KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2021
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
State laws
create an
incentive
for high fees
W
hat’s broken about Oregon’s public
records laws remains broken. And
every year that goes by with it
broken, the public’s ability to know what its
government is doing is diminished.
Oregon’s public records laws are well-inten-
tioned. They also are flawed.
The structure of the law creates a perverse
incentive for high fees. Public bodies are not
given incentives to make public documents
available at low cost. The laws give them the
power to charge reasonable fees to recoup their
costs. That gives them no incentive to keep
those costs as low as possible. And any fee —
no matter how small it may seem — can be like
a wall blocking the public from information.
While there are ways for the public to appeal
decisions to release documents, it’s nowhere
near as simple to get fees reduced.
The problem is easier to understand with
examples. This one we heard from Rachel
Alexander, the managing editor of the Salem
Reporter. She also chairs the Oregon Freedom
of Information Committee of the Society of
Professional Journalists.
She recently spoke with Oregon’s Public
Records Advisory Council.
Remember earlier this year when F. King
Alexander resigned as Oregon State Univer-
sity president? There were questions about his
role in the sexual misconduct investigations at
Louisiana State University. A reporter for the
Albany Democrat-Herald filed a narrow public
records request asking for emails among Alex-
ander and several members of OSU’s board of
trustees. It was emails for a period of about a
week. OSU said it would require an IT expert
to search for emails and came back with a $250
bill.
A $250 fee might seem like nothing. But it’s
a barrier. As you may have heard, most news-
papers are struggling for money these days.
Many smaller newspapers have zero budgets
for public record requests. The newspaper
only was able to get the records after Oregon’s
Society for Professional Journalists awarded it
a grant to do so. The emails showed the work
some members of the board of trustees were
doing behind the scenes to help Alexander
craft messaging.
If the solution to this fee issue were simple,
of course, it already would be fixed. Many
government agencies have a culture of trans-
parency and openness. They try to be forth-
coming about records, making them available
swiftly and at minimal or no cost.
But even for government agencies with that
culture, not every public records request is
easy to tackle. Sweeping requests may require
poring through hundreds of emails or docu-
ments, taking significant staff time. Imagine
what that would be like for a small town with
few staff.
There are solutions out there. Some states
put limits on what can be charged. Some juris-
dictions bar charging for time spent research-
ing if a record may be exempt from disclosure.
The federal government defines what can
be charged for Freedom of Information Act
requests. As Alexander put it, relying on shoe-
string efforts of journalists to crowdfund public
records requests is no solution.
We don’t expect the Legislature will take
on this issue in the short 2022 session. At least
another year will pass with Oregon’s broken
public records laws. It will be another year
where the public’s right to know is diminished.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the East Oregonian.
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Home-schooling will boom long after COVID-19
LANCE
IZUMI
OTHER VIEWS
S
tudent enrollment in public schools
has nosedived as parent disgust
with school COVID-19 policies,
student learning losses and controver-
sial education policies has gone through
the roof. In the wake of this enrollment
implosion, home-schooling has boomed
across the country.
At the beginning of the school year,
the U.S. Department of Education esti-
mated 1.5 million students had left the
public schools since the coronavirus
pandemic began.
If students are not enrolling in public
schools, where are they going? The
numbers show many former public
school students are now being home-
schooled.
The U.S. Census Bureau found the
percentage of home-schooling house-
holds more than doubled in 2020 from
5% in spring to 11% in the fall.
According to a recent University of
Michigan study, from 2020 to 2021, the
enrollment at public schools in Mich-
igan fell by nearly 46,000 students,
which represented a more than a 3%
drop. Among kindergartners, there was
a decrease of more than 11%.
The increase in home-schoolers does
not come from just a narrow segment of
the American population. A University
of Washington Bothell analysis found,
“The diversity of home-schoolers in the
U.S. mirrors the diversity of all students
nationally,” including all racial, reli-
gious, political, and income groups.
For instance, the Census Bureau
found that among African American
households the increase in home-school-
ing was much steeper than in the coun-
try as a whole, rising from 3% to 16%, a
five-fold jump.
This increase in African Ameri-
can home-schooling is not surprising
given recent research by McKinsey
& Company that found “Students in
majority Black schools ended the (2020-
21 school) year with six months of
unfinished learning.”
Demetria Zinga, one of the coun-
try’s top African American home-
school YouTubers, says, “I believe
home-schooling is growing and
exploding amongst African Ameri-
cans and there will be more and more
home-schoolers.”
Home-school mom Magda Gomez,
an immigrant from Mexico, has become
an activist for home-schooling in the
Hispanic community.
She observes: “We Hispanics as a
culture are usually very protective and
loving towards our children. However,
I explain that love is not enough to
raise our children. We have to educate
ourselves in different areas (of educa-
tion), especially since we are not in our
(native) country but are immigrants.”
“It is my dream,” she says, “to see
more Hispanic families doing home-
school.” Her dream is coming true
with home-schooling doubling among
Hispanic households, from 6% to 12%.
In addition to the racial diversity of
home-schoolers, in 2021 the school-
choice organization EdChoice found:
“Many parents of children with autism,
ADHD, and other neuro-developmen-
tal disorders report that public schools
cannot effectively address their child’s
specialized learning needs.”
Pediatric nurse and home-school
mom Jackie Nunes unenrolled her
special-needs daughter from public
school saying, “There just wasn’t
enough of the things that matter — time,
attention, patience, persistence, passion,
support.”
The coronavirus pandemic has
exposed all the flaws in the one-size-
fits-all public schools, which is why the
home-school boom is shaking up Amer-
ican education.
———
Lance Izumi is senior director of
the Center for Education at the Pacific
Research Institute.
these workers? What about those jobs and
the economic effect on the communities?
What about the land that Oregon owns as
state parks and Eastern Oregon Univer-
sity? And if we became a part of Idaho,
how would that affect the current county
employees?
Our lives are bound by laws regard-
less of where we live; are you sure Idaho’s
laws are better? Without a massive review
how could anyone really decide? There
could be any number of unforeseen conse-
quences that frustrate us — no state has a
perfect set of laws.
Many Umatilla County voters feel
disenfranchised from the Oregon Legis-
lature, but I can tell you growing up in
Idaho that the voters of rural communi-
ties felt the same there. I don’t see that the
Boise-based Legislature is going to be any
more aware of Umatilla County and its
voters. The issue is promoted as “red vs.
blue,” but it is more an issue of population
density; where there are more people, they
are given more attention. That is what
needs to change: giving equal attention to
all citizens.
We are not just red or blue. In fact, we
are purple — a mix of people, cultures,
political ideologies and values. If you want
change in Umatilla County, then speak up
with constructive ideas and tell the public
exactly what you want changed. Just
saying that “I’m unhappy” doesn’t really
give much information; what are you
trying to accomplish?
Let’s hear some positive ideas on how
to promote Umatilla County and rural
communities. Let’s hear positive ideas
that include all our people on how to solve
our problems. And let’s keep Umatilla
County a part of Oregon!
Margaret Normington-Jones
Pendleton
YOUR VIEWS
Keep ‘purple’ Umatilla
County in Oregon
As a teenager growing up in Moscow,
Idaho, I heard talk supporting the idea
that eastern Washington, northern
Idaho and western Montana should all
band together to form a new state called
“Washidamont.” You can see where that
idea went.
Now I hear talk that several Oregon
counties should become part of Idaho with
the reasoning that the rural counties don’t
agree with the politics, policies and laws
passed by the Oregon congress.
Let’s take a look at some of the ramifi-
cations of joining Idaho.
Umatilla County has more than 47,000
registered voters. They would all have to
reregister in Idaho, and that state does not
have mail-in voting except for absentee
voters. Umatilla County would have to
reset its election systems, and many voters
in rural areas would face hardships to
vote.
Driver’s licenses would have to be
issued by the state of Idaho. Passports
would have to be updated and addresses
changed. All of this costs money. Jobs
with required certifications such as regis-
tered nurses, teachers, lawyers, real estate
agents would all have to be recertified,
and again that costs those employees
money. Schools would have to be accred-
ited according to Idaho law. It goes on and
on.
Oregon state employees who live and
work in Umatilla County would no longer
be employed here — will Idaho replace
Resolving pandemic
is a work in progress
Thanks for all of the comments about
the COVID-19 pandemic. The more infor-
mation we receive about a problem, the
higher the likelihood of finding an effec-
tive solution. Of course, each bit of data
must be evaluated for credibility to be
useful. Resolving this pandemic is obvi-
ously a work in progress.
Rejecting treatment modalities for not
being 100% effective is a bit like looking
for health insurance and deciding cover-
age up to $5,000,000 would be necessary
to cover any potential disaster. There-
fore, if the only available policy is for just
$200,000, it would not be worth the time,
effort or expense to have.
In addition to finding the shortcom-
ings of certain treatments, we should
each formulate what could be helpful in
solving this problem and try to implement
those ideas. In addition to the unbeliev-
able death toll and disruption of lives, our
medical system is being overwhelmed,
making it difficult or impossible not only
to treat those with COVID-19 but to
provide help for other serious illnesses
and injuries.
May all of mankind soon have relief
from this pandemic.
Dr. Richard Haddock
La Grande