SUNDAY • January 31, 2021
Serving Central Oregon since 1903 • $3
MENTAL HEALTH & SPORTS
YOUNG ATHLETES’ HEALTH IS AT THE FOREFRONT OF HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS’ RETURN • B1
CENTRAL OREGON
AND STATEWIDE
Deer Ridge Correctional Institution
Families fear COVID-19 is a
death sentence for inmates
Schools
report
lower
dropout
rates
Focus on struggling teens,
COVID rules could have
prompted drop, officials say
BY JACKSON HOGAN
The Bulletin
Attorneys for inmates say Oregon prisons are dangerous
BY KYLE SPURR • The Bulletin
A
s COVID-19 cases spread last fall in Oregon’s prisons, Laurie Howard feared for her brother, an inmate at Deer
Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras. Howard, a 53-year-old elementary school teacher in Beaverton, stopped
receiving regular phone calls from her brother, Ryan Monahan, around the time the Madras prison identified its
first case of coronavirus on Nov. 13.
“I was afraid
I was going to
get some call
that said your
brother has
died. I was
terrified I wasn’t
going to be able
to say goodbye
or know what
was going on.”
Howard’s concern grew as quickly
as the virus in Deer Ridge. To date,
275 inmates have tested positive and
four have died out of a population of
about 675, according to the Oregon
Health Authority. Statewide, 3,346
inmates have contracted the virus
and 42 have died. Prison staff state-
wide have 795 confirmed cases, as of
the latest data released Jan. 28.
The pandemic has left relatives
of Oregon inmates feeling shut
out. Families are not allowed to
visit due to the virus and only hear
about the worsening prison condi-
tions through letters and occasional
phone calls.
Like Howard, they hear about
their loved ones being transferred
to other prisons while sick with the
virus and grouped together in close
quarters with other inmates and
— Laurie Howard,
her brother is
an inmate at Deer
Ridge
staff who are not wearing masks.
They worry the conditions are a
possible death sentence.
“I was afraid I was going to get
some call that said your brother has
died,” Howard said recently. “I was
terrified I wasn’t going to be able to
say goodbye or know what was go-
ing on.”
Earlier this month, Howard re-
ceived a letter from her brother. He
said he had tested positive for the vi-
rus and had a 103-degree tempera-
ture, but he was still transferred in a
bus, along with staff and other pris-
oners, to Snake River Correctional
Institution in Ontario. After two
weeks, he returned to Deer Ridge,
wearing the same clothes and with-
out personal medication that was
lost in the move.
See Inmates / A8
Coronavirus across the globe
Why America is ‘flying blind’ to the mutations
BY WILLIAM WAN AND BEN GUARINO
The Washington Post
America has so little of the ge-
netic sequencing needed to detect
new variants of the coronavirus —
like the ones first identified in Great
Britain and South Africa — that
TODAY’S
WEATHER
such mutations are likely proliferat-
ing quickly, undetected, experts said.
The lack of widespread genetic
sequencing means the window is
closing to find and slow the spread
of variants such as the one first spot-
ted in Britain, which appears to be
A chance of rain
High 49, Low 42
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much more transmissible, and those
initially detected in Brazil and South
Africa. All have been discovered in
small numbers in the United States.
Now is when genetic sequenc-
ing — a process that maps out the
genetic code of the particular virus
C1-8
B8-9
C3
Editorial
Horoscope
Local/State
A6
C3
A2-3
Lottery
Market Recap
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B2
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C5-6
that infected someone so it can be
compared to others — would do the
most good, while such variants are
less prevalent in the U.S. popula-
tion and action can be taken against
them.
See Dropout / A8
DESCHUTES COUNTY
Commission
discusses goals
for the next year
Increasing affordable
housing, coordinating mental
health resources considered
BY BRENNA VISSER
The Bulletin
Increasing affordable housing, invest-
ing more in mitigating wildfires and co-
ordinating mental health resources and
law enforcement are some of the issues
the Deschutes County Commission in-
tends to address for the next fiscal year.
In a goal setting retreat held last week,
each Deschutes County commissioner
discussed priorities for the next fiscal
year, which begins July 1.
See Mutations / A7
Obituaries
Puzzles
Sports
A7
C4
B1-3, 6
See Goals / A8
The Bulletin
An Independent Newspaper
We use
recycled
newsprint
Vol. 119, No. 27, 30 pages, 4 sections
SUN/THU
Julie Keefe/photos for the Bulletin
Laurie Howard, in her Beaverton home with her dog, Trigger, holds a letter from her brother, Ryan Monahan, an inmate at Deer Ridge Correctional Institu-
tion in Madras. Relatives of inmates say they feel shut out by Oregon corrections officials as the pandemic spreads in prisons.
The percentage of high school students
who dropped out of school plummeted
last year, statewide and in Central Ore-
gon’s two largest school districts.
But was the reason for fewer dropouts
solely the payoff of years of school district
investments and strategies to help strug-
gling students? Or did state mandates,
issued after COVID-19 abruptly ended
in-person learning in March 2020, deflate
those numbers?
Some educators say it might be a little
of both.
In the 2019-20 school year, Bend-La
Pine Schools’ dropout rate was 1.81%,
and Redmond School District’s dropout
rate was 2.31%. For Bend-La Pine, that’s
the fourth straight year of declining drop-
outs. For Redmond, it’s a big plunge after
a few years hovering around a 4% drop-
out rate.
The statewide dropout rate in 2019-20
was 2.38% — the lowest ever recorded by
the Oregon Department of Education.
In an online discussion with the media
on Jan. 19, Jonathan Wiens — director
of accountability and reporting for the
state education department — noted that
a new state mandate played a role in that
record-low dropout rate.
After school closures in March, the
state got rid of a rule that automatically
listed a student as dropping out after not
attending class for 10 days. A student
would still drop out if school staff can’t
engage with them at all for the rest of the
school year, but staff had more time to
reach out.
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