ByJeff Mapes SUNDAYA&E oregonlive.com/ Empty desks...

T H I R D O F A F I V E - PA R T S E R I E S

Empty desksBy Betsy Hammond | The Oregonian( Originally published February 2014 )

By Betsy [email protected]

Ahuge but overlookedproblem is jeopardizing thesuccess of tens of thousandsof Oregon students, leavingthem at risk of neverlearning to readwell orfailing to graduate fromhigh school.

It’s not class size,curriculumor teachertraining.

It’s attendance.Last school year nearly 1 in 5 Or-

egon students missed at least 10percent of the school year, an inves-tigation by The Oregonian shows.Those roughly 100,000 studentswere absent 3½weeks of schoolor more, in mostcases withoutraising alarms attheir school.

No other statehas been showntohavea chronicabsenteeismrateas bad as Ore-gon’s.

“ I t ’s a t r o -cious,” said RobSaxton, Oregonschools chief.

Students aredeemed chron-ical ly absentif they miss 10percent or moreof school days.Last school year24 percent of Or-egonhigh schoolstudents missedthat much. Andsodid20percentofeighth-gradersand18percentoffirst-graders.

At some Oregon schools, includ-ing North EugeneHigh, Glendale El-ementaryandBend’sMountainViewHigh, more than one-third of stu-dentswere chronically absent.

Frequent absenteeism has dev-astating consequences. One Oregonstudy found that students whomiss10percentofkindergarten lag,onav-erage, almost a year behind in read-ingby third grade andareunlikely toever catch up. Studies frommultiplestates show that chronically absenthigh school students are unlikely tograduate.

Empty desks | No state looks worse

‘Atrocious’ attendanceputs learning at risk

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Copyright © 2014 • Oregonian Publishing Co. • Vol. 164, No. 55,145 • 12 sections

MICHAEL LLOYD/THE OREGONIAN

A single empty desk is not normally a cause for alarm. More than 99 percent of students miss at least a day ofschool. But Oregon has an epidemic of chronic absenteeism that goes unnoticed. A student who misses school twodays a month ends up missing more than a tenth of the school year, enough to put him or her in academic jeopardy.

Oregon’sabsenteeismepidemicToday: Rampantabsenteeism putsthousands ofstudents at riskof failure.Wednesday:Missing too muchfirst grade setsstudents backfor years.Friday: Despitea sparkling newschool, Vernoniastudents skip atsky-high rates.Saturday: Middleschool and highschool absencesput diplomas injeopardy.Next Sunday:Vigilance atClackamasHigh helps keepkids in class.

About 100,000 Oregon students missed 10 percent or moreof the 2012-13 school year.

Note: Excludes students who enrolled after the midpoint of the school yearand those attending alternative schools

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35%

Percentage of students, by grade, who were chronically absent

Absent from class

DAN AGUAYO/THE OREGONIAN

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12Grade

All students Low-income students

Please see ABSENT, Page A16

Source: Analysis by Betsy Hammond of The Oregonian, using 2012-13 school year datafrom the Oregon Department of Education.

Missed fewer than5% of school days:53% Missed 5% to 9% of days:

29%

Missed 10% to 14% of days:11%

Missed 15% to 19% of days: 4%Missed 20% or more of days: 4%

Rampant absenteeismOne in 5 Oregon students missed 10 percent or more of theschool year in 2012-13.

Oregon officials saythey didn’t know aboutCalifornia’s inquiry intoher contract dealingsBy Jeff [email protected] [email protected], the formerOr-

egon Health Authority official atthecenterof thestormofOregon’snonfunctional health insuranceexchange,was investigatedbythestate of California for inappropri-ate contracting in 2008, The Or-egonian has learned.

Upon being hired by the Cali-fornia Public Utility Commission

in 2008, Law-son funneledfive contractsworth nearly$500,000 ina four-monthperiod to thesmall consult-ing companyrun by herformer bossin the privatesector. Theformer boss

was Steven Powell, whom Law-son later hired as her senior dep-uty in Oregon.

When Lawsonwas asked to re-sign in December, the state pro-moted Powell to replace her. Inthree years Powell rose from run-ning a tiny consulting companyto being interim chief informa-tion officer for the OregonHealthAuthority and the Department ofHuman Services, one of the high-est-rankingtechnology jobs in thestate.

The California incident raisesmore questions about Lawson’sjudgment and decision-making,issues that have already come upin the still-unfolding controversyover Oregon’s health exchange,Cover Oregon.

Stateofficialswere tight-lippedabout the matter Friday, otherthantosaytheydidn’tknowaboutCalifornia’s contracting investi-gation when they hired Lawson.“This was not disclosed by Law-sonoranyofher references,”OHAspokeswoman PattyWentz said.

Lawson could not be reachedfor comment. Powell declined tocomment.

Despite spending more than$160 million on the project, thestate was forced by the botchedproject to devise a stopgap appa-ratus to manually process health

Ex-healthofficial’spast workhad issues

• A searchable database with absenteestatistics on every public school inOregon• Interactive maps where you canzoom in to find statistics by school andarea, with schools color-coded to showlow, medium and high proportions ofchronically absent students

Go to oregonlive.com/education to find:

• An interactive chart that shows therelationship between absenteeism andeconomic status• Videos on absenteeism’s disastrous effecton education; on Vernonia and its strugglewith high absenteeism; and on ClackamasHigh School and its successful approach toenforcing attendance

• Photo galleries andonline-only stories• An invitationto share yourexperiences withabsenteeism, whetheras a parent, educatoror community memberPlease see HEALTH, Page A17

LawsonForced to quit postat Health Authority

More wintry weather is forecast. How are people and businesses coping? METRO, B1

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By Nick [email protected] [email protected] than fourmonths afterOr-

egon’s $170millionhealth insuranceexchangewas supposed togo live, of-ficials say it couldbeupandpartiallyrunning later thisweek— though itwon’t beopen to thepublic.

By thisweekend, CoverOregonofficials hope to allow insuranceagents andotherswhoassist clientsto use apassword-protected versionof the site to enroll people as part ofa limited launch.

Exchangeofficials havebeenun-der great pressure tomake this dayhappen.

But just because the state’s ex-change is turnedondoesn’tmean itwill runwell. The system remainsriddledwith bugs—asmany as 1,200of them, according to the state, anddozens of themarepotentially quiteserious.

Here are someof the technologicaltroublesOregon still faces, in ques-tion-and-answer format.

Q:What’s been theproblemwiththe technology?

A:The exchange ismore than awebsite, it’s a combination of soft-ware and hardware. Its heart is asuite of different software productsthat the OregonHealth Authority

Health exchangemay golive, but far fromhealthy

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200

210

220

Missed more than 20%

Missed 10-20%

Reading at grade levelMissed 5-10%

Missed less than 5%

3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade

Kindergarten’s long shadow

Source: 2012 ECONorthwest study of Oregon Department of Education data

Students who miss too muchkindergarten trail their peerseven years later.

Kindergartenattendance

Average readingscore in 5th grade

223223223221.4221219

215


BETSY HAMMOND/THE OREGONIAN

Michelle Eagleson, who teaches kindergarten and first grade at Vernonia Elementary, gets her students to work tirelessly because learning to read requiresmastering so much information. She uses songs, movement and encouragement to keep it fun and keep her students engaged.“Kiss your brain,” she saysafter they master a new letter sound.“You are getting smarter!”


Some of themost frequent truants in Oregon aren’t surlyhigh school students ormoodymiddle schoolers. They’re6-year-olds, almost one-fifth ofwhommissed at least 10percent of first grade in 2012-13.

Rampantfirst-gradeabsenteeismismost common inpoor rural commu-nities, includingontheWarmSpringsreservation and in small towns suchasGlendale,MyrtlePointandLaPine,an investigation by The Oregonianfound.

But it happens in Happy Valley,Northwest Portland and Fairview,too. First-graders who miss three orfourweeksof schoolare likely to trailbehind their classmates years later,even if they start coming to schoolregularly, teachers say and studiesconfirm.That’sbecause, formostOr-egonchildren,firstgrade is themagicyearduringwhichtheygofromfalter-ing to fluent at reading.

As kindergartners, students learnto map sounds onto letters, formthem into words and read simplesentences. In first grade, young-sters upgrade and flex those skills,so that untangling clusters of lettersand words becomes automatic and

the meaning can shine through. Butstudentswhostayhomefromschoolonce every two weeks or so duringthose critical early years don’t get aproper introduction to some letters,blends and sight words, then get in-sufficientpracticemelding themintowords and phrases.

A first-grader out for only one daymisses at least an hour and a half ofintensive coaching and practice atreading.

“What we find is those kids getstuck,” said Cyndi Hagey, achieve-mentspecialistatEarlBoylesElemen-tary inSoutheastPortland.“Theyarestill having to sound out every wordbecausetheyjusthaven’thadenoughpractice. They get bogged down andcan’t go faster, can’t understand thatit’s a sentence that hasmeaning.”

Across Oregon, 18 percent of first-graders missed at least 10 percent oflast schoolyear, leavingmostof them

Empty desks | The littlest truants

Early missed classeshold kids back for years

Go to oregonlive.com/education to find:• A searchable database with absentee statistics on

every public school in Oregon• Interactive maps where you can zoom in to find statisticsby school and area, with schools color-coded to show low,medium and high proportions of chronically absent students• Photo galleries and online-only stories• An invitation to share your experiences with absenteeism,whether as a parent, educator or community member

Questions for Betsy Hammond? Join Betsy atoregonlive.com/education all day today with questions,comments and personal experiences.

Oregon’sabsenteeismepidemicSunday: Rampantabsenteeism putsthousands ofstudents at risk offailure.Today: Missingtoo much firstgrade setsstudents back foryears.Friday: Despitea sparkling newschool, Vernoniastudents skip atsky-high rates.Saturday:Middle and highschool absencesput diplomas injeopardy.Sunday: Vigilanceat Clackamas HighSchool helps keepkids in class.

By Jeff [email protected] — Norman Frink and

Mark McDonnell, two formerMultnomah County prosecutorswith tough-on-crimereputations,say they decided after the 2012election that marijuana legaliza-tionwas coming toOregon.

That’s the year whenWashing-tonandColoradobecamethefirststates to legalize marijuana andwhen an underfunded andmuchmore wide-open legalization ini-tiative in Oregon failed by lessthan 7 percentage points.

“It’s going to happen,” saidFrink,who retired last year as thecounty’s chief deputy district at-torney. “This is just apolitical factin Oregon, even if some peopledon’t want to admit it.”

As a result, Frink and McDon-nell, who headed the district at-torney’s drugunit before retiring,on Tuesday announced that theywanted legislators to refer amari-juana legalizationmeasure tovot-ers in November.

In doing so, the two formerprosecutors broke with the Or-egon District Attorneys Associa-tion, the Oregon State Sheriff’sAssociation and the chiefs of

Unlikelypair backmarijuanameasure

By Betsy [email protected] now make up one-

fourth of Oregon’s first-grade en-rollment, a record-high share, thestate reported Tuesday.

The proportion of Oregon stu-dents who are Latino has slowlyincreased over the past severalyears,while the share of studentswho are white non-Hispanic hasdeclined, theOregonDepartmentof Education said.

Over the past four years, La-tino enrollment in Oregon pub-lic schools has grown by 15,000students, to 125,000, while whiteenrollmenthasdroppedbynearly16,000, to 364,000.

Latinosmakeupalargerpropor-tionofOregon’syoungeststudentsthan its high school population,which is 20 percent Latino.

The state now has eight ma-jority-Latino school districts,including Woodburn and Milton-Freewater.

Forest Grove, with 5,900 stu-dents, is the most heavily La-tino district in the Portland area.

One-fourthof Oregon1st-gradersare Latino


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ShirleyTempleBlackdiesThe child starwhomade ’em smileduring Depression,dies at 85 | A4

Copyright © 2014Oregonian Publishing Co.

Vol. 164, No. 55,1487 sections

Oregon’s first-gradersStudents in the class of 2025

44,700 students

1.5% Native AmericanSource: Oregon Department of Education

2% AfricanAmerican

4% Asian

62% White 24% Latino

6%Multiracial


In Metro• Bills dealing with problemgambling bills pass House | B1• Developments on Native Americanmascots and blind hunting | B6

Follow our coverage of theOregon Legislature session

at OregonLive.com/politics

Please see POT, Page A9

Please see LATINOS, Page A9

Please see HEALTH, Page A8

UpdateWhat: CoverOregon’s websitecould be up andsort of running byweek’s end.

Who: Limited toinsurance agentsand others whoassist clients.

What’s next:The state isn’teven guessingwhen the publiccan use the site,but it shouldhelp peoplestill needingsubsidies in theindividual marketget signed upfaster through anagent or certifiedapplicationassisters.

A single empty desk is not normally a cause for alarm.

More than 99 percent of students miss at least a

day of school. But Oregon has an epidemic of chronic

absenteeism that goes unnoticed. A student who

misses school two days a month ends up missing more than a tenth of the

school year, enough to put him or her

in academic jeopardy.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL LLOYD THE OREGONIAN


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By Betsy [email protected] — This sleepy former

mill town, surrounded by miles ofverdant forest, is trying to throwoffatraditionthatmaystemfromitsdeeplogging roots: It is a community thatdoesn’t put a whole lot of stock insending its children to school.

At Vernonia Elementary last year,40 percent of first-graders werechronically absent, missing an aver-age of more than a month of schoolapiece.

Among highschool juniorsandseniors, skip-ping school wasepidemic. Sev-enty-twopercentwereabsentmorethan10percentofthetime,andhalfof those missedthe equivalent offivetonineweeksof classes.

A c r o s s a l lgrades, fullyone-third of Vernoniastudents werewhat the stateterms “chroni-cally absent”because theymissed 10 per-cent or more ofthe school year.

Surprisingly,however, evenschool officialswho kept the re-cordsandwalkedthe halls at the city’s sparkling new$40 million school building had noidea attendance was off-the-chartsbad.

Inacombinedelementary,middleand high school with 540 students

Empty desks | A culture of not caring

In Vernonia, absences soaras families shrug off school

Source: Analysis by The Oregonian of 2012-13 attendance data from OregonDepartment of Education

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th Avg.

40%

14% 16% 17% 16%21% 20%

32%40%40%

66%

77%

33%

Grade

Percentage of students in each grade who missed 10 pecentor more of the 2012-13 school year.


Vernonia absences

Oregon’sabsenteeismepidemicSunday: Rampantabsenteeism putsthousands ofstudents at risk offailure.Wednesday:Missing too muchfirst grade setsstudents back foryears.Today: Despitea sparkling newschool, Vernoniastudents skip atsky-high rates.Saturday:Middle and highschool absencesput diplomas injeopardy.Sunday: Vigilanceat ClackamasHigh School helpskeep kids in class.


• A searchabledatabase with absenteestatistics on every publicschool in Oregon

• Interactive maps whereyou can zoom in to findstatistics by school and area.

• An interactive chart thatshows the relationshipbetween absenteeism andeconomic status

• Photo galleries and online-only stories

• Videos on absenteeism’sdisastrous effect oneducation, on Vernoniaand its struggle with highabsenteeism, and onClackamas High School andits successful approach toenforcing attendance

• An invitation to shareyour experiences withabsenteeism, whetheras a parent, educator orcommunity member


Justin Ward, who grew up in Vernonia and returned to teach there, is frustrated when families in his hometown don’tput a high priority on children attending school.

SouthHillsboro:1,063 acres

South CooperMountain:543 acres

Roy RogersWest: 49 acres

North Hillsboro:330 acres

Source: Metro

Growth plan

North Hillsboro:

Industrial Residential

Urban growthboundary

Wilsonville

MULT. CO.

CLACK. CO.

WASH.CO.


0 4

MILES

A plan developing in the Legislaturewould bring four areas inside the urbangrowth boundary.

26

217

205

5

5

By Ted [email protected] report released last week sug-

gests that public power customersin the Northwest could end up onthe losing end of a speculative andpolitically motivated deal to sub-sidize an outdated and financiallytroubled nuclear fuel processingplant in Paducah, Ky.

Thereport,authoredbyPortland-based energy consultant RobertMcCullough, describes a complextransaction in which the opera-tor of the Northwest’s sole nuclearplant, Energy Northwest, bought$687 million worth of nuclear fuelcomponents, most of which it willnever need.

The plan is to sell most of thatstockpile to the Tennessee Val-ley Authority in a series of trans-actions that begin in 2015 and rununtil 2022. Itwilluse the rest to fuelits ownplant, theColumbiaGener-ating StationnearRichland,Wash.,until 2028.

It’s a convoluted deal, and itsvalue depends on the economicbeholder.

McCullough insists this isnodealat all for customers of the Bonnev-illePowerAdministration,whobuythe plant’s output and financiallybackstopped the fuel purchase. Hesays itdidn’t comethroughthenor-mal channels, it doesn’t fit Energy

BPA purchase of nuclearfuel is called a bumdeal

By Christian [email protected] — Oregon lawmakers are

working on legislation dubbed the“land-usegrandbargain” thatwoulduntie a political knot in WashingtonCounty and set the course for thePortland area’s growth for the next50 years.

In 2010, the Metro regional gov-ernmentadoptedacontroversial sys-tem designating thousands of acresas urban or rural reserves, keepingsome parcels as farmland or natureand opening others to future devel-opment.

That set off afirestorm,miring the

plan in legal disputes and halting aneffort to open 2,000 acres in Wash-ington County to development. Andwith the system incapacitated, themetro area’s growth has essentiallystalled.

Untangling the controversy couldbe one of the biggest achievementsof the Legislature’s 35-day session.

“This compromise protects someof the most important farmland inWashingtonCountyandallowssomeneeded development where there isconsensus that it makes sense,” saidRep. Ben Unger, D-Hillsboro. “If youcan get that done, it’s a good deal.”

Legislators step ontoMetro’s land-use turf

By Harry [email protected]

bills to live or die at the OregonLegislature.Anybill thatdidn’tgeta committee vote by the end ofthe day is considered kaput — al-thoughthedeadhavebeenknownto rise again at the Capitol.

Herearesomehighlightsofbillsthat didn’t make it, ones that didand ones that hover somewherein between.

Bills that raise or spendmoney,suchas theproposed$200millionin bonds for OregonHealth & Sci-ence University, aren’t subject tothe deadline.

Dead

E-cigarette regulation: Effortsto restrict sales tominors andbanso-called “vaping” in some pub-lic places has been pushed to the2015 session.

Licenseplateprivacy:Abill thatwouldhave required lawenforce-mentagenciestopurgelicensesur-veillance data died in committee.

Liquor sales: A bill that wouldhave allowed grocery stores tostock booze was amended to re-quireataskforcetostudytheissue.

Clean fuels: A bill that wouldhaverepealedthesunsetclauseona low-carbon fuel standard didn’teven get a hearing. Instead, Gov.JohnKitzhaberusedhis executiveauthoritytoadvancetheprogram.

Statebills hitlive-or-die cutoff

Go to oregonlive.com/politics to:

• Join our live chat today at noon;bring any question to our team ofpolitics reporters covering stategovernment• Read more Oregon Legislaturenews Please see ABSENT, Page A9

Please see NUCLEAR, Page A9

Please see BILLS, Page A8

Please see GROWTH, Page A8

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PART THREE | EMPTY DESKS: A CULTURE OF NOT CARING

In Vernonia, absences soaras families shrug off school By Betsy Hammond | The Oregonian( Originally published Friday, February 14, 2014 )

VERNONIA — This sleepy former mill town, surrounded by miles of verdant forest, is trying to throw off a tradition that may stem from its deep logging roots: It is a community that doesn’t put a whole lot of stock in sending its children to school.

At Vernonia Elementary last year, 40 percent of first-graders were chronically absent, missing an average of more than a month of school apiece.

Among high school juniors and seniors, skipping school was epidemic. Seventy-two percent were absent more than 10 percent of the time, and half of those missed the equivalent of five to nine weeks of classes.

Across all grades, fully one-third of Vernonia students were what the state terms “chronically absent” because they missed 10 percent or more of the school year.

Surprisingly, however, even school officials who kept the records and walked the halls at the city’s sparkling new $40 million school building had no idea attendance was off-the-charts bad.

In a combined elementary, middle and high school with 540 students — many from families who’ve lived in the community for generations — teachers, counselors and administrators didn’t notice that almost 200 of them were missing too much school. After all, on any given day, more than 90 percent of students were present, notes Nate Underwood, principal of the middle school and high school.

—many from families who’velivedinthecommunityforgen-erations — teachers, counsel-ors and administrators didn’tnotice that almost 200of themweremissing toomuchschool.After all, on any given day,more than 90 percent of stu-dentswerepresent,notesNateUnderwood, principal of themiddleschoolandhighschool.

The fact that so many stu-dents were gone two or threedays a month didn’t set offalarm bells. But it probablyshouldhave,becausestudentswhomiss thatmuch school in-evitably have gaps in their ac-ademicskills, said JulietSafier,a high school English teacher.

Shesees theeffectsfirsthandbecause, on top of a full teach-ing load, she works with theseniors at risk of being denieddiplomasbecause theyhaven’tmetstatewritingrequirements.Last year, 63 percent of Verno-nia juniors failed thestatewrit-ing test.

Junior year is the most im-portant, in Safier’s view, be-cause that’s when Oregonstudents take reading, mathand writing tests that helpdetermine whether they willgraduate.Lastyear, two-thirdsof Vernonia juniors missed atleast 10percentof schooldays,including15percentof theclassthat missed at least twice thatmuch.

“When they are missing 10,20 percent of the school year,they and their parents have tobe aware that is going to affecttheirability topass, theirabilityto graduate,” Safier said.

Fifty-six percent of Verno-nia juniors also failed the statemath test, nearly twice thestatewiderate.Now,asseniors,theirdiplomasdependonmas-tering that level ofmathby theend of this year.

When students are pres-ent and engaged, as they wereduringanOctoberEnglishclassdevoted to the novel “Ender’sGame,” there are “fabulousmoments”when they connectdeeply towhat theyhave read,Safier said, and write and talkabout it at high levels. Newac-ademic standards require stu-dents to take their academicdiscoursetothat level, shesaid.

“But inorder todothat, theyneed to be here,” she said.

Families bond on hunts

So why are so many Verno-nia students gone so often?

School officials profess baf-flement at what, exactly, hascaused their students tobeab-sent in theextreme,evenwhencomparedwith other rural Or-egon districts. But they point

toa fewfactors theysayalmostsurely contribute.

First, they cite the familytraditionofhunting.Althoughyou can bag a beautiful bucka few minutes’ drive outsidethe city limits, many familiestake a week at the start of falldeer or elk seasons, or both, totravel tocentraloreasternOre-gon tocamp,huntandbondasa family.Manycountonbring-inghomea freezer full ofmeatfor thewinter.

Althoughsometeachersqui-etly complain about childrenas young as 5missing somuchschool for hunting trips, it’s acherished tradition in most ofthe community.

Studentsaredeemedchron-ically absent only after miss-ing 17 days of school, and nostudentmisses anywherenearthat much to hunt, school of-ficials say. But missing a weekout of the gate for deer seasonraises the risk a student willreach that level of absentee-ism.

Freshman Hayden Cielohamissed three days of school togo deer hunting with his dad,uncle and grandfathers. Hewould have missed five, saidhis mom, Amy, but the menfilledtheirquota—andHaydengot his first deer — in recordtimeand returnedhomeearly.

“What they are getting outof that experience outweighsthree days of school. … Thebonding, the experience, thelearning—what it takes todealwith a dead animal.” Thatwayof thinking “is not somethingthat will change” for familieslike hers, she said.

Another issue:a lackofmed-ical services in town. Withmost dentists, doctors andothermedical offices at least a

45-minute drive away in For-est Grove, Hillsboro or farther,a cavity or broken bone canrequire multiple half-day ab-sences. The two small clinicsin townhavebeenstaffedonlysporadically and don’t havespecialists, dentists or ortho-dontists.

Susan Ely’s three kids knowthat she’ll insist that theygo toschool even when they com-plain they don’t feel good. “Inourhouse, school isNo. 1,” shesaid. None of her childrenwillcome close tomissing 17 days,she said.

Except last year.Her daugh-ter Megan, a three-sportathlete, needed two knee sur-geries. That required manyphysical therapy sessions, vis-its to an orthopedist in LakeOswego and two surgeries inOregonCity.“Youcan’t just runyour kid to the doctor and runthemback to school,” Ely said.

A third factor: a mutedsense of the value of educa-tion among many people inthe community.

Nooneopenlyquestions theimportance of school, parentsand teachers say. The com-munity of 820 householdsdug deep after a 2007 flooddevastated the town and de-stroyed its schools to come upwith $13 million to help builda showcase school on highground. When push comes toshove,however, gettingachildto school just isn’t that urgentformanyparents, teachersandsome parents say.

That is fueledbythe fact thatmany men in Vernonia havebeen able to get solid, good-paying jobs in nearby mills orin thewoodswithout somuchas a high school diploma. Al-thoughVernonia’s lumbermillclosed more than a half-cen-tury ago, a significant share ofmen have mill jobs in Clats-kanie, Mist or St. Helens.

“Our students may have aparent and a grandparent thathated school and that didn’tneedschool tohave successfullives,” school counselor PeterWeisel said. “So for that family,it’s no big deal. ‘Let ’em misssome school.’ ”

Although poverty and un-employment are high, U.S.Censusdata forVernonia showthat men without diplomaswho do have jobs earn an av-erage of $45,000 a year, whileVernonia men who’ve gone tocollege but not earned a four-year degree average $44,000.

That less-is-more effect isunlikely toholdtrue for today’shigh school students,whowillfind more opportunities andbiggerpaychecks if theyearnadiploma,orbetter, acollegede-gree, economists say. Nurses,teachers and electricians willbe in high demand in north-west Oregon; mill work andother manufacturing jobs areshrinking.

Some parents “don’treally care”

JustinWard,amiddleschoolEnglish teacher, understandshow pronouncements aboutthe importance of schoolcould ring hollow in the post-flood years when classes wereheld in dingy portables. Butlast year, students were wel-comed to a gleaming buildingwith twohuge gyms, spaciousclassrooms and abundant nat-ural light.

No longer can they say,“Why should we care aboutschool? Look what we’re in,”saidWard,whogrewup inVer-nonia and returned to teachthe next generation. It both-ers Ward when students misschunks of school to go hunt-ing, because they have a coldor because parents are goingthrough a divorce.

And, perhaps because Ver-nonia residents arehis people,he is more willing than mostto say so.

“It’s sad,” he said. “I’ll calland talk to parents, ‘Your kid’sfailing.They’rebehindbecausethey’re not here,’ and some ofthemdon’t really care.”

JonnaTraboshandLoganTi-tus, juniors at Vernonia High,said they know a lot of teenswho are indifferent to doingwell inschool.Andwhenthoseteens skip, Titus said, “someof their parents are fine withthat.”

They rattle off a half-dozennames, male and female, ofstudents who started skip-ping in middle school. “She’ssick.” “He plays video gamesall night.” “Her parents aren’thomewhenschool starts.”“Hisparents don’t really care.”

Trabosh has no problemcoming to school every day.She plans to become a nurse

and is headed to college. ButTitus seesmuch lessneed for adiploma.Neitherofhisparentsearned one, yet his dadmakesa living as a contractor.

Titus wants to work on carsfor a livingandhasbuilt ausedtruck into one that “looks andruns like new,” he said. If thatdoesn’t pan out, he plans towork as a roofer. His contrac-tor dad has all the contacts hewould need to get started, hesaid.

Still, Titus is in class almostevery day, even though hechafes at the school’s closedcampus and strict rules. “Icame this far,” he said. “Whynot finish?”

School officials step up

To their credit, Vernoniaschoolofficials are trying tofixthe problem even before theyfully understand it.

Until this year, the schoolsdidn’t regularly monitor indi-vidual absences, and studentsfaced no automatic conse-quences for absenteeism aslong as they did not miss 11straight days, when state lawsays they must be droppedfrom the rolls. That helps ex-plainhowonemiddle-schoolerremained enrolled all last yearbut missed almost 60 days ofschool, while a half-dozen ju-niors and seniors each missedabout 40 days.

That changed this year. Ifa student misses five days ina term, for any reason, theteacher phones the parentsand calls in the student totalk about the importance ofattending school. Should thestudent go on tomiss 10 days,the family gets a call from thecounselor and a letter warn-ing that the sheriff and a judgecould get involved if the pat-tern continues.

Comparedwithschoolswithbetter track records, thosewarning levels are set high. Astudentwhomisses 10 days inthe first nine weeks of schoolis on track to miss more than20 percent of the school year,twice the rate that the statedeems unacceptably high.

But consistent follow-through on the newpolicy ap-pears to be having an impact.

“It has increased our com-munication with parents,”Vernonia Elementary Princi-palAaronMiller said. “This re-ally isparent-dependent, sowehave to educate them.”

While many teachers re-ported that at least one stu-dent, and sometimes several,reached thefive-dayabsentee-ismmark this fall, the schools’principals and counselors sayonly two students hit the 10-day mark during the first nineweeks of school. By year’s endlast year, 26 studentshadbeenabsent at that rate.

AbsentContinued from Page A1

THE OREGONIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2014 A9

Education and payVernonia’s general lack of emphasis on school makes some sensegiven the relatively high salaries for people with little education. Butthat situation isn’t expected to hold for the next generation.Median earnings for wage-earners 25 and olderVernonia Men WomenHigh school dropout $45,000 $36,000High school diploma or GED $27,000 $25,000Some college $44,000 $35,000Four-year degree $52,000 $44,000Graduate degree * $128,000

OregonHigh school dropout $23,000 $15,000High school diploma or GED $31,000 $21,000Some college $38,000 $26,000Four-year degree $54,000 $35,000Graduate degree $72,000 $47,000

* Too few to report

SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU’S AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY 2008-12

C

0 20

MILES


26

47

30 205

5

PortlandPortland

St.Helens

ForestGrove

BattleGround

Vernonia

EMPTY DESK | OREGON’S ABSENTEEISM EPIDEMIC


Vernonia, historically a logging community, has a sparkling new school. But its absenteeismrates remained shabby last year.

Northwest’s typical fuelingplans and it didn’t receive ad-equate vetting for a project ofits size. At itsmost basic level,he says, it’s commodity spec-ulation.

Moreover,McCullough saysEnergyNorthwestandtheBPAcherrypickedtheiraccountingassumptions, first to make aquestionable transaction looklikeawinner, andnowtomin-imize the ongoing risks. Hisanalysis suggests that it couldultimately cost BPA custom-ers — 140 publicly owned util-ities in the region — an extra$206millionover the lifeof thetransaction.

“We have a federal agencyspeculatinginariskycommod-ity,” he said. “It’s dicey.”

Energy Northwest andBonneville, meanwhile, saythey’ve engineered a finan-cial home run, or at least a tri-ple, for ratepayers. They’velocked in a fuel supply for thenext twodecadeswith limiteddownsiderisk,providingpricecertainty that’s highly valu-able to ratepayers. They saythe deal will leave them nineyears of fuel touse in the reac-torworth$236million.Accord-ing to their latest accountingmethodology, they will havespent $65million to buy it.

“Energy Northwest has ahistory of strategic fuel pur-chases that have resulted insome of the lowest fuel costsin the nation for ColumbiaGenerating Station,” said DaleAtkinson, a vice president atEnergyNorthwest.“Intheend,ratepayers are saving millionsof dollars in the Northwest,and these savings will be re-flected over the next two BPArate cases.”

McCullough has spent agood part of the past year an-alyzing the economics of the

Columbia Generating Station.The plant is the lone holdoverfrom the financial fiasco thatwas the Washington PublicPower Supply System, whichattemptedtobuildfivenuclearplants in the ’70s and ’80s.

In December, McCulloughreleased a study funded by ananti-nucleargroup,Physiciansfor Social Responsibility, con-cluding that Bonneville couldsave its ratepayers $1.7 billionover the next 17 years simplyby closing the remaining nu-clear plant and purchasingpower on the openmarket.

Energy Northwest has re-leased its own study, and aspecial website, extolling theplant’s virtues. It maintainsthe plant is a key piece of thepower reliability equation inthe Northwest and will saveratepayers $1.6 billion if oper-ated until 2043.

Both studies are heavilydependent on underlying as-sumptions about future natu-ral gas prices and the resourcemix that would be used to re-place theoutputof thenuclearplant if it were shuttered.

In the meantime, Mc-Cullough said, he decided tohave a closer look at the fuelpurchaseafteraJanuarymeet-ing to discuss his initial find-ings with BPA AdministratorElliotMainzer andhis lieuten-ant, Greg Delwiche.

Thefueldealwashatched in2012 with Energy Northwest’sagreement to purchase a hugesupply of depleted uraniumtailings that USEC, formerlyU.S. Enrichment Corp., wouldprocess into nuclear fuel overthe followingyear at a plant inPaducah.

USEC,whichhasbeenheav-ily subsidized by the U.S. gov-ernment, was financiallytroubledat the timeof thedealand subsequently announceda plan to enter bankruptcy. ItsPaducahplantusesa1950s-eraprocess called gaseous diffu-sion to enrich uranium. The

process requires 20 times asmuch energy as modern cen-trifuge technologies, whichhas caused a dramatic drop innuclear fuel prices and forcedthe closure of most plants us-ing the old technology.

McCullough said the Pa-ducah facility faced closurebecause it could not find cus-tomers at its high cost. Andfollow-up reporting by News-week suggested that the dealwith Energy Northwest andthe TVA was engineered byKentucky’s two Republicansenators,MitchMcConnellandRand Paul, to save union jobsinadvanceof the2012congres-sional elections. The Paducahplant isa substantial employerand a major customer of theTVA, the enormous yet debt-laden government utility thatserves a large swath of theSoutheast.

Whatever themotivation inKentucky, Energy Northwestagreed to spend $687 millionfor fuel that McCullough sayswas cheaper on theopenmar-ket at the time and is worthonlyabout$440milliontoday.

Energy Northwest didn’tneed all that fuel. But the fi-nancially strapped TVA waseventuallywilling topurchasethree-quartersof it,notonly tofuel itsownnuclearfleetbut toproduce triton gas for nuclearweapons.Federal rules requirethatweaponsbeproducedus-ingU.S. technology,sotheTVAhad to buy fuel produced us-ing the older, more expensiveenrichment process. The dealwithEnergyNorthwest let thefinancially strapped utility offthe hook for more borrowing

and provided a big electricitysale to USEC.

With the BPA’s financialbacking and the TVA’s agree-ment to buy three-quartersof the fuel, Energy Northwestagreed to step in. This despiteits original analysis of thedeal’s cash flows that showeda negative present value of$150 million on the fuel sale.McCulloughsays that factwasobscured in a presentation toEnergy Northwest’s board byanaccountingmisstep that re-sulted in a $220 million profitonthefinancingandmadetheoverall deal look likeawinner.

Energy Northwest and theBPA insist that the uraniumtails transaction was putthrough a number of analyt-ical screens to scrutinize therisks and see if it was in thebest interests of all parties.And a number of contractualmeasures were put in place toprotect Northwest ratepayersif USEC or the TVA couldn’tdeliver.

“We were continuallybrought back to the samecon-clusionthat therewasextremevalue in the transaction forEnergy Northwest and the re-gion,” saidMarcus Harris, a fi-nancial analyst at the BPA.

Energy Northwest andthe BPA now say their origi-nal analysis was probably tooconservative, overstating theactual risks and understatingthevalue. Indeed, the fuel hasbeenprocessedanddelivered,so they’ve already eliminatedone of themajor counterpartyrisks.

Accordingly, they ’vechanged their accounting on

the deal and are now usinga vastly lower interest rate,equivalent to their borrowingrate on thedeal of 2.8percent,to discount the deal’s futurerevenue streams to the pres-ent day. That reduction froman original rate of 12 percenttransformsthedeal’seconom-icsonpaper, turningwhatwasa $150 million loss into a $252million gain.

It’s also out of step withthe conventions of corporatefinance, or the rates that theBPA, EnergyNorthwest or theTVA typically use to evaluateprojects.

“This is moving the goalposts because you couldn’tmake the goal,” said Mc-Cullough. “It’s simply inap-propriatecherrypicking.Theyapparently chose the numberbecause they like the result itgets them.”

McCullough still sees risk.TheTVAhas hadfinancial dif-ficulties, and the Obama ad-ministration has consideredprivatization as one option. Ithas theright todelaydeliveriesunder the contracts, and Mc-Cullough says it may get seri-ous buyer’s remorse over thehigh cost of the fuel. Mean-while, the spot price of ura-nium could continue to fall,putting Energy Northwest’sshare of the fuel out of themoney.

Energy Northwest and theBPAinsist that they’vethoughtthroughall theanglesandcon-clude that Northwest ratepay-ers are getting a good deal.

In themeantime, staffat theNorthwest Power andConser-vationCouncil haveoffered totakeaneutral lookat theduel-ing studies and their assump-tions, or perform their owncost effectiveness study onthe nuclear plant for the nextregional power plan in 2015.Thecouncil, taskedwithassur-ingthefederalpowersystemisaffordable and reliable, hasn’tresponded to the staff’s offer.

NuclearContinued from Page A1 Volcanic ash from ama-

jor eruption in Indonesiashrouded a large swath ofthe country’s most denselypopulated island on Friday,closed three internationalairports and sent thousandsfleeing.

First light brought clear theextent of the overnight explo-sive eruption atMount Keludon Java Island, though therewas no immediateword onany casualties.

Booms from themountaincould be heard 80miles awayin Surabaya, the country’ssecond-largest city, and evenfurther afield in Jogyakarta.

Ash covered the ground inboth cities andwas still fall-ing, according towitnessesand accounts on socialmedia.TV footage from towns closerto the peak showed farmyardanimals covered in ash.

Transportministry spokes-manBambang Ervan said Jo-gyakarta, Solo and Surabayaairportswere closed due to re-duced visibility and the dan-gers posed to aircraft enginesby ash.

The 5,680-foot Kelud hadbeen rumbling for severalweeks.

MuhammadHendrasto,head of the country’s volcanomonitoring agency, said themountain in East Java prov-ince erupted violently about90minutes after authoritiesraised its status to the high-est level.

Officials late Thursdayurged about 200,000 peopleliving in 36 villages within10 kilometers (6miles) ofthe crater to evacuate. It wasunclear howmany peopleheeded that warning, thoughthousands fledwhen theblasts began.

Kelud is among about 130active volcanoes in Indonesia.

—Associated Press

NEWSUPDATE |Indonesian volcano“In the end, ratepayers are savingmillions of dollars

in the Northwest, and these savings will be reflected

over the next two BPA rate cases.”Dale Atkinson

a vice president at Energy Northwest

The fact that so many students were gone two or three days a month didn’t set off alarm bells. But it probably should have, because students who miss that much school inevitably have gaps in their

academic skills, said Juliet Safier, a high school English teacher.

She sees the effects firsthand because, on top of a full teaching load, she works with the seniors at risk of being denied diplomas because they haven’t met state writing requirements. Last year, 63 percent of Vernonia juniors failed the state writing test.Junior year is the most important, in Safier’s view, because that’s when Oregon students take reading, math and writing tests that help determine whether they will graduate. Last year, two-thirds of Vernonia juniors missed at least 10 percent of school days, including 15 percent of the class that missed at least twice that much.

“When they are missing 10, 20 percent of the school year, they and their parents have to be aware that is going to affect their ability to pass, their ability to graduate,” Safier said.

Fifty-six percent of Vernonia juniors also failed the state math test, nearly twice the statewide rate. Now, as seniors, their diplomas depend on mastering that level of math by the end of this year.

When students are present and engaged, as they were during an October English class devoted to the novel “Ender’s Game,” there are “fabulous moments” when they connect deeply to what they have read, Safier said, and write and talk about it at high levels. New academic standards require students to take their academic discourse to that level, she said.

“But in order to do that, they need to be here,” she said.

Families bond on hunts

So why are so many Vernonia students gone so often?

School officials profess bafflement at what, exactly, has caused their students to be absent in the extreme, even when compared with other rural Oregon districts. But they point to a few factors they say almost surely contribute.

First, they cite the family tradition of hunting. Although you can bag a beautiful buck a few minutes’ drive outside of the city limits, many families take a week at the start of fall deer or elk seasons, or both, to travel to central or eastern Oregon to camp, hunt and bond as a

family. Many count on bringing home a freezer full of meat for the winter.

Although some teachers quietly complain about children as young as 5 missing so much school for hunting trips, it’s a cherished tradition in most of the community.

Students are deemed chronically absent only after missing 17 days of school, and no student misses anywhere near that much to hunt, school officials say. But missing a week out of the gate for deer season raises the risk a student will reach that level of absenteeism.

Freshman Hayden Cieloha missed three days of school to go deer hunting with his dad, uncle and grandfathers. He would have missed five, said his mom, Amy, but the men filled their quota — and Hayden got his first deer – in record time and returned home early.

“What they are getting out of that experience outweighs three days of school. … The bonding, the experience, the learning — what it takes to deal with a dead animal.” That way of thinking “is not something that will change” for families like hers, she said.Another issue: a lack of medical services in town. With most dentists, doctors and other medical offices at least a 45-minute drive away in Forest Grove, Hillsboro or farther, a cavity or broken bone can require multiple half-day absences. The two small clinics in town have been staffed only sporadically and don’t have specialists, dentists or orthodontists.

Susan Ely’s three kids know that she’ll insist that they go to school even when they complain they don’t feel good. “In our house, school is No. 1,” she said. None of her children will come close to missing 17 days, she said.

Except last year. Her daughter Megan, a three-sport athlete, needed two knee surgeries. That required many physical therapy sessions, visits to an orthopedist in Lake Oswego and two surgeries in Oregon City. “You can’t just run your kid to the doctor and run them back to school,” Ely said.

A third factor: a muted sense of the value of education among many people in the community.

No one openly questions the importance of school, parents and teachers say. The community of 820 households dug deep after a 2007 flood devastated the town and destroyed its schools to come up with $13 million to help build a showcase school on high ground. When push comes to shove, however, getting a child to school just isn’t that urgent for many parents, teachers and some parents say.

That is fueled by the fact that many men in Vernonia have been able to get solid, good-paying jobs in nearby mills or in the woods without so much as a high school diploma. Although Vernonia’s lumber mill closed more than a half-century ago, a significant share of men have mill jobs in Clatskanie, Mist or St. Helens.

“Our students may have a parent and a grandparent that hated school and that didn’t need

school to have successful lives,” school counselor Peter Weisel said. “So for that family, it’s no big deal. ‘Let ’em miss some school.’ ”

Although poverty and unemployment are high, U.S. Census data for Vernonia show that men without diplomas who do have jobs earn an average of $45,000 a year, while Vernonia men who’ve gone to college but not earned a four-year degree average $44,000.

That less-is-more effect is unlikely to hold true for today’s high school students, who will find more opportunities and bigger paychecks if they earn a diploma, or better, a college degree, economists say. Nurses, teachers and electricians will be in high demand in northwest Oregon; mill work and other manufacturing jobs are shrinking.

Some parents “don’t really care”

Justin Ward, a middle school English teacher, understands how pronouncements about the importance of school could ring hollow in the post-flood years when classes were held in dingy portables. But last year, students were welcomed to a gleaming building with two huge gyms, spacious classrooms and abundant natural light.

No longer can they say, “Why should we care about school? Look what we’re in,” said Ward, who grew up in Vernonia and returned to teach the next generation. It bothers Ward when students miss chunks of school to go hunting, because they have a cold or because parents are going through a divorce.

And, perhaps because Vernonia residents are his people, he is more willing than most to say so.

“It’s sad,” he said. “I’ll call and talk to parents, ‘Your kid’s failing. They’re behind because they’re not here,’ and some of them don’t really care.”

Jonna Trabosh and Logan Titus, juniors at Vernonia High, said they know a lot of teens who are indifferent to doing well in school. And when those teens skip, Titus said, “some of their parents are fine with that.”

They rattle off a half-dozen names, male and female, of students who started skipping in middle school. “She’s sick.” “He plays video games all night.” “Her parents aren’t home when school starts.” “His parents don’t really care.”

Trabosh has no problem coming to school every day. She plans to become a nurse and is headed to college. But Titus sees much less need for a diploma. Neither of his parents earned one, yet his dad makes a living as a contractor.

Titus wants to work on cars for a living and has built a used truck into one that “looks and runs like new,” he said. If that doesn’t pan out, he plans to work as a roofer. His contractor dad has all the contacts he would need to get started, he said.

Still, Titus is in class almost every day, even though he chafes at the school’s closed campus and strict rules. “I came this far,” he said. “Why not finish?”

School officials step up

To their credit, Vernonia school officials are trying to fix the problem even before they fully understand it.

Until this year, the schools didn’t regularly monitor individual absences, and students faced no automatic consequences for absenteeism as long as they did not miss 11 straight days, when state law says they must be dropped from the rolls. That helps explain how one middle-schooler remained enrolled all last year but missed almost 60 days of school, while a half-dozen juniors and seniors each missed about 40 days.

That changed this year. If a student misses five days in a term, for any reason, the teacher phones the parents and calls in the student to talk about the importance of attending school. Should the student go on to miss 10 days, the family gets a call from the counselor and a letter warning that the sheriff and a judge could get involved if the pattern continues.

Compared with schools with better track records, those warning levels are set high. A student who misses 10 days in the first nine weeks of school is on track to miss more than 20 percent of the school year, twice the rate that the state deems unacceptably high.

But consistent follow-through on the new policy appears to be having an impact.

“It has increased our communication with parents,” Vernonia Elementary Principal Aaron Miller said. “This really is parent-dependent, so we have to educate them.”

While many teachers reported that at least one student, and sometimes several, reached the five-day absenteeism mark this fall, the schools’ principals and counselors say only two students hit the 10-day mark during the first nine weeks of school. By year’s end last year, 26 students had been absent at that rate.

To see the entire series, as well as additional online-only features, go to:

www.oregonlive.com/absent

All content copyright The Oregonian 2014


Ahuge but overlookedproblem is jeopardizing thesuccess of tens of thousandsof Oregon students, leavingthem at risk of neverlearning to readwell orfailing to graduate fromhigh school.

It’s not class size,curriculumor teachertraining.

It’s attendance.Last school year nearly 1 in 5 Or-

egon students missed at least 10percent of the school year, an inves-tigation by The Oregonian shows.Those roughly 100,000 studentswere absent 3½weeks of schoolor more, in mostcases withoutraising alarms attheir school.

No other statehas been showntohavea chronicabsenteeismrateas bad as Ore-gon’s.

“ I t ’s a t r o -cious,” said RobSaxton, Oregonschools chief.

Students aredeemed chron-ical ly absentif they miss 10percent or moreof school days.Last school year24 percent of Or-egonhigh schoolstudents missedthat much. Andsodid20percentofeighth-gradersand18percentoffirst-graders.

At some Oregon schools, includ-ing North EugeneHigh, Glendale El-ementaryandBend’sMountainViewHigh, more than one-third of stu-dentswere chronically absent.

Frequent absenteeism has dev-astating consequences. One Oregonstudy found that students whomiss10percentofkindergarten lag,onav-erage, almost a year behind in read-ingby third grade andareunlikely toever catch up. Studies frommultiplestates show that chronically absenthigh school students are unlikely tograduate.

Empty desks | No state looks worse

‘Atrocious’ attendanceputs learning at risk

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A single empty desk is not normally a cause for alarm. More than 99 percent of students miss at least a day ofschool. But Oregon has an epidemic of chronic absenteeism that goes unnoticed. A student who misses school twodays a month ends up missing more than a tenth of the school year, enough to put him or her in academic jeopardy.

Oregon’sabsenteeismepidemicToday: Rampantabsenteeism putsthousands ofstudents at riskof failure.Wednesday:Missing too muchfirst grade setsstudents backfor years.Friday: Despitea sparkling newschool, Vernoniastudents skip atsky-high rates.Saturday: Middleschool and highschool absencesput diplomas injeopardy.Next Sunday:Vigilance atClackamasHigh helps keepkids in class.

About 100,000 Oregon students missed 10 percent or moreof the 2012-13 school year.

Note: Excludes students who enrolled after the midpoint of the school yearand those attending alternative schools

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35%

Percentage of students, by grade, who were chronically absent

Absent from class


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12Grade

All students Low-income students


Source: Analysis by Betsy Hammond of The Oregonian, using 2012-13 school year datafrom the Oregon Department of Education.

Missed fewer than5% of school days:53% Missed 5% to 9% of days:

29%

Missed 10% to 14% of days:11%

Missed 15% to 19% of days: 4%Missed 20% or more of days: 4%

Rampant absenteeismOne in 5 Oregon students missed 10 percent or more of theschool year in 2012-13.

Oregon officials saythey didn’t know aboutCalifornia’s inquiry intoher contract dealingsBy Jeff [email protected] [email protected], the formerOr-

egon Health Authority official atthecenterof thestormofOregon’snonfunctional health insuranceexchange,was investigatedbythestate of California for inappropri-ate contracting in 2008, The Or-egonian has learned.

Upon being hired by the Cali-fornia Public Utility Commission

in 2008, Law-son funneledfive contractsworth nearly$500,000 ina four-monthperiod to thesmall consult-ing companyrun by herformer bossin the privatesector. Theformer boss

was Steven Powell, whom Law-son later hired as her senior dep-uty in Oregon.

When Lawsonwas asked to re-sign in December, the state pro-moted Powell to replace her. Inthree years Powell rose from run-ning a tiny consulting companyto being interim chief informa-tion officer for the OregonHealthAuthority and the Department ofHuman Services, one of the high-est-rankingtechnology jobs in thestate.

The California incident raisesmore questions about Lawson’sjudgment and decision-making,issues that have already come upin the still-unfolding controversyover Oregon’s health exchange,Cover Oregon.

Stateofficialswere tight-lippedabout the matter Friday, otherthantosaytheydidn’tknowaboutCalifornia’s contracting investi-gation when they hired Lawson.“This was not disclosed by Law-sonoranyofher references,”OHAspokeswoman PattyWentz said.

Lawson could not be reachedfor comment. Powell declined tocomment.

Despite spending more than$160 million on the project, thestate was forced by the botchedproject to devise a stopgap appa-ratus to manually process health

Ex-healthofficial’spast workhad issues

• A searchable database with absenteestatistics on every public school inOregon• Interactive maps where you canzoom in to find statistics by school andarea, with schools color-coded to showlow, medium and high proportions ofchronically absent students


• An interactive chart that shows therelationship between absenteeism andeconomic status• Videos on absenteeism’s disastrous effecton education; on Vernonia and its strugglewith high absenteeism; and on ClackamasHigh School and its successful approach toenforcing attendance

• Photo galleries andonline-only stories• An invitationto share yourexperiences withabsenteeism, whetheras a parent, educatoror community memberPlease see HEALTH, Page A17

LawsonForced to quit postat Health Authority

More wintry weather is forecast. How are people and businesses coping? METRO, B1

For the latest weather news, closures and road reports, go to OREGONLIVE.COM/WEATHER

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By Nick [email protected] [email protected] than fourmonths afterOr-

egon’s $170millionhealth insuranceexchangewas supposed togo live, of-ficials say it couldbeupandpartiallyrunning later thisweek— though itwon’t beopen to thepublic.

By thisweekend, CoverOregonofficials hope to allow insuranceagents andotherswhoassist clientsto use apassword-protected versionof the site to enroll people as part ofa limited launch.

Exchangeofficials havebeenun-der great pressure tomake this dayhappen.

But just because the state’s ex-change is turnedondoesn’tmean itwill runwell. The system remainsriddledwith bugs—asmany as 1,200of them, according to the state, anddozens of themarepotentially quiteserious.

Here are someof the technologicaltroublesOregon still faces, in ques-tion-and-answer format.

Q:What’s been theproblemwiththe technology?

A:The exchange ismore than awebsite, it’s a combination of soft-ware and hardware. Its heart is asuite of different software productsthat the OregonHealth Authority

Health exchangemay golive, but far fromhealthy


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200

210

220

Missed more than 20%

Missed 10-20%

Reading at grade levelMissed 5-10%

Missed less than 5%

3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade

Kindergarten’s long shadow

Source: 2012 ECONorthwest study of Oregon Department of Education data

Students who miss too muchkindergarten trail their peerseven years later.

Kindergartenattendance

Average readingscore in 5th grade

223223223221.4221219

215



Michelle Eagleson, who teaches kindergarten and first grade at Vernonia Elementary, gets her students to work tirelessly because learning to read requiresmastering so much information. She uses songs, movement and encouragement to keep it fun and keep her students engaged.“Kiss your brain,” she saysafter they master a new letter sound.“You are getting smarter!”


Some of themost frequent truants in Oregon aren’t surlyhigh school students ormoodymiddle schoolers. They’re6-year-olds, almost one-fifth ofwhommissed at least 10percent of first grade in 2012-13.

Rampantfirst-gradeabsenteeismismost common inpoor rural commu-nities, includingontheWarmSpringsreservation and in small towns suchasGlendale,MyrtlePointandLaPine,an investigation by The Oregonianfound.

But it happens in Happy Valley,Northwest Portland and Fairview,too. First-graders who miss three orfourweeksof schoolare likely to trailbehind their classmates years later,even if they start coming to schoolregularly, teachers say and studiesconfirm.That’sbecause, formostOr-egonchildren,firstgrade is themagicyearduringwhichtheygofromfalter-ing to fluent at reading.

As kindergartners, students learnto map sounds onto letters, formthem into words and read simplesentences. In first grade, young-sters upgrade and flex those skills,so that untangling clusters of lettersand words becomes automatic and

the meaning can shine through. Butstudentswhostayhomefromschoolonce every two weeks or so duringthose critical early years don’t get aproper introduction to some letters,blends and sight words, then get in-sufficientpracticemelding themintowords and phrases.

A first-grader out for only one daymisses at least an hour and a half ofintensive coaching and practice atreading.

“What we find is those kids getstuck,” said Cyndi Hagey, achieve-mentspecialistatEarlBoylesElemen-tary inSoutheastPortland.“Theyarestill having to sound out every wordbecausetheyjusthaven’thadenoughpractice. They get bogged down andcan’t go faster, can’t understand thatit’s a sentence that hasmeaning.”

Across Oregon, 18 percent of first-graders missed at least 10 percent oflast schoolyear, leavingmostof them

Empty desks | The littlest truants

Early missed classeshold kids back for years

Go to oregonlive.com/education to find:• A searchable database with absentee statistics on

every public school in Oregon• Interactive maps where you can zoom in to find statisticsby school and area, with schools color-coded to show low,medium and high proportions of chronically absent students• Photo galleries and online-only stories• An invitation to share your experiences with absenteeism,whether as a parent, educator or community member

Questions for Betsy Hammond? Join Betsy atoregonlive.com/education all day today with questions,comments and personal experiences.

Oregon’sabsenteeismepidemicSunday: Rampantabsenteeism putsthousands ofstudents at risk offailure.Today: Missingtoo much firstgrade setsstudents back foryears.Friday: Despitea sparkling newschool, Vernoniastudents skip atsky-high rates.Saturday:Middle and highschool absencesput diplomas injeopardy.Sunday: Vigilanceat Clackamas HighSchool helps keepkids in class.

By Jeff [email protected] — Norman Frink and

Mark McDonnell, two formerMultnomah County prosecutorswith tough-on-crimereputations,say they decided after the 2012election that marijuana legaliza-tionwas coming toOregon.

That’s the year whenWashing-tonandColoradobecamethefirststates to legalize marijuana andwhen an underfunded andmuchmore wide-open legalization ini-tiative in Oregon failed by lessthan 7 percentage points.

“It’s going to happen,” saidFrink,who retired last year as thecounty’s chief deputy district at-torney. “This is just apolitical factin Oregon, even if some peopledon’t want to admit it.”

As a result, Frink and McDon-nell, who headed the district at-torney’s drugunit before retiring,on Tuesday announced that theywanted legislators to refer amari-juana legalizationmeasure tovot-ers in November.

In doing so, the two formerprosecutors broke with the Or-egon District Attorneys Associa-tion, the Oregon State Sheriff’sAssociation and the chiefs of

Unlikelypair backmarijuanameasure

By Betsy [email protected] now make up one-

fourth of Oregon’s first-grade en-rollment, a record-high share, thestate reported Tuesday.

The proportion of Oregon stu-dents who are Latino has slowlyincreased over the past severalyears,while the share of studentswho are white non-Hispanic hasdeclined, theOregonDepartmentof Education said.

Over the past four years, La-tino enrollment in Oregon pub-lic schools has grown by 15,000students, to 125,000, while whiteenrollmenthasdroppedbynearly16,000, to 364,000.

Latinosmakeupalargerpropor-tionofOregon’syoungeststudentsthan its high school population,which is 20 percent Latino.

The state now has eight ma-jority-Latino school districts,including Woodburn and Milton-Freewater.

Forest Grove, with 5,900 stu-dents, is the most heavily La-tino district in the Portland area.

One-fourthof Oregon1st-gradersare Latino


INDEX

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A10

MORE NEWS AT MOBILE.OREGONLIVE.COM

Business........C1Class. Index.. D7Comics ......... L6Croswrd NYT D9Editorial........B4Foodday/Liv ..L1

Health............ F1Metro.............B1Movies.......... L4Obituaries .... B3Sports ...........D1Television ..... L5

ShirleyTempleBlackdiesThe child starwhomade ’em smileduring Depression,dies at 85 | A4



Oregon’s first-gradersStudents in the class of 2025

44,700 students

1.5% Native AmericanSource: Oregon Department of Education

2% AfricanAmerican

4% Asian

62% White 24% Latino

6%Multiracial


In Metro• Bills dealing with problemgambling bills pass House | B1• Developments on Native Americanmascots and blind hunting | B6

Follow our coverage of theOregon Legislature session

at OregonLive.com/politics

Please see POT, Page A9

Please see LATINOS, Page A9

Please see HEALTH, Page A8

UpdateWhat: CoverOregon’s websitecould be up andsort of running byweek’s end.

Who: Limited toinsurance agentsand others whoassist clients.

What’s next:The state isn’teven guessingwhen the publiccan use the site,but it shouldhelp peoplestill needingsubsidies in theindividual marketget signed upfaster through anagent or certifiedapplicationassisters.


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INDEXA&E ..........A&E1Business........C1Class. Index..D6

Comics ......... E4Crsswrd NYT D6Editorial........B4

Living.............E1Metro.............B1Movies.....A&E4

Obituaries .... B3Prep Friday.... F1Sports ...........D1

Television ..... E2Weather...... A10


By Betsy [email protected] — This sleepy former

mill town, surrounded by miles ofverdant forest, is trying to throwoffatraditionthatmaystemfromitsdeeplogging roots: It is a community thatdoesn’t put a whole lot of stock insending its children to school.

At Vernonia Elementary last year,40 percent of first-graders werechronically absent, missing an aver-age of more than a month of schoolapiece.

Among highschool juniorsandseniors, skip-ping school wasepidemic. Sev-enty-twopercentwereabsentmorethan10percentofthetime,andhalfof those missedthe equivalent offivetonineweeksof classes.

A c r o s s a l lgrades, fullyone-third of Vernoniastudents werewhat the stateterms “chroni-cally absent”because theymissed 10 per-cent or more ofthe school year.

Surprisingly,however, evenschool officialswho kept the re-cordsandwalkedthe halls at the city’s sparkling new$40 million school building had noidea attendance was off-the-chartsbad.

Inacombinedelementary,middleand high school with 540 students

Empty desks | A culture of not caring

In Vernonia, absences soaras families shrug off school

Source: Analysis by The Oregonian of 2012-13 attendance data from OregonDepartment of Education

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th Avg.

40%

14% 16% 17% 16%21% 20%

32%40%40%

66%

77%

33%

Grade

Percentage of students in each grade who missed 10 pecentor more of the 2012-13 school year.


Vernonia absences

Oregon’sabsenteeismepidemicSunday: Rampantabsenteeism putsthousands ofstudents at risk offailure.Wednesday:Missing too muchfirst grade setsstudents back foryears.Today: Despitea sparkling newschool, Vernoniastudents skip atsky-high rates.Saturday:Middle and highschool absencesput diplomas injeopardy.Sunday: Vigilanceat ClackamasHigh School helpskeep kids in class.


• A searchabledatabase with absenteestatistics on every publicschool in Oregon

• Interactive maps whereyou can zoom in to findstatistics by school and area.

• An interactive chart thatshows the relationshipbetween absenteeism andeconomic status

• Photo galleries and online-only stories

• Videos on absenteeism’sdisastrous effect oneducation, on Vernoniaand its struggle with highabsenteeism, and onClackamas High School andits successful approach toenforcing attendance

• An invitation to shareyour experiences withabsenteeism, whetheras a parent, educator orcommunity member


Justin Ward, who grew up in Vernonia and returned to teach there, is frustrated when families in his hometown don’tput a high priority on children attending school.

SouthHillsboro:1,063 acres

South CooperMountain:543 acres

Roy RogersWest: 49 acres

North Hillsboro:330 acres

Source: Metro

Growth plan

North Hillsboro:

Industrial Residential

Urban growthboundary

Wilsonville

MULT. CO.

CLACK. CO.

WASH.CO.


0 4

MILES

A plan developing in the Legislaturewould bring four areas inside the urbangrowth boundary.

26

217

205

5

5

By Ted [email protected] report released last week sug-

gests that public power customersin the Northwest could end up onthe losing end of a speculative andpolitically motivated deal to sub-sidize an outdated and financiallytroubled nuclear fuel processingplant in Paducah, Ky.

Thereport,authoredbyPortland-based energy consultant RobertMcCullough, describes a complextransaction in which the opera-tor of the Northwest’s sole nuclearplant, Energy Northwest, bought$687 million worth of nuclear fuelcomponents, most of which it willnever need.

The plan is to sell most of thatstockpile to the Tennessee Val-ley Authority in a series of trans-actions that begin in 2015 and rununtil 2022. Itwilluse the rest to fuelits ownplant, theColumbiaGener-ating StationnearRichland,Wash.,until 2028.

It’s a convoluted deal, and itsvalue depends on the economicbeholder.

McCullough insists this isnodealat all for customers of the Bonnev-illePowerAdministration,whobuythe plant’s output and financiallybackstopped the fuel purchase. Hesays itdidn’t comethroughthenor-mal channels, it doesn’t fit Energy

BPA purchase of nuclearfuel is called a bumdeal

By Christian [email protected] — Oregon lawmakers are

working on legislation dubbed the“land-usegrandbargain” thatwoulduntie a political knot in WashingtonCounty and set the course for thePortland area’s growth for the next50 years.

In 2010, the Metro regional gov-ernmentadoptedacontroversial sys-tem designating thousands of acresas urban or rural reserves, keepingsome parcels as farmland or natureand opening others to future devel-opment.

That set off afirestorm,miring the

plan in legal disputes and halting aneffort to open 2,000 acres in Wash-ington County to development. Andwith the system incapacitated, themetro area’s growth has essentiallystalled.

Untangling the controversy couldbe one of the biggest achievementsof the Legislature’s 35-day session.

“This compromise protects someof the most important farmland inWashingtonCountyandallowssomeneeded development where there isconsensus that it makes sense,” saidRep. Ben Unger, D-Hillsboro. “If youcan get that done, it’s a good deal.”

Legislators step ontoMetro’s land-use turf

By Harry [email protected]

bills to live or die at the OregonLegislature.Anybill thatdidn’tgeta committee vote by the end ofthe day is considered kaput — al-thoughthedeadhavebeenknownto rise again at the Capitol.

Herearesomehighlightsofbillsthat didn’t make it, ones that didand ones that hover somewherein between.

Bills that raise or spendmoney,suchas theproposed$200millionin bonds for OregonHealth & Sci-ence University, aren’t subject tothe deadline.

Dead

E-cigarette regulation: Effortsto restrict sales tominors andbanso-called “vaping” in some pub-lic places has been pushed to the2015 session.

Licenseplateprivacy:Abill thatwouldhave required lawenforce-mentagenciestopurgelicensesur-veillance data died in committee.

Liquor sales: A bill that wouldhave allowed grocery stores tostock booze was amended to re-quireataskforcetostudytheissue.

Clean fuels: A bill that wouldhaverepealedthesunsetclauseona low-carbon fuel standard didn’teven get a hearing. Instead, Gov.JohnKitzhaberusedhis executiveauthoritytoadvancetheprogram.

Statebills hitlive-or-die cutoff

Go to oregonlive.com/politics to:

• Join our live chat today at noon;bring any question to our team ofpolitics reporters covering stategovernment• Read more Oregon Legislaturenews Please see ABSENT, Page A9

Please see NUCLEAR, Page A9

Please see BILLS, Page A8

Please see GROWTH, Page A8

3568626V

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By Betsy [email protected] January, Principal Shelley Mitchell realized

thatBanks JuniorHighhadabigproblem:Aviruswassweeping through her small-town school, infectingwave afterwave of students.

As the illness peaked, 30 percent of students wereabsentonasingleday.Mitchell tookextrememeasuresto protect her students and their learning.

She hired an anti-germ team from facility-manage-ment giant Sodexo, which twice sent cleaners over-night to wipe down every desk, doorknob and flatsurface.

Itwasahugerelief,Mitchell recalls,whennormalcyreturned to the school,which serves remote flanks ofruralWashingtonCountyaswell as the townofBanks.

What Mitchell didn’t notice, however, was a moresignificant problem: From September to June, one-fourth of her school’s eighth-graders missed nearly amonth of school apiece. That was enough to jeopar-dize their ability to learnmath and their likelihood ofgraduating fromhigh school.

Chronicabsenteeism,definedbythestateasmissingat least10percentof theschoolyear,canbedevastatingto a student’s success and canundermine the successof an entire school. But it can go unnoticed, as it didin Banks, because studentswhomiss only twodays amonth end up exceeding that 10 percent.

Theproblemisubiquitous inOregonmiddleschools:rich and poor, urban and rural, large and small. Ex-cluding magnet schools, Oregon has 225 schools that

Empty desks | Diplomas in jeopardy

How to ride herd onmiddle school truants


Alice Ott Middle School counselors Steve Benner (left) and Alicia Wendler assist Principal James Johnston during a call to the parents of a student who hasmissed 11 days of the school year. Johnston informed the parents of the consequences of their child’s absences, including a possible court-ordered fine.

Banks Alice Ott Statewide chronicSchool Junior High Middle School absenteeism rates

Enrollment: 190 About 720Districtwide poverty rate: 11% 35%School free/reduced lunch rate: 29% 71%Chronic absenteeism rates:

Grade 6: n/a 12% 15%Grade 7: 20% 17% 18%Grade 8: 24% 18% 20%Low-income students: 35% 16% 22%


A tale of two schools

0 5

MILES

Portland

ForestGrove

Vancouver

Hillsboro

Beaverton

CLARKMULTNOMAH

Banks Junior High

Alice OttMiddle School

26

8

217

205

84

5

Go to oregonlive.com/education to find:• A searchable

database with absenteestatistics on every publicschool in Oregon• Interactive maps whereyou can zoom in to findstatistics by school and area

• Photo galleries andonline-only stories• An invitation to shareyour experiences withabsenteeism, whetheras a parent, educator orcommunity member

Oregon’sabsenteeismepidemicSunday:Rampantabsenteeism putsthousands ofstudents at riskof failure.Wednesday:Missing too muchfirst grade setsstudents back foryears.Friday: Despitea sparkling newschool, Vernoniastudents skip atsky-high rates.Today: Middleand high schoolabsences putdiplomas injeopardy.Sunday:Vigilance atClackamas HighSchool helpskeep kids in class.

By Rob HotakainenMcClatchy News ServiceWASHINGTON — Marking an-

other milestone for the legalmarijuana industry, theObama ad-ministration on Friday said it hasadvised U.S. attorneys in stateswhere the sale ofmarijuana is legalnot to prosecute banks that allowpot stores toopenaccounts andac-cept credit card payments.

The policy will apply to Wash-ington and Colorado, where vot-ers legalized the recreational useof marijuana in 2012, and to the 20states and the District of Columbiathat allowmarijuana to be sold formedical reasons. Current federallawprohibits banks fromacceptingmoney linked to marijuana trans-actions because thedrug is bannedunder the federal Controlled Sub-stances Act.

Themovewashailedasastepfor-

ward by proponents of marijuanasales, but banking organizationswarned that accepting the depos-its was still illegal and said it wasunlikely to widely change banks’business practices.

“Legitimate marijuana busi-nesses will no longer be forced tooperate as cash-only businesses, acircumstancewhichhasmadethemhighly vulnerable to robbery andothercriminalactivities,”saidDem-ocratic Rep. Denny Heck of Wash-ington, who had lobbied hard forchange in federalpractices afterhisstate legalized the recreational useofmarijuana. Sales are expected tobegin there this spring; they beganin Colorado Jan. 1.

FrankKeating,chiefexecutiveof-ficerof theAmericanBankersAsso-ciation, was more cautious on thelikely effect of the policy change.

Feds shift policy onbanks and pot funds

By Harry [email protected] – It was called by one Or-

egon lawmaker “the mother of allasks.”

And perhaps it is, at least for thisshort legislative

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