REGION
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 3A
PENDLETON
Board approves superintendent contract
Ontario High School, was
named superintendent March 7
The Pendleton School Board and will start July 1.
Other topics discussed
approved a three-year contract with
incoming Superintendent Andy Kovach during the meeting:
• The board unanimously
at a meeting Monday.
Michelle Jones, the district’s director approved new curriculum for
of business services, said Kovach will the school district, which will
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The adopted curriculum is
opportunity to negotiate pay raises after
K-8 Ready Math Curriculum, Kovach
his annual evaluation from the board.
The $127,500 salary represents the K-12 iReady Diagnostics
low end of the pay scale offered by the and Interventions Tool, McGraw Hill
board when it advertised the job, the $OJHEUD , +RXJKWRQ 0LIÀLQ +DUFRXUW
Geometry and Algebra II, McGraw Hill
maximum being $140,000.
Outgoing
Superintendent
Jon Integrated Math and Glencoe Health
Peterson retired last year but agreed to Series High School Health.
With pension costs and the state’s
work on contract through June while the
minimum wage set to rise next year,
board found a successor.
For the 2014-2015 school year, the board member Steve Umbarger said
last year before his retirement, Peterson purchasing new curriculum could be
costly on a tight budget.
earned $128,215.
Peterson said the district could priori-
Kovach, currently the principal of
East Oregonian
tize which curriculum to adopt
if there’s not enough money in
the budget for all of them.
•
Special
Programs
Director Julie Smith reported
an improvement in results of
the district’s special education
report card.
Although still behind the
state target, special education
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graduation
rates
nearly
doubled from the year before — 52.4
percent and 53.6 percent, respectively.
Special education students are also
showing progress outside the classroom.
While only 10 percent of special
education students are enrolled in some
type of higher education, well below
the state target, that number jumps to 65
percent when competitive employment
is included, which is above the state’s
expectation.
Photo contributed by OSP
The heads of two bighorn sheep were removed by
poachers east of Biggs Junction in Gilliam County.
Alleged bighorn
UMATILLA
Robotics team heads to World Championships poachers get
May 6 hearing
By JENNIFER COLTON
East Oregonian
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Umatilla Robotics will compete at the
World Championships.
This weekend, Umatilla’s FIRST
Robotics Competition team, 4125
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Northwest District Championships in
Portland, a regional level competition
against 159 teams from Oregon and
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the Engineering Inspiration Award, an
honor that celebrates outstanding success
in advancing respect and appreciation for
engineering within a team’s school and
community.
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to lead robotics clubs and classes at
McNary Heights Elementary School as
well as participating and volunteering at
community events across the county.
“It’s really cool this year because
we’re going to the championships on a
completely different path. This isn’t just
about the efforts of the robot, this is a whole
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Only one team from each regional
competition can win the Engineering
Contributed Photo
Umatilla’s Team 4125 “Confidential” qualified for the FIRST World
Championships at the regional competition this weekend in Portland.
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Umatilla Robotics to compete at the
world championships, April 27-30 in St.
Louis, Missouri.
At the championship, 900 teams and
20,000 students from 39 countries will
compete. Among those students will be
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“We’ve been looking and hotels and
talking to Mid-Columbia about busing
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of how we’re going to get everyone
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competition by winning the Chairman’s
Award at one district-level competition
and the Engineering Inspiration Award
at the other.
BRIEFLY
Irrigon teen
arrested for rape
IRRIGON — A
15-year-old Irrigon boy
raped an 18-year-old woman
and now is in jail, according
to the Morrow County
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not identify either person.
The county’s dispatch
center Sunday at 6:53 p.m.
received information from
Good Shepherd Medical
Center, Hermiston, that
an 18-year-old female
from Irrigon reported a
15-year-old boy sexually
assaulted her, according to
a written statement from the
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A deputy contacted the
victim at the hospital, and
sheriff’s detective Brian
Synder responded and began
a sexual assault investigation.
The woman and her
boyfriend visited the
15-year-old Saturday
evening at his home in
Irrigon. Sunday at about 1
a.m., according to the sher-
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raped and sexually assaulted
her.
The survivor told her
boyfriend in the morning
“the 15-year-old did
something to her during
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statement, “but she did not
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was “upset, confused and
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decided to call a girlfriend,
who told her to tell her
parents.
She did, the sheriff’s
they are taking their time
with the investigation
CONDON — The two before the May hearing.
men accused of poaching Weatherford said the duo
bighorn
sheep
along could face up to $50,000 in
Interstate 84 east of Biggs restitution — $25,000 for
Junction will be arraigned each animal killed.
Weatherford did not
May 6 in Gilliam County.
Cody Plagmann, 37, provide any other infor-
and Justin Samora, 32, mation about the motive
are accused of working for the incident. Bighorn
together to kill and behead sheep were reintroduced in
two bighorns from the I-84 Oregon in 1954 and wild-
herd earlier this month. OLIH RI¿FLDOV HVWLPDWH WKHUH
They were arrested by are now roughly 4,500 of
Oregon State Police and the animals across the state.
Drawing a bighorn tag is a
have since posted bail.
Plagmann, of Albany, once-in-a-lifetime hunting
was booked on charges opportunity in Oregon, with
of taking or possessing fewer than 100 tags issued.
According to OSP,
bighorn sheep, wasting a
game animal and hunting troopers received a tip from
on closed ground. Samora, a passing motorist on the
of Layton, Utah, also faces morning of April 3 that
charges of aiding in a someone was apparently
game violation. There is no gutting a game animal
hunting season for bighorns next to I-84. Samora was
from the I-84 herd, which discovered at the scene
have become a popular sitting in a vehicle, while
viewing attraction along the Plagmann was found hours
later hiding along railroad
highway.
Charges have not yet tracks two miles away. In
EHHQ¿OHGLQFRXUW*LOOLDP the course of their search,
County District Attorney troopers found the severed
Marion Weatherford said heads of two bighorns.
East Oregonian
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her to the hospital.
Synder obtained a search
warrant for the residence
and found evidence there,
according to the statement,
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and book him into the youth
jail at the Northern Oregon
Regional Corrections
Facility, The Dalles.
The Morrow County
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arraigned him Tuesday
afternoon via video from the
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rape, two counts of unlawful
sexual penetration and three
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abuse.
APRIL
Teen dies, two
injured in crash
LA GRANDE — A crash
Monday evening outside La
Grande killed one teen and
injured two others.
Oregon State Police
reported Melissa Book, 19,
was eastbound in a 2008
Toyota Solara at 5:46 p.m.
with two passengers, Alexis
Browning, 18, and Hanna
Doig-Cashell, 18. All three
lived in La Grande.
At about milepost 256,
Book tried to pass a vehicle,
according to preliminary
information from state
police, but the car left the
road and rolled. Police do
not know what caused the
loss of control.
Doig-Cashell died at the
scene. Book suffered serious
injuries and an air ambulance
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Saint Mary Medical Center,
Walla Walla. Browning was
seriously injured as well, and
an ambulance drove her to
Grande Ronde Hospital, La
Grande.
State police closed both
eastbound lanes of I-84 for
approximately three hours
following the crash.
T. S. Eliot called April,
“the cruelest month...”
B UT IT DOESN ’ T HAVE TO BE .
G IVE US A CALL
www.pendletonpsych.com
541-278-2222
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