SUNDAY • April 4, 2021 • Serving Central Oregon since 1903 • $3
Bend flips the script on Summit
PREP FOOTBALL • SPORTS, B1
Madras
seeks
funds for
homeless
services
CENTRAL OREGON’S
LARGEST DISTRICTS
Schools are
going back
to classes
full time.
Now comes
the hard part
A sign reminds
students to be
safe at Juniper
Elementary School
as Bend-La Pine
prepares for full
five-day-a-week
school in Bend on
Thursday.
Dean Guernsey/
Bulletin photos
Year-round shelter serving wider
region would be a first for the city
BY KYLE SPURR
The Bulletin
Madras city officials are developing a
plan to build a homeless services center that
would provide a permanent, year-round lo-
cation for those in need across the region.
The center would be a first for the city.
The only option for homeless people in
Madras is a temporary warming shelter
that closed last month and is on land that
was sold and will be redeveloped into a
Starbucks coffee shop.
Rather than keep looking for temporary
options, the city is working with the Jeffer-
son County Faith Based Network to create
the permanent shelter.
City and county officials will meet
Wednesday to discuss applying for a
Community Development Block Grant
that could award up to $1.5 million for
a homeless services center in Madras. A
location has not been identified for the
center, but it will be in Madras and open
to people across Jefferson County and the
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, ac-
cording to the city.
See Madras / A7
DESCHUTES
River will rise
as irrigation
season begins
For the first time since March 2020, all Bend-La Pine,
Redmond students will return to 5 full days a week
BY JACKSON HOGAN
The Bulletin
A
fter more than a year of school
being fully online or only
partly in-person, thousands of
students in Bend-La Pine and
Redmond school districts will
soon return to full-time, in-person classes
five days a week.
This change — which only became pos-
sible after the Oregon Department of Edu-
cation shrunk the mandatory 6-feet social
distancing rule for students to 3 feet in
late March — is good news to educators
in Central Oregon’s two largest school dis-
tricts.
“I’ve got a great class — they’re super
excited to be back,” said Carrie Price, a fourth
grade teacher at Juniper Elementary School
in northeast Bend. “This is what they need.”
But transitioning the majority of students
— grades 4-12 in Bend-La Pine, grades 6-12
in Redmond — from part-online to full-
time classroom settings isn’t as simple as
moving desks closer together.
Completely shifting the logistics of school
operations in the middle of the school year
is difficult but worth it to get all students
back full time, said Redmond Superinten-
dent Charan Cline.
“We know this is good for kids, and
frankly it’s good for our staff,” Cline said. “It’s
just that it takes time to make the switch.”
In both school districts, younger students
BY MICHAEL KOHN
The Bulletin
Carrie Price sets up her socially
distanced classroom at Juniper
Elementary on Thursday. Students are
required to stay 3 feet away from one
another in the classroom. As for going
back to in-person classes? “I think
the kids, some of them, have slipped
into some patterns of school being
somewhat optional on their home days,”
Price said. “We just have to trigger those
memories about how to be at school.”
— grades K-3 in Bend-La Pine and all el-
ementary students in Redmond — have
attended school full time for more than a
month after schools began to reopen ear-
lier this year.
In Bend-La Pine, students in grades 4-12
have attended in-person school twice a
week, with the other three days learning
entirely online.
See Schools / A6
The irrigation season is underway in
Central Oregon, and residents will start to
notice more water flowing down the De-
schutes River and in the canals the river
and its reservoirs feed.
The North Unit Irrigation District be-
gan letting more water into the Deschutes
River from Wickiup Reservoir on Tuesday .
The amount of water has steadily increased
from around 100 cubic feet per second to
around 375 cubic feet per second.
Conditions are being evaluated to deter-
mine when flows can be brought up to 600
cubic feet per second, according to Kyle
Gorman, region manager for the Oregon
Water Resources Department.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is
evaluating Oregon spotted frog activity to
determine when it is safe to allow more
water into the river, Gorman said. Pushing
too much water down the river at once can
damage spotted frog breeding habitat.
TODAY’S
WEATHER
Clouds and sun
High 62, Low 28
Page B6
INDEX
Business/Life
Classifieds
Dear Abby
C1-8
B5
C3
Editorial
Horoscope
Local/State
A4
C3
A2, 5
Lottery
Market Recap
Mon. Comics
B2
B4
C5-6
Obituaries
Puzzles
Sports
A7
C4
B1-6
The Bulletin
An Independent Newspaper
We use
recycled
newsprint
Vol. 119, No. 81, 26 pages, 4 sections
SUN/THU
See Deschutes / A5
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