More than 12,000 books and library materials made the move from Gearhart Elementary School to the new Pacific Ridge Elementary School on Spruce Drive, part of the district’s efforts to relocate students to a campus outside of the tsunami inundation zone.
Librarian Laura Stewart guided the library’s effort, and this month, she won a state award for her work, earning the Oregon Association of School Libraries award, Library Paraprofessional of the Year 2020 award.
As full-time librarians in the state are cut from city and school payrolls, paraprofessionals like Stewart are asked to step up into positions left vacant.
“I was surprised and very honored to receive this recognition in a year that has been filled with challenges every day, in every facet of our lives,” Stewart said. “It was a bright surprise to receive this news.”
Stewart and her husband Jay Stewart owned a potter gift shop, House of the Potter Inc., in Cannon Beach, for 34 years. Jay died in 2011. She closed the store in 2013, deciding it was time to make changes in her life.
Stewart considered leaving the North Coast to live closer to her children, but in October 2013 a position opened up at Seaside Heights Elementary as a Title 1 aide.
“My plan was to sell my house and decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” Stewart said. “But a happy surprise happened. I was loving working with elementary kids. My job gave me so much joy.”
When her house and 7-acre property on U.S. Highway 26 in Seaside sold in 2015, she found a rental in Gearhart. At that same time the job of paraprofessional librarian at Gearhart school opened up. “I applied and was hired,” she said. “My love of reading books and kids merged into a perfect job for me.”
That was also the same year that the campaign to pass the Seaside School District bond to build new schools in Seaside started.
Stewart joined the committee. “My four children were born and raised in Seaside,” she said. “They went to Cannon Beach Elementary, graduating from Seaside High School. You could say I was a very involved parent volunteer, my belief that our Seaside kids needed and deserved a safe school became a passion. When the bond passed I was so happy. This was finally going to happen. I made the decision to buy a home and stay in our community to keep working for our Seaside kids.”
She worked for four years to get Gearhart Elementary School ready for the library merge with The Heights.
“Then came a pandemic, online school and all the things that happen with this new reality in education,” she said.
“In June, I packed up the library for the move in August, wearing masks and gloves,” she said. “In August, our move in was delayed, due to delays in the construction and COVID-19 restrictions. Finally, the movers came last week with library carts to move the books to our new library.”
While weeding collections and boxing all materials, Stewart continued to read stories online to students during distance learning and applied for and received a $3,000 grant to boost the new library’s Spanish collection.
After mornings of online school, Stewart, fellow librarian Maureen Ogilvie and educational assistants shelve books in the afternoons.
“With masks, gloves and all the district COVID protocols we are merging our schools into one Pacific Ridge Elementary,” Stewart said. “Never in a million years would I have imagined this is the way we would be merging our libraries.”
Headlines Around the State of Oregon
COVID-19 has claimed two more lives in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 655, the Oregon Health Authority reported on Monday, Oct. 26, according the latest numbers. Oregon Health Authority reported 339 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of today, bringing the state total to 42,436.
The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Benton (1), Clackamas (41), Clatsop (1), Columbia (7), Coos (8), Crook (2), Deschutes (10), Douglas (1), Jackson (15), Josephine (1), Klamath (9), Lake (2), Lane (37), Linn (7), Malheur (2), Marion (40), Multnomah (90), Polk (4), Sherman (1), Umatilla (5), Union (1), Washington (56) and Yamhill (6).
Early mornings in October are chilly, but the parking lot of the Klamath Falls Gospel Mission somehow still felt warm on Thursday as volunteers helped distribute boxes of food throughout Oregon and Northern California.
Forklifts transferred pallets of produce, dairy and meat boxes from vast refrigerated cargo trailers and onto a line of cars and trucks. Mostly wearing bright orange, the volunteers jovially greeted the visitors, making small talk as they filled their vehicles to the brim with fresh, free food. The cars drove off to deliver their bounty across the county and even the state. Ammond Crawford, the Mission’s executive director, said this is the only major distribution point for hundreds of miles.
People have come from as far away as Lakeview, Medford and even Salem to pick up food and distribute it further within their own communities.
Groundbreaking research on industrial hemp and the best ways to grow the crop are underway in Klamath Falls. Workers on Wednesday finished harvesting their crop of industrial hemp for Klamath Basin Research and Extension Center at Rock Creek Ranch, located off Highway 140 West.
The approximately one-acre, two-year operation is part of a multi-state, regional water efficiency trial aimed at identifying the best ways to grow and irrigate industrial hemp. The project has additional sites in Hermiston and Ontario, as well as Fresno and Davis, California. The overall project is mainly funded by about $1 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is designed to help determine best practices for irrigating the crop. OSU has a long history with hemp research, having been the site of the National Hemp Center from 1880 to 1934, according to GHIC Director Jay Noller.
Hemp was outlawed in the United States in 1936, though Noller, founder of the GHIC, said that some OSU faculty continued to unofficially grow the crop on campus for research purposes until it was removed in 1970.
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Lakeview District will be performing aerial herbicide applications across 20,700 acres starting on Monday, Nov. 2, and is expected to be completed by Nov. 15, depending on weather conditions, according to a news release. The goal of the proposed herbicide applications in South Warner, North Warner, Picture Rock, Clover Flat, Silver Lake, Dragon Rock Fire, Double J Fire area, and Windy Ridge annual grass project is to restore wildlife habitat invaded by invasive annual grass species that have the potential to create fuel loads and increase wildfire return intervals.
With the November 3rd Election night just around the corner, Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is pushing to place stringent restrictions on the 56 Portland police officers who remain federally deputized.
Despite the city’s request, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to end the federal deputation of local officers, who were deputized ahead of a far-right rally in September. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has since barred these officers from making arrests under federal law, but some remain concerned about what could happen on Election Night with the DOJ insisting that local officers patrolling the demonstrations have the ability to bring federal charges against protesters.
On Wednesday this week, Hardesty will introduce a resolution to the City Council that would limit the authority of these officers, who make up most of the bureau’s Rapid Response Team, the unit responsible for responding to protests. If passed, the rule would place new restrictions on who the deputized police can take orders from and communicate with during demonstrations.
“Building on the mayor’s order to take no further action of any kind pursuant to the federal deputation, I am proposing a resolution that creates safeguards to further ensure these deputized officers remain under local control and protect Portlanders from being charged with bogus federal charges,” Hardesty said in a statement.
Ducks scrimmage canceled as some 5 players test positive for Covid-19 over the weekend.
University of Oregon Athletic Communications announced Saturday evening that five football players have tested positive for COVID-19. These are the first positive tests since the program began daily testing in September.
Head coach Mario Cristobal told the media that the individuals are asymptomatic, in isolation and working with the local medical staff.
“The scrimmage was canceled,” Cristobal said. “Tomorrow we are testing the entire team again and following up with PCR tests for the other guys that tested positive.”
The university has reported the positive cases to health authorities and contact tracing is in progress. It is unclear as to when the group of players will be back in action and participating in group practices. The program is scheduled to kick-off their season against Stanford on Nov. 7 at Autzen Stadium.
A Veterans Administration police officer in Roseburg has been arrested after admitting he hid cameras in a 14-year-old girl’s bedroom, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday. Robert Wayne Roady, 48, faces multiple charges, including invasion of personal privacy. The sheriff’s office says Roady “admitted to placing the cameras in the room of a 14-year-old female for sexual purposes.” The department says that, after searching Roady’s home, detectives found evidence indicating there might be other victims. The investigation is ongoing. The sheriff’s office asks anyone with information about this case to contact the detectives’ division at (541) 440-4458.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler on Monday said authorities will soon announce a plan for dealing with possible civil unrest on election night. Wheeler, speaking during a news conference at City Hall, said local, state and federal authorities have been working to establish a mutual aid agreement to address potential violence or disruptions on election night, which is a week from Tuesday. Wheeler did not divulge specifics but said federal deputization of officers, crowd dispersal techniques and the roles of various law enforcement agencies are among the topics that have been discussed. He expects an announcement about the interagency plan to come early this week.
Multnomah County Commissioners are again talking about whether the Portland Police Bureau should be merged with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. The idea would be to use the money savings to fund social services. There would be extensive issues to be worked out, including who leads the new agency. The Police Chief is appointed by the Portland Police Commissioner, while the Sheriff is elected.
PORTLAND, Ore.—U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams announced today that a Hillsboro, Oregon, resident has been charged with assaulting a federally deputized Portland Police officer with the pointed end of an umbrella and interfering with law enforcement officers performing their official duties during a civil disorder event.
A federal grand jury in Portland has returned a two-count indictment charging Skyler Roy Rider, 18, with Civil Disorder and Assaulting a Federal Officer.
According to court documents, late on the evening of October 6, 2020 and into October 7, a crowd gathered and a march began at Elizabeth Caruthers Park located in the 3500 block of South Moody Avenue. The group walked to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building on South Macadam Avenue. Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officers observed many in the crowd carrying shields, wearing helmets, gas masks, and body armor. As the group marched towards the ICE building, support vehicles followed them as they blocked streets.
As the crowd arrived at the ICE building, people in the crowd were observed flashing lights in the eyes of Federal Protection Services (FPS) officers as they stood outside the ICE building. People in the crowd were observed throwing rocks at the FPS officers and at one point, someone in the crowd threw a flaming object onto the roof of the ICE building. Due to the criminal acts, FPS officers moved the crowd back towards Elizabeth Caruthers Park.
Later, the crowd again began marching towards the ICE building, blocking the streets. The PPB incident commander declared the event an unlawful assembly and the crowd was given multiple warnings over a loudspeaker to leave the area or face possible arrest, use of crowd control munitions to include tear gas. The crowd did not leave the area, but remained in the middle of the street. A PPB officer assigned to the Rapid Response Team, deputized as a U.S. Marshal to protect federal personnel and property during civil disorder events, observed a subject later identified as Skyler Roy Rider, holding a distinct blue and white umbrella, in a line of others blocking the street holding shields. The PPB officer determined there was probable cause to arrest Rider for disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer. As the officer approached Rider to arrest him, Rider lowered the umbrella with both hands and forcibly jabbed the officer in the chest with the pointed end of the umbrella. The force caused the officer to gasp and curl over in pain. Rider ran from the officer and other officers came to assist and placed Rider into custody for assaulting a public safety officer.
Following the arrest of Rider, he was found to be dressed in all black wearing a gas mask and body armor. In his pockets were two water bottles. Video was later viewed by the PPB officer showing Rider throwing a water bottle at FPS officers earlier in the evening.
Skyler Roy Rider, made an initial appearance in federal court today before a U.S. Magistrate Judge Jolie Russo, was arraigned, pleaded not guilty, and ordered released pending a two-day jury trial scheduled to begin on December 29, 2020.SHARE0