NEWS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2020
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
Hermiston breaks ground on Funland
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
A small group of Herm-
iston residents celebrated
some good news on Wednes-
day, July 29, by breaking
ground on the new Funland
Playground at Butte Park.
The previous iteration
of Funland — a large, cas-
tle-like wooden structure —
burned down in May 2019
in a suspected case of arson.
In the year since, a com-
mittee of city offi cials, par-
ents and other residents has
worked to design a new and
improved playground that
they hope will be just as fun
but more secure, durable and
accessible.
“I’m excited,” said City
Councilor Roy Barron,
who was one of six people
to turn over a shovelful of
dirt on the future home of
the playground. “It’s nice
to have something positive
to look forward to for the
community.”
In December 2019, the
city council approved the
committee to work toward a
goal of fundraising as much
as $810,000 for the project,
in addition to the $752,000
insurance payout.
Larry Fetter, director of
Hermiston’s parks and rec-
reation department, said they
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Shovels sit awaiting use at the groundbreaking ceremony for
the new Funland Playground in Hermiston on Wednesday,
July 29, 2020.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Hermiston Mayor David Drotzmann signs a shovel for Jadalynn Martinez as her brother Jaysen
Martinez looks on at the groundbreaking for the new Funland Playground in Hermiston on
Wednesday, July 29, 2020.
were able to raise enough to
check off the main items on
their wish list. That includes
an additional picnic shelter
that is being donated by the
Rotary Club, a building for
concessions and restrooms,
and a rubberized “poured-
in-place” surface.
Fetter said the color-
ful poured-in-place surface
underneath the playground
has a 20-year lifespan. It is
porous enough for water
to drain through instead of
pooling up, accessible to
devices, such as wheelchairs
and walkers, and easier to
maintain than loose materi-
als that need to constantly be
replenished.
“It’s fi rm, but resilient,”
he said. “If you land on it,
it’s like a marshmallow, but
it doesn’t get displaced like
wood chips.”
The concessions build-
ing will provide restrooms
for both the playground and
the splash park, and offer an
opportunity for groups or
businesses to sell conces-
sions while keeping an eye
on both parts of the park.
The new playground will
be made out of compressed
plastic materials that will
be much more fi re-resistant
than wood, and Fetter said
the playground’s design pro-
vides fewer places for peo-
ple to hide and a fence that
helps limit how many ways
people can access it. He said
the playground will also get
a much-upgraded security
and lighting system.
“We will have very
high-defi nition
cameras
recording live, so there will
be real-time monitoring,” he
said.
Fetter said the city is
still accepting donations for
the project, which will go
toward enhancements, such
as additional benches and
shade. He said the hope is
to open the playground in
October, but if the weather
or supply chain for the play-
ground pieces don’t coop-
erate with the construction
schedule, it may need to be
fi nished in the spring.
Charlie Clupny, who
helped build both the 1996
version of Funland, and the
2001 version that was built
after the fi rst burned down,
said he was thrilled to see
the iconic playground return
again in a new form.
“It will certainly be a dif-
ferent kind of rebuild, but
when it’s done it will be a
spectacular monument to the
community,” he said.
Small schools shift gears on distance learning
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Hermiston School Dis-
trict had already seen the
writing on the wall for an
online-only start to the
school year, but for some
Eastern Oregon school dis-
tricts, new metrics from
the Oregon Department of
Education mean a change
in plans.
“We’re back to square
one,” Echo School District
Superintendent
Raymon
Smith said.
In order for any school
in Oregon to be able to have
students in the classroom,
the entire state must have
less than 5% of COVID-
19 tests conducted com-
ing back positive for three
consecutive weeks. Then,
the county where a school
district resides must also
have a less than 5% posi-
tive test rate and fewer than
10 new confi rmed cases
per 10,000 people in a sev-
en-day period, three weeks
in a row. An exception can
be granted for rural schools
with less than 100 stu-
dents to bring kindergarten
through third grade back
into the classroom if they
meet slightly looser met-
rics, including 30 new con-
fi rmed cases per 10,000.
Echo
Smith said Echo School
District had been making
plans to return all students
to the building full time
in August. Now, they’re
throwing their focus into
online learning. Teachers
who had already embraced
technology tools in the
classroom are training col-
leagues with a more ana-
log style, and administra-
tion is pulling in training
resources from places like
the InterMountain Educa-
tion Service District.
Smith said the approach
will look a little more like
a traditional class schedule
for grades six through 12,
although even the oldest
students won’t be expected
to sit in front of a computer
for eight hours straight.
There will be opportunities
for watching prerecorded
lessons at their own pace,
and then getting together
with the class online later
for practice applying the
information.
For the younger grades,
particularly kindergarten
through second, there will
be a lot of working in small
groups through video chats
with teachers and aides,
scheduled as much as pos-
sible around times that
work well for each family.
“Let’s be honest, you
cannot educate 25 kinder-
gartners at once by Zoom
effi ciently,” Smith said.
He said they will have
evening sessions once a
week where parents can
tune in and hear from their
child’s teacher about what
their student has been
learning and what they will
be learning in the upcoming
week. He encouraged par-
ents to be proactive in alert-
ing their child’s teacher to
any issues that could be
improved.
Instead of jumping
straight into classes on Aug.
24, the fi rst week of school
will be used for making
sure all students have elec-
tronic devices and internet
access, and training par-
ents and students on how to
use the various devices and
platforms being utilized by
teachers.
Stanfi eld
Given how far short
Umatilla County falls on any
of the metrics for reopen-
ing school, Stanfi eld School
District
Superintendent
Beth Burton said her dis-
trict is now planning for an
online-only start to the year.
The school’s second quarter
starts on Nov. 9, and she said
she hopes the district will
have a chance to implement
its hybrid model then.
“This is not what we had
envisioned,” she said.
Burton said the good
news is that the district has
much more time to prepare
for comprehensive distance
learning than they did in
when schools were closed
with only a day’s notice in
the spring. She said parents
and students should expect
a much more comprehen-
sive, rigorous offering this
time around, with students
interacting via video with
their teacher and peers on a
regular basis.
“(In the spring) we
worked really hard at it, but
we didn’t have the time to
be really methodical about
planning it,” she said.
Burton said Chrome-
books loaned to students
in the spring came back in
good condition, and after
cleaning and upgrading
them the district will loan
them back out again. She
said some of the devices
are due to be replaced, but a
nationwide shortage means
some students might have
to make due with the older
ones for the fi rst couple of
months.
The district had already
pushed back its usual
August start time to Sept. 8
to give construction crews
working on the expansion
of the schools more time
to work without students
on campus. Burton said if
there was one silver lin-
ing to the school closure in
March, it was an early start
to the construction.
COVID-19 does, how-
ever, complicate the dis-
trict’s original plans to
“cram everyone in” the
spaces not under construc-
tion during the 2020-21
school year, Burton said.
“Obviously, that would
be irresponsible now,” she
said.
Whenever students do
return to the classroom, it
will be in a way that follows
the state’s guidelines for
Umatilla County passes 2,000
COVID-19 cases since March
HERMISTON HERALD
Umatilla County Public
Health announced two new
deaths of residents diagnosed
with COVID-19 on Tuesday,
Aug. 4, bringing the county’s
total to 25 deaths.
The latest deaths were
a 74-year-old man who
tested positive July 17 and
died July 28 at Trios Med-
ical Center in Kennewick,
Washington, and a 74-year-
old man who tested positive
July 12 and died Aug. 1 at St.
Anthony Hospital in Pend-
leton. Both had underlying
health conditions, according
to the news release.
The
latest
numbers
announced Aug. 4 bring
the county up to 2,005 con-
fi rmed cases of COVID-19
since the pandemic began.
As of Aug. 4, there were
also 107 presumptive cases.
The county’s hospitalization
number dipped into the sin-
gle digits for the fi rst time in
weeks, with nine residents
hospitalized.
More than 11,000 tests
have been conducted on
county residents since the
pandemic began. In her July
30 announcement that Uma-
tilla County would be going
back to baseline reopening,
Gov. Kate Brown cited the
county’s test positivity rate
of 23% of tests as one of
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the reasons the county was
being returned to baseline,
along with its average at the
time of 51 new cases per
day and the fact that 45% of
cases had not been success-
fully traced to a source.
social distancing, she said.
Morrow County
Morrow County School
District’s board of educa-
tion planned to meet the
evening of Tuesday, Aug. 4,
to discuss in detail how the
district will offer compre-
hensive distance learning
for the forseeable future.
Superintendent
Dirk
Dirksen said until the
announcement from the
state, the original plan
had been to offer parents
a choice between a hybrid
model or an online-only
experience. He said the dis-
trict had planned to help
those students who were
going to be online-only
with access to internet and
devices, but it will be more
diffi cult now that the entire
school district will be using
that option.
“We
have
enough
devices for all the kids, the
problem is coming up with
internet,” he said. “Some
parts of Heppner don’t even
have any cell service.”
He said staff were disap-
pointed that they would not
be able to serve students in
person to start out the year,
but they were ready to take
up the challenge. One ben-
efi t of the online-only start,
he said, was they would be
100% focused on making
the distance-learning por-
tion be the best it could be.
“It’s not going to be the
same as the spring,” he
said. “It will be as chal-
lenging and rewarding for
the kids as if they are in the
building. We’re trying to
make it that same level of
opportunity.”
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