T he C olumbia P ress
1
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C latsop C ounty ’ s I ndependent W eekly
www.thecolumbiapress.com
July 10, 2020
Vol. 4, Issue 28
District reveals plan for reopening schools
B y C indy y ingst
The Columbia Press
Nothing about the new school year
will be simple.
“What will our schools look like for
the ’20-’21 school year? The answer to
that is, unfortunately, very complicat-
ed,” Superintendent Tom Rogozins-
ki told parents in a virtual town hall
meeting Wednesday night.
The Warrenton-Hammond district,
like others around the state, received
a small booklet of instructions from
Oregon Department of Education
designed to get the district ready for
students in the fall. The first day of
school is Sept. 14.
“What this is not, tonight, is an un-
veiling of precisely what we’re doing
next year,” Rogozinski said. “ODE’s
guidances are evolving and continue
to evolve.”
The most difficult requirement is
to establish a minimum of 35 square
feet per person in determining room
capacity.
The district also must support phys-
ical distancing in all activities and in-
struction, striving to maintain at least
6 feet between individuals.
There could be marked spaces on
the floor, one-way traffic flow in halls
Problematic
intersection will
soon get a fix
B y C indy y ingst
The Columbia Press
Cindy Yingst/The Columbia Press
Tom Rogozinski, superintendent of the Warrenton-Hammond School District,
speaks in a virtual town hall meeting to discuss plans for reopening local schools.
and constrained spaces, and require-
ments to wash hands before entering
the school, before meals and in each
classroom.
There’s also a plan for “cohorting”
in which smaller groups of students
operate together, such as a particular
group always uses the same entrance
door to campus and rides the same
bus, associating less with other co-
horting groups.
Rogozinski presented results of a
survey that asked parents how they
felt about sending children to school
during a pandemic.
When asked how much their chil-
dren learned during distance learn-
ing in the spring, 76 percent said
less or a lot less.
Seventy percent of parents said
they felt comfortable or very com-
fortable with 100 percent in-person,
in-school learning.
Sixty-four percent were uncom-
fortable or very uncomfortable with
students being required to wear
masks.
See ‘Schools’ on Page 5
One of the main entries into War-
renton will be reconfigured in the next
two years.
The change will affect how traffic
flows on Highway 101 and how drivers
enter town from the south.
“This is a safety project,” said Lou
Torres, public information officer for
Oregon Department of Transporta-
tion. “The intersection of U.S. 101 and
Perkins Lane has a fairly long crash
history. A number of the crashes have
been severe crashes involving injuries
or fatalities.”
The intersection is in the top 10
percent of the region’s worst crashes,
hence the high priority, Torres added.
A raised median will give pedestri-
ans a safe space if they’re attempting
to cross all four lanes of traffic. The
median also will limit how drivers pull
onto Highway 101 as there will be no
more left turns onto the highway.
The project’s total cost is $2.14 mil-
lion, which includes engineering,
right-of-way acquisition, and con-
struction.
See ‘Entry’ on Page 6
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