April 6, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 7A
School district gets first look at strategic plan
Board receives
public input for
district’s future
By R.J. Marx
Cannon Beach Gazette
As Seaside schools em-
bark on a plan to move en-
dangered schools out of the
tsunami zone, school district
officials, business and com-
munity leaders and others
launched the first step in the
development of a multiyear
strategic plan.
Under the direction of Col-
onna, principal of Colonna
Strategic Planning Services,
based in Bend, the district
approved the $15,000 cost
for the plan in December, to
be paid out of existing areas
of the budget, including the
district’s professional training
budget, Superintendent Sheila
Roley said.
R.J. MARX/SEASIDE SIGNAL
Educator and consultant Je-
rome Colonna.
“The board members met
as a group with Jerry Col-
onna and he took us through
his process of developing
the strategic plan for the dis-
trict,” Seaside School District
Superintendent Sheila Roley
said at the Tuesday, March
20, meeting of the district’s
board of directors. “He took
us through the first phase of
the process. Our first ask was
to have teachers, principals
and community members
generate questions for mem-
bers of the community.”
The district held open fo-
rums and focus groups dis-
trictwide.
“We were just listeners,”
Roley said. “It was really
wonderful. We had every-
where from two to 20 in the
groups.”
One-hundred-eighty peo-
ple responded overall, she
said.
The March report is a
summary of those sessions,
she said, intended to present
the core beliefs of the com-
munity and our school com-
munity — “what can they
look forward to from our
district,” Roley said. “Some
themes emerged: People re-
ally value the things we do
well.”
She said respondents of-
fered “lots of compliments
on the quality of our staff and
our board, and in general the
operations and personnel.”
The district looks at stu-
dents as individuals, she
added. “It’s not one-size-fits-
all. People also recognize the
importance of our extracur-
ricular activities like athlet-
ics, arts, and other activities.”
Focus group participants
showed concerns about rais-
ing graduation rates absen-
teeism, standardized testing
and developing “real-world
skills,” from balancing a
checkbook to buying car in-
surance.
Improvements also sought
stronger guidance programs,
more focus on academics and
safety and security improve-
ments.
Main indicators of success
as described by respondents
included up-to-date technol-
ogy, an understanding of how
education is tied to future
success and sharing schools.
and online. “The focus group
comments will help form dis-
trict core values and beliefs,”
Colonna wrote in his report.
“The core values and beliefs
will create a foundation for
the plan’s mission, vision,
goals and performance indi-
cators.”
Mark Truax, a member of
the planning committee, said
the process is “going well.”
“It’s really interesting,”
Truax said. “It’s kind of a
slow pace, but it’s what needs
to be done. It’s the kind of
project that needs to be step
by step and kept on task.”
Completion of the strate-
gic plan is expected by No-
vember.
“Interestingly, most of
those comments are not
about academics,” Roley
said. “You know kids are
successful if they love fifth-
grade loving school and
wanting to come back, or
knowing how to advocate for
themselves. … People see
our role as being very holis-
tic in the community and are
not an organization that lives
in isolation.”
The goal of the strategic
plan is to take the district “to
the next level of effective-
ness,” she added.
Since approval by the
school board, students,
teachers and others have reg-
istered input in focus groups
LAWN CARE
THE MARBLED MURRELET
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By Nancy McCarthy
The marbled murrelet.
NANCY MCCARTHY
For Cannon Beach Gazette
When they are nesting,
marbled murrelets stay silent
and well hidden. In fact, the
coastal seabirds remained a
mystery from the time they
were discovered in the 1700s
by Capt. Cook until 1974,
when the first nest was dis-
covered in California.
“There was nothing known
about the bird at the time, or at
least white man thought,” said
S. Kim Nelson, a research
biologist with Oregon State
University and the Oregon
Department of Fisheries and
Wildlife.
Nelson spoke at a “Lis-
tening to the Land” lecture
sponsored by the Necanicum
Watershed Council in Seaside
March 21.
“The native Americans
knew about the marbled mur-
relets, they knew where they
nested,” Nelson said. “They
knew about the beautiful
dance they do in courtship
where they put their bills up
in the air and swim across the
water and they dive under the
water and come up together.”
But nobody thought to ask
the Native Americans about
the bird that nests deep in for-
ests and forages for prey at the
ocean’s edge.
“The Tlinget tribe revered
the marbled murrelet. They
wouldn’t eat the murrelet be-
cause they thought they were
so special and mysterious,”
Nelson said.
In the early 1900s, or-
nithologists still wondered
where the murrelets nested.
In the 1970s, the Nation-
al Audubon Society offered
$100 to the first person to
find a marbled murrelet nest.
That occurred in 1974 when
a tree climber found a nest
in a Douglas fir tree in Cali-
fornia’s Big Basin Redwoods
State Park.
It wasn’t until 1990 that
the first nest in Oregon was
discovered. There are about
70 known murrelet nests in
Oregon, Nelson said.
Formerly listed as a
“threatened” species, mar-
bled murrelets recently were
relisted as “endangered” in
Washington, Oregon and Cal-
ifornia.
Although they can live for
15 to 20 years, they have a
low reproductive rate, Nelson
said. They don’t breed until
they are 2 or 3 years old, and
they don’t breed every year.
When they do breed, they lay
only one egg between April
and July, and if that egg fails,
they won’t always renest.
They often return to the same
forest stand during breeding
season every year.
The birds, which fly be-
tween two ecosystems —
forest, where they lay their
eggs on large tree limbs, and
marine environments, where
they feed in shallow water
— are experiencing a decline
in the habitat they depend on
for survival because the old-
growth buffer they need is
disappearing, Nelson said. As
a result, 70 percent of nests
fail annually, she added, and
chicks aren’t surviving the
fledge from the nests. If they
do fledge, they aren’t surviv-
ing at sea until they’re old
enough to breed.
One potential method of
reversing the decline of failed
nests could be preserving a
larger buffer of trees between
clear cuts and older forests
where the birds nest, Nelson
said. The larger buffer may
prevent predator birds, such
as stellar jays, American
crows and common ravens
from reaching the nests, she
said.
Because murrelets are
S. Kim Nelson, research bi-
ologist with Oregon State
University and the Oregon
Department of Fisheries
and Wildlife.
finding less suitable food in
the ocean due to predators,
over-fishing and warmer tem-
peratures, Oregon’s five ma-
rine reserves will be “great”
for the birds, she said. They
will find prey in the reserves,
which are either closed to
fishing or allow only limited
fishing. The reserves will be
“nurseries for the fish,” she
added.
“What murrelets need is
dependable, abundant prey,
right where their nest sites
are,” Nelson said. “So they
don’t have to fly up and down
the coast; they can fly straight
out from their nests and find
their prey.”
The Cape Falcon Marine
Reserve, near Oswald State
Park, will support a known
murrelet nest in the park, Nel-
son said.
“As the (marine reserves)
are there longer and longer,
we can look at the impact, and
from what it’s shown so far, it
can only be beneficial for the
murrelets,” Nelson said.
Writer’s Series presents PoetryFest 2018
Manzanita
PoetryFest
2018, to be held April 14, fea-
tures workshops conducted
by Wendy Willis from 9 a.m.
to noon and 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.
After a reading by Willis, an
open mic for workshop partic-
ipants follows at 7 p.m.
Willis’ “Blood Sisters of
the Republic” was released
by Press 53 in 2012. Her sec-
ond book of poems, “A Long
Late Pledge,” won the Doro-
thy Brunsman Poetry Prize
and was released by Bear
Star Press in 2017. Willis has
published poems and essays
in the New England Review,
Oregon Humanities, Poet-
ry Northwest, The Rumpus,
Zócalo Public Square and
ZYZZYVA. She is a faculty
member in poetry at the Attic
Institute in Portland. She has
her M.F.A. in poetry from the
Rainier Writing Workshop at
Pacific Lutheran University.
Willis splits her time be-
tween her roles as mother, poet
and advocate for democracy.
She lives in Portland with
her husband, the poet David
Biespiel, his son Lucas and
her two daughters, Ruby and
Violet.
Moms are
Sweet!
Give her your favorite
treats this Mother’s Day
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