OFF PAGE ONE
Saturday, June 3, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 9A
Adopted from a foster home,
PENDLETON: 150 students
PHS grad looks to pay it forward are home-schooled in town
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
By the time she finishes
college, Jennifer Kannier
could come full circle.
After she graduates from
Pendleton High School
Saturday, she plans to pursue
a degree and career in social
work, a fitting profession for
the former foster child.
Jennifer said she spent her
first three years in Longview,
a southwestern Washington
town 50 miles north of Port-
land.
Her biological parents
struggled with addiction
to drugs and alcohol and
Jennifer was eventually
placed in a foster home
across the Columbia River in
Rainier, Oregon.
She would intermittently
stay at a drug treatment
facility with her mother. But
when mom slipped back into
addiction, Rainier became
Jennifer’s longterm home.
But even though Jennifer’s
world kept changing, she
remained relatively unfazed.
“I felt like I was a normal
child,” she said.
Kannier’s
fortunes
changed after she turned 7,
when the state sent letters to
her relatives asking if they
would be willing to take her
on.
Jennifer’s first cousin,
Wyndi Kannier, answered
the call and adopted her,
triggering Jennifer’s move to
Pendleton.
In the first couple of
years, state social workers
studiously followed up on
her placement, going as far as
to check to see if all the fire
extinguishers in the Kannier
residence worked.
Those check-ins from the
state have since subsided and
Jennifer’ life has flourished
under the watch of her adop-
tive parents.
A National Honors Society
student with a part-time
job at the Round-Up office,
Jennifer said she hasn’t been
especially public about her
past. Although she’s annoyed
when some of her classmates
unknowingly make adoption
jokes in front of her, she has
received strong support from
Continued from 1A
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
A former foster child, Jennifer Kannier plans to pur-
sue a career in social work after she graduates from
Pendleton High School Saturday.
the people she’s talked about
it with.
Knowing that some of
her classmates have absentee
parents, Jennifer is thankful
that her own adoptive parents
took her on and supported her.
She’s aware that other foster
children aren’t as lucky.
According to a 2014 study
conducted in California,
foster children performed
worse in English and math
than their peers and grad-
uated high school at a 58
percent rate, 26 percentage
points below their peers.
Jennifer said it still hasn’t
hit her yet that she has earned
a diploma, but she already
has her sights set on where
she’s going next — Bend.
Jennifer and her adoptive
family moved to Bend for a
year, when Jennifer was a
freshman in high school. The
Kanniers ultimately moved
back to Pendleton to be closer
to her sick grandmother, but
Jennifer said she was struck
by Bend’s beauty and the
friendliness of its residents.
She plans to attend Bend’s
Central Oregon Community
College and live on campus,
perhaps learn to ski.
Although she’s unsure of
which four-year university
she’ll transfer to after she’s
done
with
community
college, she does know that
she wants to pursue social
work as a career.
Jennifer views it as a
way of paying it forward for
the way the foster system
helped her out of a difficult
situation.
“I feel like I would be one
of the most qualified (social
workers),” she said, having
been in the system herself.
At the graduation cere-
mony Saturday, members
from both her families will be
there. While she’s fallen out
of touch with her biological
mother, she’s invited her two
biological brothers to watch
her walk the stage.
will have to promote itself to
gain some of them back.
Yoshioka, who also serves
as the district’s director of
curriculum, instruction and
assessment, studied some
of the sources that were
siphoning off Pendleton’s
students in November.
Yoshioka said Pendleton
has long lost more of its
students to surrounding
districts than it takes from
them — and recent trends
reveal that hasn’t changed.
According to his research,
surrounding districts were
enrolling 131 students that
resided in the Pendleton
School District bound-
aries. Meanwhile, only 25
students commuted from the
surrounding area to attend
Pendleton schools.
Additionally,
150
students are home-schooled
in Pendleton rather than sent
to public school.
A newer trend drawing
kids away from the district
is online charter, which
allow students to log-in
to school from a laptop at
home. In Yoshioka’s survey,
57 Pendleton students chose
this route.
In an educational market-
place, Yoshioka said the
district will have to advertise
directly to the public in the
same way charter schools do.
Yoshioka said the district
has plenty to advertise, like
Pendleton High School’s
91 percent graduation rate
in 2015-2016, the district’s
career technical education
offerings and more.
While Pendleton prob-
ably won’t ever be able
to compete with the small
class sizes school districts
like Helix offer, the district
may be able to start new
services that make a dent in
Pendleton’s online charter
community.
The
InterMountain
Education Service District
recently unveiled IMESD
Online, a service for all of its
member districts that gives
them the ability to create
their own online schools.
But bringing those 57
students into the district’s
fold won’t be automatic.
Pendleton
resident
Angela Bonzani said she and
her husband have never been
interested in sending her
eight children, six of them
school-aged, to a traditional
public school.
Home schooling allowed
her children more time with
the family and better sleep,
which was the route the
Bonzanis took until they
enrolled their children in
Baker Charter Schools.
Bonzani liked that Baker
took away the stress of
identifying and purchasing
curriculum for her students
while still having the
flexibility of a home school
environment.
“It’s a lot like home
schooling, because you’re
home,” she said.
Even
if
Pendleton
launched an online program,
she has no plans to transfer
her kids from Baker Charter
Schools because of the
resources and attention the
programs offer.
Acknowledging that not
every family is going imme-
diately jump at the chance of
joining a Pendleton online
school, Yoshioka said his
early expectations for the
online program would be
30-50 new students for the
district.
Increased
competi-
tion isn’t the only thing
depressing
Pendleton’s
enrollment,
especially
considering that Baker
and the dozen other online
charter schools are each
capped at enrolling 3 percent
of a public school district’s
population.
Pendleton is graying
Whether it’s because of
the national trend of couples
having smaller families,
or the tight local housing
market and family wage
jobs, the result is the same.
“Pendleton is an aging
community,” Yoshioka said.
According to the U.S.
Census, Pendleton lost 98
people between 2000 and
2010, less than 1 percent.
But although working
age adults and seniors rose
by 1.6 percent and 1.4
percent, respectively, school
age children (5-17) declined
by 8 percent. The preschool
pipeline offered no respite
either — children between
the ages of 0 and 4 decreased
by 6.4 percent.
How funding works
Luckily for Pendleton, the
state doesn’t base enrollment
funding on a raw headcount
— it’s funding per student is
actually set to go up.
Michael Wiltfong, the
Oregon Department of
Education’s director of
school finance explained
that the state uses a metric
called weighed average daily
membership, or ADMw, to
calculate how much money
is allocated to each pupil.
ADMw adds more weight to
special education students,
English language learners,
impoverished students and
other kids that might need
more funding to be educated.
School officials lay a lot
of the burden of the district’s
budget cuts on the state
budget.
According
to
the
Confederation of Oregon
School Administrators, the
Oregon Quality Education
Commission
determined
that the state would need
to spend $9.1 billion in the
2017-2019 biennium to
reach the national average in
instructional time and class
size. The current proposed
education budget is $8.2
billion.
With Pendleton down
several staff members
heading into next year, Yosh-
ioka is unsure if the decrease
in faculty will create larger
class sizes, which will
depend on kindergarten
registration.
Despite
the
school
district’s slide, Yoshioka said
he’s optimistic, pointing to
incoming Superintendent
Chris Fritsch’s commitment
to boosting enrollment.
Yoshioka also had another
figure that made for positive
news. The 180 kids already
enrolled in kindergarten are
twice the amount that were
enrolled at this time last year.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra at
asierra@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0836.