Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon Wednesday, August 19, 2020 -- THREE
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Stand up for freedom
To the editor,
The BLM mobs in Port-
land are a wakeup call to
all Americans. We are not
in this together as Gover-
nor Brown pretends. The
truck driver ripped from his
pickup was beaten nearly
to death because he was
white and attempting to
help a transgender person.
Our Governor is not only
responsible for these mobs,
she is encouraging them
to destroy our Republic,
demoralize our police force
and turn Oregon into a
fascist state controlled by
her edicts. These mobs are
predominantly young white
Americans educated in our
schools and universities
to hate America, hate our
heritage, hate our police,
hate our Constitutional Re-
public.
Governor Brown must
be recalled. Thank God for
the volunteers manning
the recall petition. She has
stolen over 400 million
federally allocated dollars
dedicated to rural Oregon.
She is destroying small
businesses with her uncon-
stitutional edicts. She is
closing our schools, deny-
ing our youth the education,
sports, music and social
activities every other gen-
eration for three centuries
has prospered from.
We are not in this to-
gether Governor Brown.
The masks you force upon
us are worthless. They have
no health purpose except
to cause us to fear and to
conform to your edicts. 99.3
percent survive Covid-19.
Most don’t know they have
it.
BLM racial hatred is
coming to Pendleton Au-
gust 29. One day they will
come to Heppner. They
have already filled our
youth with hatred for our
heritage and way of life and
scared them to death with
the climate change scam.
We are not in this together
with Governor Brown, with
these phony masks, with
these so-called “freedom of
speech” BLM mob protests.
Take a stand my fellow
Americans. Peacefully join
the counter protest in Pend-
leton August 29 at 3:30 p.m.
at Roy Raley Park. Throw
off the mask. Demand our
schools and universities
teach and honor America
and our way of life paid for
with the courage, commit-
ment to God and sacrifice of
our forefathers. Pastors and
church boards – open your
churches. If BLM mobs
have freedom of speech to
protest, you must stand up
for freedom of worship.
Obey God not Caesar.
Stuart Dick. Irrigon
Correction
Last week’s front-page
article mentioned the Hep-
pner Chamber of Com-
merce would be matching a
$25,000 grant with money
of their own. This is incor-
rect. Business Oregon will
be matching $25,000 with
the $25,000 the City of
Heppner is giving toward
the Small Business Support
Fund for South Morrow
County.
The Heppner Chamber
of Commerce will manage
this grant and will soon
be mailing questionnaires
to businesses who were
unable to secure funding
through the Payroll Protec-
tion Program (PPP) or the
Economic Injury Disaster
Loans (EIDL). If you would
like to be considered for
grant money through the
Small Business Support
Fund for South Morrow
County, please e-mail the
chamber at heppnercham-
ber@gmail.com.
Students to be back in school for
‘limited hours’
Complex new COVID-19 rules allow small school attendance
starting Sept. 8
By David Sykes
Under a complex new
set of state rules, students in
Morrow County will be al-
lowed back into classrooms
starting September 8, but
only for a limited amount
of time and in small groups
each week. How long this
limited attendance will
continue, and how many
students will be allowed
in the school at the same
time will be governed by an
ever-changing county-wide
COVID-19 infection rate.
In a letter to parents
posted on the district web
site, School Superintendent
Dirk Dirksen explained the
rules allowing small stu-
dent groups back in school
starting on Sept 8. Because
of school size the rules will
differ between Heppner,
Boardman and Irrigon. One
rule is a student will not be
able to spend more than two
hours in school buildings on
any given day. Dirksen said
they should, at least in Hep-
pner, be able to rotate all the
students into the school at
least once per week for one
on one tutoring time with
teachers.
At a meeting last week
Dirksen and the Morrow
County Commission held a
long discussion on the new
opening guidelines. One
discussion asked why all
schools in a diverse district
like Morrow County are
judged by just one coun-
ty-wide infection rate. Since
Heppner’s COVID-19 in-
fection is much lower than
Boardman and Irrigon some
questioned why Heppner
should not be allowed more
opening. It had been sug-
gested to Governor Kate
Brown’s office that instead
of using county-wide in-
fection rates, zip codes
instead be used to rate virus
infection in each communi-
ty. Using zip codes would
allow smaller schools in
more isolated communities
with low infection rates
like Heppner to have more
liberal or lenient school
opening guidelines for their
students.
“Would be better if
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we could go zip code by
zip code,” said Commis-
sioner Don Russell. As an
example he said, “If there
was a pink eye in Heppner,
we wouldn’t shut down the
schools in Boardman and
Irrigon. Because we have
large cases of COVID in
the north end of the county
and very small cases in the
south end of the county it
seems like we shouldn’t
penalize the area that’s not
sick, and that’s not the call
the governor is making,”
Russell pointed out.
Dirksen said they were
trying to make sure Hep-
pner was not treated dif-
ferently than other small
schools in the state located
in low infection rate com-
munities. “Morrow County
is one of the more unique
school districts because of
the different communities,”
he said. “I want to make
sure Heppner should not
be treated differently (than
other smaller schools in
the state) just because we
happen to be made up of a
county wide district.”
Apparently, there are
already reports of some
students wanting to transfer
from larger schools like
Pendleton to the smaller
less restrictive school dis-
trict’s such as Helix. This
prompted Umatilla and
Morrow School districts to
sign an agreement blocking
student transfers between
the two districts to stop
these attempted student
transfers.
In Dirksen’s letter on
school opening guidelines
he said September’s open-
ing was being allowed if
there were “no confirmed
cases of COVID-19 among
the school staff or students
in the past 14 days.” As an
example of the complexity
of the new rules, groups, or
as they are called “cohorts”,
of students will be limited
to no more than 10 students
to a cohort. Also, students
cannot be part of more
than two cohorts (including
transportation) in any given
week. In addition, the rules
say, “any one staff member
cannot interact with more
than three cohorts in a given
day and five in a week.”
Students can only be in a
school building on a given
day for two consecutive
hours with each building
being limited to 250 stu-
dents within a given week.
With Heppner High School
attendance at 140 students
and the elementary at 180,
Dirksen said he did not see
a problem getting all the
students into the school
building at least once a
week for in-person tutoring
with teachers. However,
Riverside, Sam Boardman
and Irrigon High School
are “going to have a prob-
lem” because, as an exam-
ple, Riverside High School
enrolment is at 485. “It’s
going to take two weeks to
get everybody in for tutor-
ing services,” he explained.
Dirksen also said there
have been lots of sanitizing
procedures implemented to
keep the schools clean and
masks will be used.
Bus transportation to
and from school will also
have a set of rules said
Dirksen. As an example,
each driver will have a
transportation log recording
how long each student is on
the bus. If a child appears
sick when the bus arrives
the driver is instructed to
isolate the child on the bus
and transport them to the
school where they will also
be isolated for evaluation.
“If a kid is obviously sick
when they get on the bus,
there will be an isolation
seat, then the kid will come
to the school and be making
contact. We can’t leave
a kid at a bus stop when
there is no parent present,”
he said.
County Health Nurse
Diane Kilkenny was also in
attendance at the meeting.
“Our numbers are steadily
averaging 8-10 per day,”
she said of infections in
the county. She said her
department is working hard
to get the numbers down so
all the kids can get back full
time into school. Kilkenny
said health workers are
going to be working in
the schools with student
contact tracing or finding
who they contacted if they
do get infected. “The main
thing in the schools is going
to be contact tracing, and
they are going to have logs
so it will be easy if someone
comes in with a positive
COVID to isolate someone
quickly,” she said. “That’s
the whole point of the logs,
so you contain the infection
and it doesn’t shut down the
whole school. But it’s really
based on the numbers of our
county. That’s the important
piece and that falls to all of
us to take a hand in,” she
said.
With the need to still
have distance learning in
the schools in the coming
year, a discussion was held
on the disparities in high
speed internet service at
various locations around
the school district. “A lack
of broadband is going to be
easier to solve in the north
end of the county than in
the south end,” Russell said.
“You have much larger dis-
tances between family units
geographically (in the south
end),” he pointed out. “It’s
expensive (to put in high
speed internet), and even
if the money were avail-
able today and somebody
dropped down $30 million
go ahead and hook up ev-
erybody in Morrow County,
because of shortages of
material, equipment and
people it would take time
to install high speed internet
to families in south county,”
Russell said. Slow internet
affects the ability of the
school district to provide
decent distance learning to
students in the south county.
On an optimistic note,
Dirksen said the current
plan at least gets the district
going in a positive direc-
tion, getting kids back in
school. He said hopefully
opening the schools, even
on a limited basis, will
“show that bringing kids
back will not impact the
community (with increased
virus infections).” Dirksen
said if kids are back in
school and new infections
remain stable or drop, that
will give the school district
leverage in convincing the
state to increase the number
of kids able to physical-
ly go back to school. He
said in-person learning at
the school buildings was
particularly important in
south county because of the
spotty or poor highspeed
internet to many of the stu-
dents’ homes.
According to Dirksen’s
letter, which can be read in
its entirety on the district
web site, students are not
required to attend in-person
instruction in the schools.
“Schools cannot require
students to come to school
for in-person instruction
and it is a family choice
whether they want their
child to participate in this
opportunity,” he said. He
added that the district will
be sending out a survey for
families to give their opin-
ions on students attending
school in person. Once the
district has the survey in-
formation, they will work
out details on schedules for
transportation and meal de-
livery for families. A link to
the survey is also included
in Dirksen’s letter.
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