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-
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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-
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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
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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
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