A8
News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Stakes are high for education reform Supreme Court
Oregon, other
states, will get
unprecedented
leverage under
new law
By Edward Stratton
EO Media Group
A change in federal
education law will give
Oregon and other states
unprecedented leverage to
decide on student assess-
ments, accountability mea-
sures, school improvement
and educator effectiveness.
The No Child Left Be-
hind Act of 2001, a reautho-
rization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education
Act covering federal over-
sight of K-12 education, is
being replaced by the Ev-
ery Student Succeeds Act,
taking full effect in the
2017-18 school year.
The stakes are high in
Oregon, which persistent-
ly faces some of the low-
est graduation and highest
chronic absenteeism rates
Danny Miller/EO Media Group
State Department of Education Deputy
Superintendent Salam Noor asked Astoria High
School students Thursday for feedback about
their education experience.
in the nation.
As Oregon creates an
education plan to turn in
to the U.S. Department of
Education in the fall, state
Deputy Superintendent of
Public Instruction Salam
Noor, the highest educa-
tional official under Gov.
Kate Brown, has been
crisscrossing the state and
asking locals to reimagine
education.
Noor has been to 11 fo-
rums so far in Oregon and
ended his tour Monday in
Coos Bay.
So far, he said, he has
heard a consistent focus
on the need for student
and teacher engagement,
a variety of high-interest,
hands-on programs and
close relationships be-
tween students and faculty.
“We’re hearing consis-
tencies about the ... mental
health needs of students,
unanimously backs
landowners in Clean
Water Act case
and the social/emotional
needs that have to be ad-
dressed,” he said.
After the tour, Noor
said the state will try to
synthesize the informa-
tion into themes to in-
form the education plan
that education officials
are drafting in July and
August.
The state receives fed-
eral guidelines for its ed-
ucation plan in October,
he said, and will turn in a
final draft by November.
While not all feedback will
be reflected in the plan,
he said, the information
he’s gathered at the fo-
rums will continually in-
form the state’s work on
education.
“It gives us a bigger
picture and a broader per-
spective on what’s actually
needed and what’s happen-
ing in schools and commu-
nities across the state,” he
said.
For more information
or to suggest ideas, visit
http://tinyurl.com/j2r3xe2
or email ESSA.Oregon@
state.or.us.
By Mateusz Perkowski
EO Media Group
The U.S. Supreme Court
Monday ruled unanimously
that landowners can chal-
lenge a federal government
determination that their
property is subject to Clean
Water Act restrictions.
With federal officials
facing a new source of law-
suits, they must now do a
better job justifying their
conclusions, legal experts
say.
“The cavalier attitude to-
ward asserting authority un-
der the Clean Water Act we
hope will change,” said Reed
Hopper, an attorney with
the Pacific Legal Founda-
tion, a public interest legal
organization.
The nation’s highest
court rejected arguments
by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers that its “jurisdic-
tional determinations” can’t
be challenged in court be-
cause they’re merely advi-
sory opinions that property
is subject to the Clean Water
Act.
The ruling is a victory
for farmers and other land-
owners who would rather
sue to prove their proper-
ty doesn’t fall under the
agency’s jurisdiction than
seek costly Clean Water Act
permits or abandon their
projects.
The federal government
argued that landowners are
free to ignore a jurisdic-
14 stock dogs poisoned with strychnine
By Sean Ellis
EO Media Group
CANYON COUNTY, Idaho — Four-
teen stock and guard dogs have been poi-
soned with strychnine in southwestern Ida-
ho since early April and 12 have died.
The poisoning of the dogs, which are
used to guard and shepherd sheep and
goats, has occurred over several weeks.
“We lost another dog today. The poi-
soning is still going on,” the dogs’ owner,
Casey Echevarria, told EO Media Group
May 30.
The dogs were intentionally poisoned
with strychnine, said Dr. Brent Varriale, a
Fruitland veterinarian who examined three
of them. He said they had large amounts of
green dyed grain in their stomachs, which
is consistent with gopher bait that contains
strychnine. The gopher bait was mixed
with a signiicant amount of raw ground
meat and the amount of bait found in each
dog would have required mixing it with
food to encourage the dogs to eat as much
of it as they did, he said.
Varriale said he examines dogs that
have consumed gopher bait and suffered
strychnine poisoning about once every few
years and they never have that much of the
bait in their stomachs.
The large number of Echevarria’s dogs
that have suffered strychnine poisoning
this spring, coupled with the large amount
of bait found in their stomachs, “tells me
it was done intentionally,” Varriale said.
Varriale saved and froze stomach
content samples from each dog and
contacted the Canyon County Sheriff’s
Department, which investigated the in-
cidents but has not identiied any sus-
pects.
tional determination and
then fight the U.S. Environ-
mental Protection Agency
when defending against an
enforcement action.
Chief Justice John Rob-
erts, in his opinion for the
court, dismissed the claim
that landowners must ex-
pose themselves to sanc-
tions to question the gov-
ernment’s conclusions.
“Respondents need not
assume such risks while
waiting for EPA to ‘drop the
hammer’ in order to have
their day in court,” Roberts
said.
The practical effect is
that federal agencies will
need a solid scientific ba-
sis that private property has
a “significant nexus” with
waterways protected by
the Clean Water Act, said
Hopper, who argued the Su-
preme Court case on behalf
of the Hawkes Co., which
was blocked from extract-
ing peat moss from its wet-
lands.
“The Corps is going
to have to get its ducks in
a row. It’s going to have
to provide data to sup-
port its decision that this
is a water of the U.S.,” he
said.
In the Hawkes case,
the government required
the company to obtain a
Clean Water Act permit be-
cause the wetland alleged-
ly had a “significant nex-
us” with a river 120 miles
away.
O n l y 11
11 more days
June 19, 2016
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UNDER
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