News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 76 - 99 of 99
The Sisters School Board has completed interviews of all five candidates who remain under consideration for the job as Sisters School Superintendent. Two of the seven semifinalists selected by the board earlier this month have dropped out. Judy Delahunt, a former personnel director for Redmond schools and a current member of the Redmond School Board, withdrew after being named interim superintendent of the Redmond school system for 2003-04. She will temporarily replace Superintendent Jerry Colonna, who last week was chosen... Full story
The seven semifinalists for Sisters School Superintendent are a varied lot, but not geographically. All but one already work in Oregon, three in Central Oregon. Redmond Superintendent Jerry Colonna, who is helping to coordinate the search, told The Nugget that "out-of-state candidates are shying away from Oregon because of our financial situation, so the out-of-state pool has really gone down." The fact that 28 other Oregon districts are looking for chief executives is also a limiting factor. Colonna was selected Monday as... Full story
Redmond students may help ease Sisters' school budget pains next year. The reason is that 15 or 20 students who live in the Redmond area may transfer to Sisters schools in 2003-04. The students will carry with them the money all districts receive from the state on the basis of enrollment. Schools receive about $5,000 per student this year and will probably get about the same next year. Thus, 20 students added to Sisters' enrollment would increase the district's revenue by $100,000. Sisters Superintendent Steve Swisher... Full story
Seven "semi-finalist" candidates will vie for the job of Sisters' school superintendent. The Sisters School Board decided Monday night to interview all seven candidates Friday and Saturday, March 14 and 15. The board also adopted a calendar that will start the 2003-04 school year on September 15, late enough for the new high school to receive students. The seven superintendent candidates received the highest ratings from a search committee that spent much of last week going over the 24 applications the position has... Full story
Although Sisters School District has no charter schools, and none appears to be in the offing, the school board recently adopted a policy that would allow such schools under certain conditions. The issue arose after officials of Bridges Academy, a private school east of Sisters, talked with state officials about possibly converting their institution into a charter school. The local academy has not pursued the idea and has submitted no application to the Sisters School Board. The Oregon School Boards Association encouraged... Full story
Mental health services in this region have always been strapped for cash. With a statewide budget crunch, that situation is getting worse. The Deschutes County Mental Health Department receives only about $900,000 a year from property taxes and other local sources, according to Director Gary Smith. The bulk of its $14 million budget comes from the state and federal governments. That's why the state revenue shortage hurts locally. Smith explained that the funding problem is aggravated by the fact that in modern times... Full story
The Sisters area will have a role in the May election of board members for Central Oregon Community College. Four positions on the seven-member board will be on the ballot, including the one for Zone 7, which covers Sisters. John Overbay of Sunriver, current occupant of the Zone 7 seat, has filed for re-election. He was first elected in a contest for an open seat in 1999 and is completing that four-year term. Overbay, 68, lives in Sunriver. He is the former owner of the Wagner Markets and still owns the land and buildings on... Full story
Sisters schools spent $7,553 per student on operating costs in 2000-2001, according to an audit by the Oregon Secretary of State's office. That was slightly above the statewide average. The audit entitled "Oregon Department of Education: Kindergarten Through 12th Grade Cost Survey" was released about six weeks ago. It was, in fact, a study of per-student operating expenditures in all 198 Oregon school districts, broken into several categories, for the year 2000-2001. In total spending per student the survey shows the... Full story
You don't have to be an old timer to know the causes of Oregon's fiscal plight. The chain of events began in 1990. That was the year Democrat Barbara Roberts was elected governor, succeeding Neil Goldschmidt, who chose not to seek a second term. But voters made a more fateful decision that same November day (this was before the infernal mailed ballots): A slight majority, centered in the Portland suburbs, approved Measure 5. In many ways, Measure 5 has been the governor of Oregon since. Those who voted for it did so because... Full story
Deschutes County Sheriff Les Stiles is pulling a fiscal rabbit out of the hat to avoid some budget cuts this year. And the rabbit has Greg Brown's name on it. "We took a $112,000 hit in January and we're likely to take another $50,000 hit in February," Stiles said last week when asked about the impact on his office of state revenue shortages and the failure of Measure 28. The combined $162,000 is a reduction in grant-in-aid funding to the county from the state Department of Corrections. But Stiles is not planning to make... Full story
Sisters High School and Sisters Elementary School received the highest possible grade -- "exceptional" -- on the annual school report cards issued by the state last week. They were among only four high schools and 91 elementary schools receiving that mark across the state. Only two other schools in Central Oregon, Amity and Jewell elementary schools in Bend, were included in the elite group. The 1999 Legislature passed the law making the report cards mandatory. They rate all public schools in Oregon on a four-point scale,... Full story
Sisters High School has a near-zero dropout rate. During the last school year (2001-02), only three of the 453 students enrolled at the beginning of the year withdrew before the year was over. This produced an official dropout rate of .66 percent, according to an annual report issued earlier this month by the State Department of Education. Sisters' experience is part of a favorable story across the state. The statewide dropout rate for 2001-02 was 4.9 percent, representing the fourth consecutive year the rate has fallen. It... Full story
The bewildering array of social services that receive at least some government support in Oregon is composed of two large groups today -- the lucky and the unlucky. The lucky are the ones that depend primarily on federal, local or private funding. The unlucky are those that depend heavily on the state general fund, the main operating fund of state government. With the failure of Measure 28, the state general fund is expected to fall about 20 percent short of the revenue expected when the Legislature adopted the 2001-2003... Full story
Casey Kendall looks like a wrestler, but he's not. He was a Golden Gloves boxer in high school and college. Two of his children participate in scholastic wresting programs today, however. That's part of the reason Kendall has become the town's leading advocate of greater support for high school and middle school wrestling. He thinks the sport has helped his own sons in a variety of ways and could do the same for many more if they, too, were attracted to a strong program. This belief caused Kendall to write a letter to the... Full story
Three of the five Sisters School Board positions will be on the ballot next May 20. The three incumbents whose seats will be on the ballot are Eric Dolson, Steve Keeton and Jeff Smith. Dolson and Smith say they will run for re-election. Keeton will not. "The main reason I'm not running again is the time commitment," Keeton explained last week. "It's really a big time commitment." Keeton, 42, operates his own construction company. Dolson, 53, is co-publisher with his wife of The Nugget. He was appointed to the board last June... Full story
Both The Nugget and The Bulletin editorially oppose Measure 28. Their arguments are not unreasonable. But in sum, they ask voters to sacrifice the good on the altar of the perfect. Said The Nugget: "...there is a very real possibility that passing a tax increase to get us by for a few years will take the pressure off the legislature to enact real reform." Echoed The Bulletin: "What Oregon really needs isn't a three-year hike...Rather, as Kulongoski's predecessor emphasized last spring, Oregon needs permanent solutions." In ot... Full story
The fiscal sky over Sisters will not fall if Measure 28 fails. Nonetheless, the fate of the measure at the polls this month will make a difference to Sisters' public schools. It will have much less impact on the City of Sisters. Measure 28 was placed on the January 28 ballot by the Legislature, meeting in special session last September. It proposes a small, temporary (three-year) tax increase that would make up $310 million worth of cuts in the current state general fund budget. The cuts will take effect if voters say no to... Full story
The search for a new Sisters school superintendent has quietly entered its fifth week. School Board Chairman Jeff Smith thinks it's going well. But he and others involved know that finding the right person in today's political and fiscal environment will be more difficult than usual. The large and growing future deficit projection for PERS (the Public Employees Retirement System) is complicating the search. It is making some experienced candidates who ordinarily would consider trying for an attractive superintendency opt for... Full story
How much would Measure 28 on the January 28 ballot cost the taxpayer? The precise answer, of course, depends on each taxpayer's taxable income. In their joint statement in support of the measure in the Voters' Pamphlet Gov. John Kitzhaber and former Gov. Vic Atiyeh say: "On average, Measure 28 will cost Oregonians $9.50 per month. Sixty percent of taxpayers will pay less than that." In the same publication, the three-member Joint Legislative Committee presenting an argument on behalf of the legislative majority that placed... Full story
On Sunday, December 8, Northwest newspapers reported that former Congressman John Dellenback had died at age 84. It was a fitting Christmas story. Why does a politician's death make a Christmas story? Because this politician was a true Christian gentleman. His life illustrated an admirable way of handling the awkward relationship between religion and politics. I don't know a lot about Dellenback's family background. My impression is that, like so many modern pioneers, he was raised in the East and came West after the war. I... Full story
John Young, head of the Oregon School Board Association search operation, launched the process to find a replacement for Superintendent Steve Swisher (far right). Photo by Jim Cornelius Although it was foggy outside, there was no lack of clarity in the meeting room Monday night when a couple dozen area residents described for the Sisters School Board the characteristics they would like to see in the district's next superintendent. When the hour-long exercise was over, one participant mused, "It sounds like God." Actually,... Full story
Ted Goodwin, who spends his summers in Sisters, told a Central Oregon reporter last week: "You just have to hunker down, like a jackass in a hailstorm, and let this thing happen." That was vintage Goodwin; he's still part cowboy. He was talking about his role in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision declaring the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. Well, not quite. But that's how it was perceived. In truth, Goodwin has been outhunkered by members of Congress, the President and... Full story
A fair solution The Sisters School Board is suffering an embarrassment of riches. It not only passed, in the May election, a $20.5-million bond issue to build a new high school. It subsequently learned that the district expects to earn $1.9 million in interest from investment of the bond proceeds before the bills have to be paid. While that might produce cheers in some towns, in Sisters it produced a controversy that split the school board down the middle. Two members said: "Let's return the interest money to the taxpayers" b... Full story
The Sisters School Board moved closer Monday night, February 9, to final answers for two money questions that seemed to come with the winter's snow: - What happened to some $900,000 in interest earnings on high school construction bonds that the board expected to "give back to the taxpayers" by paying down bond principal? - How much did the district actually spend on its new high school, which opened last fall, and was the total more than had been budgeted? Superintendent Lynn Baker offered a printed response to the first... Full story
