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About The Siuslaw news. (Florence, Lane County, Or.) 1960-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 2018)
SIUSLAW NEWS ❚ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2018 Education from 1A “You only have to use equip- ment like chainsaws, yarders, skidders, cats,” said Jesse. Meanwhile, at the table across from them, classmate Makayla Bender says she wants to be a veterinarian. While it may be too early for these children to pave out the story of their lives, their inter- ests are reflective of the diver- Phone and Internet Discounts Available to CenturyLink Customers The Oregon Public Utility Commission designated CenturyLink as an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier within its service area for universal service purposes. CenturyLink’s basic local service rates for residential voice lines are $15.80-$17.80 per month and business services are $28.00-$32.00 per month. Specific rates will be provided upon request. CenturyLink participates in a government benefit program (Lifeline) to make residential telephone or broadband service more affordable to eligible low-income individuals and families. Eligible customers are those that meet eligibility standards as defined by the FCC and state commissions. Residents who live on federally recognized Tribal Lands may qualify for additional Tribal benefits if they participate in certain additional federal eligibility programs. The Lifeline discount is available for only one telephone or qualifying broadband service per household, which can be either a wireline or wireless service. Broadband speeds must be 15 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload or faster to qualify. Lifeline discounts include a transfer restriction (port freeze). This means that you are unable to obtain the Lifeline discount on service with another provider for a period of time. The length of time depends on the services you purchase – 60 days for voice telephone service, 12 months for qualifying broadband service. Certain exceptions to the transfer restrictions may apply. See http://www.lifelinesupport.org/ls/change-my-company. aspx for more information. A household is defined for the purposes of the Lifeline program as any individual or group of individuals who live together at the same address and share income and expenses. Lifeline service is not transferable, and only eligible consumers may enroll in the program. Consumers who willfully make false statements in order to obtain Lifeline telephone or broadband service can be punished by fine or imprisonment and can be barred from the program. If you live in a CenturyLink service area, please call 1-888- 833-9522 or visit centurylink.com/lifeline with questions or to request an application for the Lifeline program. sity needed in the workforce, and these interests are nurtured through their education oppor- tunities. Education opportuni- ties, in turn, are nurtured by the strength of a community’s economy and workforce. “B ALLOT M EASURE 5” “We go back 20 years ago, with the tail end of the heyday of the timber industry. There was a great support system around that,” Andy Grzeskowiak said. As the superintendent of the Siuslaw School District, he is particularly keen on discover- ing why he’s had issues with funding the schools he over- sees, and what it will take to fix them. Back in the day, the high schools and the lumber industry held a symbiotic relationship, due in large part to how the mills were run. “Not everybody worked in the woods or the mills directly,” Grzeskowiak said. “You had all these other trades, some of which were trained from inside the system. Service engineers within the mills made sure the mill ran. And then you had peo- ple that were trained from the outside who could come in and run the mill to make sure oper- ations could run well.” There were mechanics, welders, general laborers — almost every trade had some sort of representation in the mills, and the mills got many of these workers directly from the high schools. “You had kids that would come in and start off in entry level jobs,” Grzeskowiak said. “They would work part time and they would do some pro- fessional technical training. And they would become the welders for the mill, or they would start off as a load opera- tor and then wind up going to Lane Community College and become a diesel mechanic. And then they’re a mechanic for that facility.” While the mills were slowly going out of business, the tech- F LORENCE A NTIQUES & C OAST J EWELERS We are happy to announce that we have RELOCATED to 1220 Bay Street #100 and added COAST JEWELERS to our name! nical careers that the students learned in the mills kept them in the community. Florence was building its retirement infrastructure. Homes and busi- nesses were going up. Then, in 1990, the system began to crash. That was the year Ballot Measure 5, an amendment to the Oregon Constitution, decreased the rates of property taxes in Oregon. Before the change, schools were funded by property taxes, but the public voted for a dras- tic cut in taxes. Before Measure 5, $19.64 was charged for every $1,000 a house was worth. After the measure came into full effect, $5 for every $1,000 was taxed. In its place, income tax was used as the pri- mary funder of schools. Suddenly, “volatility” became the buzzword for those looking to fund schools. “Income tax is the most volatile tax there is,” Grzeskowiak said. “Once we started linking state funding to that, that’s when things got dicey.” It got dicey for the entire state of Oregon. Programs were cut, teachers fired. Vocational programs and the arts were slashed. While bond measures and grants were used to offset some of the shortfall, they were, by their very nature, volatile. They were also project specific. By the year 2000, the Quality Education Comm- ission was set up to see how much money the schools need- ed to keep going. As it turned out, they needed a lot. In response to the commis- sion, Measure 1 was passed in 2001. This required the legisla- ture to fund school quality goals, issue reports and estab- lish equalization grants. Except it didn’t really do those things. Multiple reports were issued, but funding rarely made it to the schools. As programs continued to be cut, the Great Recession of 2008 hit. Construction in the Siuslaw region tanked, and the skilled workers ended upleav- ing the community. Siuslaw High School, which was dependent on income tax, was at a crossroads: Keep the tech- nical vocational training, or aim for four-year colleges? “We had a change of focus away from technical education to more of a college-focused track,” Grzeskowiak said. “We had this push for college readi- ness, and at the same time we were reducing funds overall. Things that were considered to be electives were in the career fields. Programs in mechanics and welding, printmaking and photography, all started getting reduced. That’s where we also start seeing things in art and PE that were being considered non-essential.” Teachers who weren’t laid off began instruction geared to college entrance exams, with the goal of sending students out to four-year institutions, leav- ing the Siuslaw region bereft of young, trade-oriented profes- sionals. This had been a national trend for years, with blue-collar work often being devalued in the face of more “prestigious” career goals. However, the push hurt a lot of students. “The idea was, everybody was going to become a scien- tist, an engineer or a mathe- matician,” Grzeskowiak said. “We’re going to get everybody to go to college because it’s a good thing. And then the flood- gates opened and everybody was going to college.” The finances hit the millen- nial generation the hardest. According to a 2017 Forbes article, the average American household with student debt owes about $49,000. Graduates in their 20s spend, on average, $350 a month just on student loans. But the jobs that the college graduates are getting aren’t necessarily paying for those student loans. The same Forbes article states that the average “entry-level” job was worth about $50,000 a year for new graduates. They can expect their wages being garnished 10 percent for roughly 10 to 12 years after they graduate, just to pay off the student loan. And that’s if they get a job. “Having a university degree isn’t a guarantee for employ- ment,” Grzeskowiak pointed out. In 2016, Marketwatch reported that 45 percent of col- lege graduates worked in “non- college jobs,” which is defined as a position in which fewer RV’ers, PARTS we are your complete RV and SERVICE Automotive Repair Facility PARTS SERVICE On Site Repairs In shop or Mobile ASE CERTIFIED TECH for Truck, Auto and RV Repair 541-997-8287 than 50 percent of the workers in that job need a bachelor’s degree. Low-skilled jobs, including baristas, bartenders and cashiers, accounted for 19.3 percent of underemployed graduates. The “four-year” university is taking a lot longer to finish as well. In 2016, the National Student Clearinghouse reported that students take five to six years to actually finish a degree, and go to multiple insti- tutions to do it. While budgetary concerns are a major drive for this, Grzeskowiak points out another problem in the “four-year” push. “We thought we were going to solve all of our problems by sending everyone into the tech industry,” he said. “There was this fantasy piece within com- puters that everybody was going to be a video game pro- grammer. If you could do it and do it well, you could make a lot of money at it — but it’s like every other field. Every field has superstars in it, and that’s always a draw. You always have that romantic tinge to it. ‘Hey, be a video game designer and make all this money.’” But, not everybody can be a videogame designer. According to a CNN report, there are only 520,800 jobs video game jobs worldwide. “With competition in the game space so fierce, there’s no room for mistakes,” the report said. “Trying to get a 16-year-old kid to try and figure out what they want to do and jump to college is a tough thing to do,” Grzeskowiak said. “There is some value in taking some time, maybe taking a year or two, and then going to school. And that’s probably part of the downfall of the push to get to college right out of high school. We funneled everybody into one path and into one timeline. And not everybody falls lock- step into that age and develop- ment.” The push for college racked up debt for those who went. To pay for that, many millennials moved back into their parent’s homes in retirement communi- ties like the Siuslaw region. However, some don’t have the skills that the region requires to enter the workforce. This is where Russ Pierson, dean of Lane Community College (LCC) Florence Center, comes in. “P LEASE DO SOMETHING ” To Pierson, LCC Florence is a lifeblood to the community. He found this out on his first day on the job back on 2015. “Many members of the board of education were here for a lis- ten session,” he said. “They were going around from com- munity to community, talking to folks about the college, its direction and its importance to the community. Florence had as many people as the rest See EDUCATION 10A Please join us on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1ST ere s are h for our inesse ity bus n u m m o s. e need these c r servic nowing u k o , y x f la o y to re with all It’s eas to help GRAND OPENING from 5 - 7 pm Our 494 Highway location remains open while we liquidate some of the furniture. We are offering 20% OFF all furniture at the Highway 101 location! Both locations are open Call the Siuslaw News to Join Our Senior Directory 541-997-3441 Wednesday - Friday from 12 - 5:30 pm Shorewood Senior Living and Sat, Sun from 10 am-5:30 pm 541-997-8202 9 A 1451 Spruce St. 375 9th St, Florence, OR 97439 • (541) 997-6111
