaches or to shrink from and job prospects multiply, e[perimentation, it puts an onus on college students turn their attention policymakers and administrators to elsewhere, to professions that promise bring generous measures of training, more money, more independence, support and patience to the task. more respect. Teachers crave better opportunities That was one takeaway from a for career growth. Evan Stone, one Frank widely discussed story in The Times on of the chief e[ecutives of Educators Bruni Sunday by Motoko Rich, who charted 4 E[cellence, which represents about Comment teacher shortages so severe in certain 17,000 teachers nationwide, called for areas of the country that teachers are “career ladders for teachers to move being rushed into classrooms with dubious into specialist roles, master-teacher roles.” Tuali¿cations and before “They’re worried that they’ve earned their teaching they’re going to be doing credentials. the same thing on day one It’s a sad, alarming state as they’ll be doing 30 years of affairs, and it proves that in,” he told me. for all our lip service about He also questioned improving the education of licensing laws that prevent America’s children, we’ve the easy movement of an failed to make teaching e[emplary teacher from one the draw that it should be, state to another. Minnesota the honor that it must be. recently rela[ed such Nationally, enrollment requirements; if other states in teacher preparation followed suit, it might build programs dropped by 30 a desirable new Àe[ibility percent between 2010 and into the profession. 2014, as Rich reported. Teaching also needs to To make matters worse, be endowed with greater more than 40 percent of prestige. One intriguing line the people who do go into of thought about how to do teaching e[it the profession within ¿ve years. this is to make the requirements for becoming How do we make teaching more rewarding, a teacher more dif¿cult, so that a teaching so that it beckons to not only enough college credential has luster. graduates but to a robust share of the very best In the book “The Smartest Kids in the of them? World,” Amanda Ripley noted that Finland’s Better pay is a must. There’s no getting teachers are revered in part because they’re the around that. Many teachers in many areas survivors of selective screening and rigorous can’t hope to buy a house and support a training. family on their incomes, and college students Kate Walsh, the president of the National contemplating careers know that. If those Council on Teacher Quality, told me that students are taking on debt, teaching isn’t in this country, “It’s pretty ¿rmly rooted in likely to provide a timely way to pay it off. college students that education is a fairly easy The average salary nationally for public major.” Too often, it’s also “a major of last school teachers, including those with decades resort,” she said. in the classroom, is under $57,000; starting Dan Brown, a co-director of Educators salaries in some states barely crest $30,000. Rising, which encourages teenagers to There’s also the issue of autonomy. contemplate careers in the classroom, said “The No. 1 thing is giving teachers a voice, that teaching might be ready for its own a real voice,” Randi Weingarten, the president Fle[ner Report, an early 100s document that of the American Federation of Teachers, said revolutionized medical schools and raised the to me this week. bar for American medicine, contributing to the Education leaders disagree over how aura that surrounds physicians today. much of a voice and in what. Weingarten He also asked why, in the intensifying emphasizes teacher involvement in policy, political discussions about making college and a survey of some 30,000 teachers and more affordable, there’s not more talk of other school workers done by the AFT and methods “to recognize and incentivize future the Badass Teachers Association in late April public servants,” foremost among them showed that one large source of stress was teachers. being left out of such decisions. There should be. The health of our Others focus on primarily letting teachers democracy and the perpetuation of our chart the day-by-day path to the goals laid prosperity depend on teaching no less than out for them, so that they’re not just obedient they do on Wall Street’s machinations or vessels for a one-size-¿ts-all script. Hold them Silicon Valley’s innovations. So let’s make the accountable, but give them discretion. classroom a destination as sensible, e[citing The political battles over education, along and ful¿lling as any other. with the shifting vogues about what’s best, Ŷ have left many teachers feeling like pawns Frank Bruni has been a columnist for The and punching bags. And while that’s no New York Times since 2011. Better pay is a must. Many teachers in many areas can’t hope to buy a house and support a family on their incomes. YOUR VIEWS Council not responsible for Pendleton’s roads problems Reading the editorial of Aug. 6 makes me wonder where is the honesty you so blatantly demand of the city council. The paragraph you select as the reason for our present situation — “It took decades of mismanagement, poor budgeting and bad leadership to get us to this position” — leads me to ask, is that really an honest appraisal of this council or is there something else going on? I read that the great city of Portland is looking for 1.3 billion to ¿[ its street problems; that the city of Bend has postponed its Yote on a gas ta[ to ¿[ its streets; that cities all oYer Oregon are trying to ¿[, paYe and patch their city streets and nobody seems to haYe the money to ¿[ the problem. How is it possible that so many cities suffer from the same fate? Surely not all of the councils in Oregon are guilty of the same folly of mismanagement, etc. Perhaps we should look elsewhere for answers to how we got here. Some of the standard reasons for the situation in Pendleton and most other cities were never even mentioned in the editorial, such as a lot more cars and many miles more driven, greater mileage per gallon, much less revenue distributed from the state gas ta[ fund and the much greater cost of materials and maintenance, to note a few. The opinion Tuite dishonestly offers a public Àogging for a crime not committed. You unjustly attribute the local problem to many councils past and present when in fact the problem is systemic to most of the cities in Oregon, the U.S. and e[acerbated by inaction on the local, state and national level, and is growing worse. And in the same editorial we ¿nd the words “:e¶re going to ta[ you an egregious amount.” Does the editorial crowd understand that the council doesn¶t ta[ without the consent of the ta[ed? That¶s us. The council only sets the rate. We the citizens of the city approve or not approve the ta[. It is our collective responsibility to ta[ ourselves to pay for the services we want. If a gas ta[ levy fails, you can hardly blame the council if the citizens of the city who keep crying “¿[ our streets” turn down a 5 cent gas ta[ levy designed to do just that. Larry O’Rourke Pendleton Walking tour a reminder of Pendleton’s interesting history Anyone interested in Pendleton’s history or curious as to why tourists come to Pendleton should go on the walking tour “Robbers, Reprobates and the Red-Light District.” The one-hour tour is every Saturday at 10:30 a.m. and starts at MaySon’s Old Fashion General Store at the corner of Main and Emigrant in Pendleton. The tour is led by Keith May and is insightful, fun and real. I highly recommend it. Pendletonians, we live in an e[tremely interesting town. Fritz Hill Pendleton
