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WEDNESDAY EDITION
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INVITATIONAL
National Arts and
Humanities Month
SPORTS — C
COMMUNITY — B
126TH YEAR ❘ ISSUE NO. 79
❘ OCTOBER 5, 2016 ❘ $1.00
SERVING WESTERN LANE COUNTY SINCE 1890
FLORENCE, OREGON
Making
the grade
Siuslaw superintendent
evaluates recent school
testing results
B Y J ACK D AVIS
M ARCH FOR
AWARENESS
PHOTOS BY MARK BRENNAN/SIUSLAW NEWS
S
iuslaw Outreach Services (SOS) held its annual Domestic
Violence Awareness Walk Sunday in Historic Old Town
Florence. Mayor Joe Henry and City Councilor Ron
Preisler joined members of the Siuslaw High School band,
football team and cheerleading squads and approximately 100
community members as they marched down Bay Street from
the Veteran’s Memorial Park (right) to the Port of Siuslaw
boardwalk. SOS Director David Wiegan said the walk gets big-
ger every year, and that this year garnered attention from Old
Town merchants and visitors as the participants marched. For
more information on SOS, attend its Business After Hours on
Thursday, Oct. 6, from 5 to 6 p.m., at its office at 1576 12th St.,
or go to FlorenceSOS.org.
New reporter joins Siuslaw News editorial team
B Y C HANTELLE M EYER
Siuslaw News
iuslaw News has announced
the hiring of Mark Brennan as
its new community reporter.
Brennan began working on Monday.
Brennan’s primary focus is to
write stories and take photos that
inform readers about community-
based events, organizations and indi-
viduals who impact Florence and
Mapleton, including the Siuslaw and
Mapleton school districts, Dunes
City Council, local clubs, communi-
ty organizations and various commu-
nity events.
Siuslaw News General Manager
Jenna Bartlett said, “We’re excited
for Mark to become part of our team.
He has strong ties to our area that
will serve him well as the communi-
S
ty reporter.”
Brennan, 58, has lived in Florence
since 2010 with his partner Linda. He
previously lived in Eugene and in
New England.
His “first career,” as he says, was
in photography.
“I was originally a photographer
and owned a photolab, Eugene
Family Photo, but people stopped
dropping off photo rolls with the dig-
ital revolution,” Brennan said. “Once
the digital paradigm occurred, I
decided I needed to do something
else. I followed my natural inclina-
tion and went back to the University
of Oregon for journalism.”
He earned a bachelor’s of science
in journalism and twice was named
student of the year.
“I’ve always been really interested
in journalism. From the time I was
quite young, I interned at my high
school newspaper. I’ve done all sorts
of things that are journalism related,”
Brennan said.
His photographs have won a num-
ber of awards over the years.
“I look forward to bringing a new
perspective to the photography at the
paper,” he said.
Aside from photography, Brennan
has an interest in film. He created
“Welcome to Florence,” a documen-
tary film about the area.
“One of the first things I did when
I came to the area was learn about the
history of Florence at the Siuslaw
Pioneer Museum,” Brennan said.
As the museum’s reference librari-
an, Brennan got a grant from the
Lane County Historical Society to
digitize records and photos. One of
his projects was to find and repair
NED HICKSON/SIUSLAW NEWS
Mark Brennan
vintage images of the area for the
City of Florence’s Siuslaw River
See
The state of Oregon has completed
the second year of a new school eval-
uation test program that replaced the
Oregon Assessment, Knowledge and
Skills (OAKS) test.
Siuslaw School District
Superintendent Andy Grzeskowiak
discussed the recently released all-
state test results during an interview
on Sept. 28.
The new test protocols call for
testing to be done at the third-
through eighth-grades and again at
11th-grade.
The purpose of the testing is to
track the class’s likely graduation
rate and to project senior graduation
percentages — a statewide problem
for Oregon schools.
The tests, which take up to three
days for each subject, evaluate
English language arts, mathematics
and science.
“There is nothing I didn’t really
expect to see,” Grzeskowiak said.
“We have made moderate progress in
most grade areas. There is a bit of a
drop off in middle school, but then
an immediate recovery back in high
school.”
In math and science, the 11th-
grade class scored higher than the
state average — significantly higher
in science, with 75.8 percent to the
state average of 59 percent — while,
in English language arts, the Siuslaw
11th-grade class scored 64.4 percent,
compared to the state average of 69
percent.
According to Grzeskowiak, the
test percentages are based on a four-
point scale. Three equals “meeting”
and four equals “exceeding” gradua-
tion expectations at that grade level.
“Being at three or above means
you are definitely on track to gradu-
ate,” he said.
The new testing schedule can be
daunting for elementary and middle
school students.
“Our old OAKS test took two or
three days to finish. Now we are hav-
ing kids take up to 10 class periods in
sixth grade just to finish the Language
Arts test,” Grzeskowiak said.
He added, “We have basically
tripled our time in testing. Some kids
get tired and just want to get done.
Then they go into what we call
‘happy clicker mode,’ and just
REPORTER 7A
See
TESTS 6A
Florence Economic Development Committee details successes and highlights
INSIDE
Florence City Council heard a pres-
entation by the Florence Economic
Development Committee during the
council meeting on Monday night.
Committee chairman Mike Rose and
members of the committee gave an
overview of the committee’s history
and its current and future projects.
Economic Development focuses on
two aspects: business retention and
expansion and marketing and recruit-
ment.
“We’ve got to go find new business-
es that might want to relocate to our
great community and work on how we
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can expand businesses and bring in
more family-wage jobs,” Rose said.
“We are in motion, as the mayor would
say.”
Mayor Joe Henry said, “In a nut-
shell, economic development is about
jobs, skilled workers and housing.”
He was appreciative that the
Economic Development Committee
was working so hard “behind the
scenes” to create so many small suc-
cesses.
Committee member Meg Spencer,
who is also the director of Siuslaw
Public Library District, said, “I was
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B Y C HANTELLE M EYER
Siuslaw News
very excited to work on business reten-
tion and expansion. A lot of time mar-
keting and recruitment is seen as kind
of sexy, but the vast majority of jobs
within the community come from peo-
ple who are already in that communi-
ty.”
With assistance from city staff, the
committee conducted a survey about
business needs through the city’s busi-
ness license renewal process.
Of the 134 respondents, Spencer said
THIS WEEK ’ S
17.5 percent of local businesses have
plans to expand, 30 percent identified
an insufficient qualified labor supply as
a challenge and 40 percent asked for a
follow-up from the committee.
Spencer said she talked with
the
respondents
about
Lane
Community College’s Small Business
Development Center mixers and train-
ing, the South Coast Development
Council’s efforts to market Sandmaster
Park in Japan and the Regional
Accelerator and Innovation Network
(RAIN).
“Since RAIN started here almost a
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year ago now, we’ve had 11 meetups
and 142 entrepreneurs have been
served,” Spencer said.
She invited the community to come
to tonight’s free State of the Startup,
sponsored by RAIN and the City of
Florence.
Light food and beverages will be
provided during the year in review at
City Lights Cinemas, 1930 Highway
101, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
One
entrepreneurial
success,
Florence resident Carl Hulan, will talk
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