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SCHOOL: Pathway program includes reimbursement
Page 12A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
tuition cost from $159 to
$45, Mendoza said her early
interest in teaching was con-
firmed when she starting
participating in Pathway.
“I knew this is what I
wanted to do,” she said.
Although Umatilla is 43
percent Latino and its school
district 73 percent non-
white, the district’s faculty
is majority white.
Mendoza said she wasn’t
taught under any Latino
teachers until she reached
high school, and as a Latina
herself, she said it would
have been nice to have had
a role model who shared her
background and culture when
she struggled at school.
Creating a more diverse
faculty isn’t just a feel-good
move — academic studies
show that students that are
demographically
matched
with their teachers perform
better in school, are less likely
to drop out, and bring higher
morale to the classroom.
Once they graduated high
school, both Spriet and Men-
doza began taking classes
at EOU, where they took a
class in cultural responsive-
ness and met requirements
to obtain an English for
speakers of other languages
endorsement.
Both women want to
work in their hometown
districts once they gradu-
ate, and Mendoza would
help Umatilla close its stu-
dent-teacher color gap.
The state has long rec-
ognized the gap as an
issue, passing the Minority
Teacher Act in 1991, which
set a goal of matching the
percentage of student and
teacher demographics by
2001.
The Oregon Legislature
began amending the act after
it failed to meet the goal.
Reforms in 2013 and
2015 required the state to
produce annual reports on
teacher-student equity and
directed all of the state’s
public education programs
to create plans that would
lead to a more diverse
teacher workforce.
Since then, the state has
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Student teacher Shelby Spriet answers a question
about an assignment from second-grader Riley Wil-
liams on Friday at McKay Creek Elementary School.
also created a scholarship
program for “culturally or lin-
guistically diverse teaching
candidates,” and eventually
wants to create a publicity
campaign to attract students
of color to the profession.
But ultimately, the effort
to diversify the state’s edu-
cators is the responsibility of
the administrators and hiring
panels who select them.
Local successes
Although the Umatilla
School District is a member
of the Pathway program, dis-
trict Superintendent Heidi
Sipe said her school system
has adopted a “grow your
own” mentality in 2005.
That’s the year the district
began employing Umatilla
High School students to man-
age its after-school program,
giving older students a chance
to get hands-on experience as
educational mentors.
Sipe said the program
spurred students of color
to go out and get their edu-
cation before returning to
teach, boosting the share of
minority of teachers from
3 percent in 2012-13 to 12
percent in 2017-18.
Milton-Freewater
is
another community with a
heavily Latino student body
and a predominantly white
staff.
When he took over as
superintendent of the Mil-
ton-Freewater Unified School
District in 2013, Rob Clark
said he was surprised about
the lack of teachers of color.
“I
was
absolutely
shocked,” he said.
Milton-Freewater’s share
of minority teachers is now
at 16 percent. Clark said
students of color need role
models that look like them,
comparing it to his efforts
to hire more female coaches
for girls’ sports when he was
an athletic director in Cen-
tral Washington.
Like Umatilla, Clark said
many of his new hires come
from the Milton-Freewater
area.
Although McLoughlin
High School also has a Path-
way program, Clark said it
will take some time to create
results for his district.
Systemic barriers
While EOU is supposed
to create a pipeline for
minority teacher candidates,
the current student body
in its college of education
doesn’t reflect that goal.
According to the equity
report, the program was
comprised of only 7 percent
nonwhite students in 2017-
2018, the lowest of any edu-
cation program in a public or
private school.
Tawnya Lubbes, an assis-
tant professor of education
and leader of the Pathway
program, said some EOU
students may have underre-
ported their ethnic heritage,
but systemic barriers remain
for students to get into the
education program.
Districts that have strug-
gled to raise the number of
teachers of color in their fac-
ulty enumerated some of
those barriers.
While the Hermiston
School District is more than
half nonwhite, it’s diversity
BALLOTS: Remain unopened for now
Continued from 1A
Ballots remain unopened
and won’t be processed by
county clerks until next
Tuesday, according to Debra
Royal, chief of staff for
Secretary of State Dennis
Richardson.
While voters continue
to make up their minds,
national political groups
continue to pour money into
Oregon’s governor race.
On Oct. 18, for instance,
the Republican Governors
Association gave another
$500,000 to state Rep. Knute
Buehler. Gov. Kate Brown,
meanwhile, netted $250,000
from Democratic pro-choice
group EMILY’S List. The
group has given $750,000 to
Brown so far.
As of Friday, disclosure
forms showed Buehler’s
campaign with a balance of
$3.2 million, while Brown
had about $3.5 million left to
spend.
Buehler has been in the
spotlight for considerable
donations from the Repub-
lican governors and Nike
co-founder Phil Knight,
which have each given Bue-
hler $2.5 million.
Knight also gave $1 mil-
lion to the governors asso-
ciation last month, lead-
ing Democrats to speculate
that the funds were imme-
diately routed to Buehler’s
campaign. The association
has said donors can’t direct
where their money goes.
In addition to those infu-
sions, Buehler also reported
receiving $100,000 from
lumber company Freres
Timber Inc.
Brown has been attract-
ing donations from con-
servation, gun safety and
pro-choice groups, accord-
ing to her campaign finance
reports.
The League of Conser-
vation Voters PAC recently
chipped in $65,709, and
Planned Parenthood of
Oregon provided another
$25,000. On the 16th, she
received
an
additional
$250,000 from national gun
control advocacy group
Everytown for Gun Safety,
which has given her a total
of $500,000.
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share has flitted between 8
percent and 9 percent for the
past seven years.
Although the district offers
a Pathway program and a tui-
tion reimbursement program
for its classified staff, which
tend to be more diverse than
teachers, Human Resource
Director David Marshall said
the district is having trouble
filling teaching positions in
general, and the majority of
the applicants who do apply
are white.
The Pendleton School
District isn’t included in the
state’s equity report because
it doesn’t surpass 40 percent
minority students, but the
district joined the Pathway
program in hopes of attract-
ing more American Indian
teachers to meet the needs
of its student population
from the Umatilla Indian
Reservation.
Matt Yoshioka, curricu-
lum, instruction, and assess-
ment director for the Pendle-
ton School District, said the
Pendleton school system is
now down to one American
Indian faculty member.
Yoshioka said he’s con-
sidering having school staff
meet with every high school
student individually to talk
about exploring the teaching
profession, including stu-
dents at Nixyaawii Commu-
nity School, a charter school
that enrolls many tribal
students.
Hilda Rosselli, the direc-
tor of career and college
readiness for the Oregon
Chief Education Office, said
the barriers could go as deep
as the testing students need
to pass to obtain their teach-
ing license.
Rosselli said some stu-
dents who learned English
as a second language might
struggle with the test and the
state is looking into mak-
ing changes that would be
fairer to that population
without watering down the
test. The state has also pro-
vided implicit bias training
to educators who sit on hir-
ing panels. Rosselli said that
without being aware of it,
educators can favor candi-
dates who share their back-
ground and experiences.
Saturday, October 27, 2018
HEALTH: Patients will
still see the same team
Continued from 1A
McBee said.
The Umatilla Hospital
District notified Armstrong
in May that they would
not be renewing her con-
tract to provide clinic ser-
vices at the district-owned
building at 1890 Seventh
St. At the time, McBee
said the board had simply
decided to “go in a differ-
ent direction.”
Now
they
have
announced that Family
Health Associates, which
is led by Dr. Derek Earl,
will open a clinic in the
building on Nov. 15. For
now, the building is closed
as it undergoes a new paint
job and other adjustments.
McBee said the hospi-
tal district board is very
happy to see FHA open a
Umatilla branch.
“I think it’s going to be
great,” she said.
Although Armstrong
will no longer contract
with the hospital district,
Umatilla is not losing her
as a provider. She and her
husband Mark Keith pur-
chased a large house at
82346 Bucks Lane (just
off Highway 730 before
Interstate 82) and have
remodeled it into Encore
Wellness 4 Life Umatilla,
a private wellness cen-
ter that will officially start
seeing patients Nov. 1.
Keith said patients can
expect to see the same
team as the old site, with
the addition of provider
Jan Atigbi. They will serve
as a “wellness team, not a
sick-care team,” he said.
That will include more
traditional medical care
in addition to “natural
and holistic care” such as
supplements, high-nutri-
ent IV therapy and allergy
therapy.
Armstrong said she
doesn’t see Earl and his
team at Family Health
Associates as competi-
tion. Right now she refers
patients to him and he
refers patients to her, she
said, and she plans to con-
tinue their collaboration.
She said when Colum-
bia River Health builds a
clinic they will also com-
plement and expand ser-
vices already provided in
Umatilla.
“It’s not at all ‘us
against them,’” she said.
“We’re
all
working
together to provide care
for the community.”
Columbia River Health
CEO Seth Whitmer said
CRH has already pur-
chased property for the
planned clinic to be built
sometime in the next few
years.
The company provides
a community health cen-
ter in Boardman and this
year took over medical
sponsorship of the school-
based health clinics in
Pendleton.
Columbia River Health
has also acquired the for-
mer Carlson’s Umatilla
Drug.
Cathy Putnam, who
has owned the pharmacy
and drug store since 1985,
is joining the Columbia
River Health family and
will continue running the
pharmacy.
“People will still be
able to see her familiar
face,” Whitmer said.
The drug store has fea-
tured a gift shop in the past,
and Whitmer said that will
be removed, but other than
that day-to-day custom-
ers likely won’t see much
of a difference in who is
serving them or the med-
icines they are receiving.
Once CRH builds its new
clinic, Whitmer said, the
pharmacy will be moved
from its current location at
821 Sixth St. to inside the
clinic.
To celebrate the transi-
tion from Carlson’s Uma-
tilla Drug to Columbia
River Pharmacy, the phar-
macy will have a com-
munity open house Nov.
8 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. It
will include hot chocolate,
vitamins for children and
flu shots from 11 a.m. to 1
p.m.
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