SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020
TRAINING
BAKER CITY HERALD — 3A
an email to the Herald.
“Eastern Oregon benefi ts
Continued from Page 1A
in a big way from this good
The grant money will be
news that taps into technol-
used to establish two teach-
ogy to educate the health
— Tonia Springer, program
ing labs at BTI from which
care providers of tomorrow in
coordinator, BTI
lessons will be streamed
rural communities,” Wyden
throughout the state over the in February of this year.
said. “The importance of
Zoom computer app.
“We saw the grant op-
telemedicine and distance
Through partnerships with portunity and we like to be
learning has been magnifi ed
the participating hospitals — innovative,” she said. “We like during the coronavirus pan-
which also include those in
to be able to reach into rural demic, and I’m gratifi ed that
Baker City, La Grande and
and frontier communities.”
Eastern Oregon has earned
Pendleton — students will
Dalton said he believes
these federal resources to
complete in-person skills labs the BTI project was funded
support a robust health care
and clinical work (over-
because of the training cen-
system and a strong quality
seen by licensed staff) with
ter’s reputation for building
of life.”
clinic or hospital patients or
successful programs with
Merkley, the top Democrat
residents of long-term care
integrity that are created in
on the Senate Appropriations
centers, Springer said.
partnerships, such as those
subcommittee, said: “High
“This was an attempt to hit developed with area hos-
quality, reliable broadband
rural communities,” Dalton
pitals, and with state and
internet service has never
said of the program expan-
national leaders.
been more important than
sion the grant funding will al-
U.S. Senators Ron Wyden
it is right now — especially
low. “We hope to work in other and Jeff Merkley, both Or-
for our students who are
hospitals down the road.”
egon Democrats, expressed
learning remotely, and for our
Springer said BTI began
their support for BTI’s suc-
health care providers who
the grant application process cessful grant application in
are working around the clock
“We like to be able to
reach into rural and
frontier communities”
PRESCHOOL
Discipline approach, which is an
evidence-based method that integrates
Continued from Page 1A
social-emotional learning, discipline, and
The BELC preschool follows the school self-regulation.
district schedule and offers 1,020 hours a
Their school readiness approach,
year, said Robert Kleng, director of East- according to their website, includes lan-
ern Oregon University Head Start.
guage and literacy development, cogni-
Head Start utilizes the Conscious
tion and general knowledge, approaches
to provide exceptional care
and essential services to their
communities.
“I’m pleased that this fund-
ing is headed to our state,
where it will make Baker
Technical Institute’s remote
health classes accessible for
more students, and help us
keep communities in Eastern
Oregon safe,” Merkley said.
Dalton noted that most
of the instruction, which
provides training in courses
including a Certifi ed Nursing
Assistant program, phle-
botomy, emergency medicine
and medical terminology,
also is offered to high school
students at no cost.
“This is good for the stu-
dents, good for the communi-
ties and good for economic
development,” Dalton said.
More information is
available by calling BTI at
541-524-2651 or online at
bakerti.org
toward learning, physical well-being
and motor development, and social and
emotional development.
To learn more, visit www.eou.edu/
head-start/. To inquire about Head Start
and the income guidelines for Preschool
Promise, call Jen Goodman at 541-786-
5535.
L OCAL B RIEFING
Tickets available for Crossroads Art
Center’s drive-thru Oktoberfest
There is still time to purchase tickets for this year’s
Oktoberfest fundraiser for Crossroads Carnegie Art
Center. The second-annual event is a drive-thru dinner
and virtual auction set for Saturday, Oct. 17. No tickets
will be sold at the event.
Dinner tickets are $35 per person and must be
purchased by 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, through www.
crossroads-arts.org.
A bottle of wine from Copper Belt Winery or a
growler of beer from Barley Brown’s can be purchased
separately. These must be pre-ordered through the
Crossroads’ website.
There are three dinner times. The meal includes brat-
wurst (traditional and vegetarian), sauerkraut, hot Ger-
man potato salad, stoneground mustard, and cucumber-
tomato-onion salad. Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort
is catering the dinner, and will donate employee time to
prepare the meal. Dessert is a schaum torte prepared by
Sweet Wife Baking.
At the drive-thru, ticket holders receive dinner, bever-
age if ordered, dessert, a table cloth, festive napkins, and
a code for one free hour of Oktoberfest music courtesy of
Elkhorn Media Group.
The virtual auction opened online Oct. 2 and closes at
9 p.m. Oct. 18. Successful bidders can pick up their items
on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at Crossroads, 2020 Auburn Ave.
Local students named to dean’s list for
summer term at Eastern Oregon Univ.
LA GRANDE — Lynn Robinson and Mitchell
Stephens of Baker City, and Monette Martin of North
Powder, were among 69 students named to the dean’s
list for the summer term at Eastern Oregon University.
Drought stirs fears of another Dust Bowl near Madras
The (Bend) Bulletin
Evan Thomas, a farmer in
Jefferson County, is used to
seeing the landscape around
his farm covered in various
shades of green. This year
those colors have mostly
turned to brown, with oc-
casional clouds of dust fi lling
the skies.
“It’s a horrible, horrible
mess,” said Thomas, who
owns T&H Farms LLC with
his uncle Mark Hagman.
They grow carrots for seed,
Kentucky bluegrass for seed,
wheat for seed and timothy
hay on 1,250 acres near
Culver.
“It has caused erosion for
us and poor driving condi-
tions for others. It’s blowing
in people’s homes. Yeah, it’s
horrible,” he added.
In addition to causing a
hazard for drivers, Thomas,
47, said the dust affects
daily life for Jefferson County
residents, covering cars and
creeping into homes.
The dust is the result of
persistent drought affl ict-
Ryan Brennecke / The (Bend) Bulletin
On Wednesday, Oct. 7, Mark Hagman, left, and Evan
Thomas stand on a parcel of land at their family’s farm in
Culver that was not planted this season due to drought.
ing all of Central Oregon
— drought that prevents
farmers from planting crops
on all their land, leaving wide
swaths of it exposed to the
elements.
Drought conditions have
left Jefferson County farm-
ers with just about half the
normal amount of water they
have historically been allot-
ted annually. Over the past
two years, the land idled has
reached 40% for many farms.
Thomas explains that
farms are still producing
about the same acreage of car-
rot seed, but other crops are
being cut. Jefferson County
produces around 35% of the
world’s carrot seed.
Cover crops are used to pro-
tect idle ground from weeds
and topsoil loss to the winds.
The seeds are usually planted
in winter. But farmers rarely
cover all their fi elds, prefer-
ring to leave some ground
open, said Thomas. If more
water becomes available they
can use it to plant a produc-
tive crop in spring.
Another drawback of plant-
ing cover crops is the cost,
especially for an activity that
generates no revenue. Farm-
ers are already struggling due
to fewer acres planted.
“It’s not cheap,” said
Thomas, whose great-great
grandparents homesteaded
land near Culver in 1903.
“Planting a wheat cover crop
is $14 an acre for the seed,
and you still have to do all the
land preparation, get your
ground ready to receive that,
and there are labor and fuel
overhead costs to get that job
done.”
JoHanna Symons, co-
founder of Symons Beef Co. in
Madras, said planting a cover
crop is unsustainable over the
long-term.
“Expenses incurred in that
cover crop will carry over into
the next year and make the
profi t margin on the next crop
that is planted that much
smaller,” said Symons, who
runs her company with her
husband, Jeremy Symons.
State prisons to end education
contracts with community colleges
■ Decision means $3 million annual cut for Blue Mountain Community College,
which employs 27 people in three state prisons, including Powder River in Baker City
By Antonio Sierra
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Blue Mountain
Community College sits on a hill over-
looking Eastern Oregon Correctional
Institution, and for decades, the college
has sent educators down the hill to
teach adult education classes to inmates
behind prison walls.
As the program draws to a close, that
relationship is now in jeopardy.
In late August, the Oregon Depart-
ment of Corrections told BMCC and
other community colleges across the
state that it intended to end its educa-
tional contracts in 2021. For BMCC, that
means losing out on a $3 million annual
contract that encompasses 27 jobs across
three state prisons: EOCI, Two Rivers
Correctional Institution, and Powder
River Correctional Facility in Baker City.
BMCC President Dennis Bailey-Foug-
nier said the college wasn’t consulted
ahead of the department’s decision.
“That was news to us, to be honest
with you,” he said.
With dozens of jobs at stake, Bailey-
Fougnier said the state’s prisons benefi t
from having experienced educators lead
the program.
BMCC is now working with a coali-
tion of college administrations and
unions to try to get the state to reverse
its decision.
But the department of corrections
remains fi rm that signifi cant changes
need to be made to the prison’s adult
education programs, which include
GED courses and English as a second
language classes.
“DOC has an unprecedented budget
shortfall and this change allows for
signifi cant savings,” department com-
munications manager Jennifer Black
wrote in a statement. “Repurposing
contract dollars for DOC staff posi-
tions will give the department greater
fl exibility in the delivery of adult basic
education programming, will increase
weekly classroom hours, allow for consis-
tency between institutions as (adults in
custody) transfer from one institution to
the next, and enhance case management
information-sharing both during the
AIC’s incarceration phase and as AICs
transition to the community.”
In a Sept. 30 letter to the Oregon
Community Colleges Association, de-
partment Director Collette Peters wrote
that the state prison system started the
year with a $110 million projected short-
fall and has spent the ensuing months
making cuts, slashing $25 million from
its budget before the Oregon Legisla-
ture lopped off another $2.4 million in
August.
Canceling its contracts and creating
70 positions internally would save the
department $1 million, or about 6% of
the $16.4 million DOC spends over its
two-year budget cycle on outsourcing its
adult education programs.
But the department thinks it could
cushion the blow of future budget cuts in
a different way, by offsetting some of its
staff reductions.
“(The) conversion allows for the
creation of a substantial number of
(department) staff positions, establish-
ing positions for qualifi ed staff to go into
in the event their positions are impacted
by future layoffs,” correctional division
staff wrote in a policy memo.
In an Oct. 6 email, department
communications coordinator Vanessa
Vanderzee wrote that instructors would
be expected to have a bachelor’s or mas-
ter’s degree depending on the position,
but existing prison staff could also fi ll
positions for coordinators, lab supervi-
sors and administrators.
See Prisons/Page 5A
The increasing costs are
weighing on the bottom line of
many farms in the area, she
added.
“Mortgage payments are
still due and payable on land
— the fi nance companies
aren’t giving farmers a break
because of the lack of crops be-
ing grown, which means lack
of income,” said Symons. “Our
income has basically been cut
in half and our expenses have
stayed the same,” she said.
Thomas also worries that
continued drought will put
farms out of business, leaving
more farmland barren, creat-
ing more dust and damaging
the area’s economy.
“If we have two more years
like this year, it will be a dust
bowl,” said Thomas.
The source of Jefferson
County’s problem lies 100
miles to the south, where
Wickiup Reservoir stands
empty. The reservoir stores
water used by the North Unit
Irrigation District.
The lack of water stored in
the reservoir is due to weak
snowpack in the Cascades in
recent years.
All three counties in Cen-
tral Oregon are now in a state
of drought declared by the
governor. Jefferson County
is suffering the most — ac-
cording to the U.S. drought
monitor, more than half of the
county is in a state of extreme
drought.
The dry conditions are par-
tially due to climate change,
said Larry O’Neill, an associ-
ate professor at the College of
Earth, Ocean and Atmospher-
ic Sciences at Oregon State
University. Two decades of
climate analysis largely show
an increase in temperature in
Central Oregon over the last
half of the 20th century and a
decrease in precipitation, said
O’Neill.
See Drought/Page 5A
New At The Library
Patrons can reserve materials in advance online or by
calling 541-523-6419. Drive-in hours at 2400 Resort St. are
Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday
and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
FICTION
• “The Vanishing Half,” Brit Bennett
• “The Lost and Found Bookshop,” Susan Wiggs
• “Shadows of Annihilation,” S. M. Stirling
• “My Brother’s Destroyer,” Clayton Lindemuth
• “Actress,” Anne Enright
NONFICTION
• “Prayer,” Oswald Chambers
• “His Truth Is Marching On,” Jon Meacham
• “Compromised,” Peter Strzok
• “Wasteland,” W. Poole
• “Homelands,” Alfredo Corchado
DVDS
• “Body Cam” (Action)
• “True History of the Kelly Gang” (Action)
• “Red Joan” (Drama)
• “Untogether” (Drama)
• “Waiting for the Barbarians” (Drama)
Steel on the inside where it matters most.
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