By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
WALDPORT – Thursday evening was the chance for grade-schoolers to meet their teachers and pick their desks.
For middle and high school students, Thursday night was the chance to reconnect with friends, check out lockers and classrooms, look at club displays on the track – and then maybe stay for the first football game of the season against Myrtle Point, which the Irish won 42-28.
As with the start of any school year, there was excitement and optimism in the air as students and parents wandered the campuses of Crestview Heights and Waldport Middle/High schools during a two-hour open house.
The hopefulness comes despite the specter of the largest surge in COVID-19 cases in Lincoln County in 17 months, following pandemic regulations that kept students away from the high school for all but three months last year.
“I really just hope I can have a normal year and graduation,” said senior cheerleader Bailey Browne as she greeted arriving students and parents at the high school entrance.
That hopefulness extends to the staff as well.
Natalie Kelley, who is entering her fifth year as a fourth-grade teacher at Crestview, was greeting many of her 16 students, giving them class material and allowing them to choose where to sit when classes start Tuesday.
“Everyone’s excited,” she said. “It’s good to have the kids back in person.”
School amidst COVID-19 surge
Following a year that saw the Lincoln County School District open and shut and open and shut and then reopen the last few months of the year, the coronavirus is still Topic No. 1 throughout the district.
Will schools be able to stay open as the COVID-19’s Delta variant sweeps through the county?
Can students stay safe – especially children under 12 who have not been able to get vaccinated – in a school setting with hundreds of other kids?
What kind of resistance will there be to an order from Gov. Kate Brown that all school employees and contractors show proof of vaccination by Oct. 18 or present evidence of a medical or religious exemption?
The Lincoln County School District sent notices to its 600 employees this week asking them to let administrators know if they will not comply with the governor’s mandate.
In an interview with YachatsNews, Superintendent Karen Gray said the notice asked employees “If you know you’re not going to comply, please let us know because we need to replace you.”
The governor and Oregon Department of Education have listed two exemptions to the vaccination requirement – a detailed medical exemption that has to be completed by a medical provider and a very general exemption based on religious beliefs.
Gray said the exemption for religious beliefs presents “a huge loophole” to employees who don’t want to get vaccinated but want to work. But she said exempt staffers will be tested weekly for COVID-19.
Wearing masks – also mandated by the governor for everyone in school buildings or on school grounds – shouldn’t be much of an issue.
“We ended the school year wearing masks and we’ll start the year wearing masks,” Gray said. “We’re going to do everything to start and keep schools open. I do not want to get shut down.”
Gray said food service provider Sodexo should be OK initially for staffing. Bus transportation provider First Student, like all school bus providers across the county, is scrambling for drivers and offering employment bonuses up to $6,500. Both may have employees with greater resistance to the vaccine requirement.
“If you have a political agenda that’s not why we’re here,” Gray said. “We want kids on the bus and kids in school.”
Even with the opening of schools just days away, the district is struggling to fill classified staff positions – classroom aides and assistants and others needed to help in rooms and around schools. Gray said this week there were still 25-30 openings for classified positions.
“The support staff, we’re grossly under-hired,” she said. “We need people to come back to work.”
Most teachers OK with vaccines
Peter Lohonyay, president of the teacher’s union, said he believes only a “very few” of the district’s 300 teachers won’t get vaccinated and won’t qualify for or seek an exemption.
“I think we’ll keep most of our people,” he told YachatsNews.
The Lincoln County Education Association has taken a position supporting the vaccine mandate, Lohonyay said, but is obligated to help teachers who don’t share that view.
“Some people are extremely in favor … and others extremely against it,” he said. “We feel and understand the state has the right to mandate other vaccines to attend school … we don’t see a difference in those and this mandate.”
Lohonyay said the union has received more calls from teachers who have to work with unvaccinated children under 12 who are nervous about being in a classroom with 20-25 students.
The Lincoln County Health Department had a vaccination clinic outside the entrance to Waldport High School on Thursday evening, and in the first few hours had given 13 shots – including to a few teachers.
District begins small online option
Other than a new district program offering online classes to 150 kindergarten through six-graders, there is no opportunity for teachers to work remotely this year. That new, $750,000 program has elementary teachers teaching from classrooms at Newport High School.
The district started the program because it reached the 3 percent limit on district students who attend out-of-district online charter schools, Gray said, and administrators did not like other online offerings for K-6 students “so we decided to start our own.”
Seventh- through 12-graders can enroll in the online Edmentum program, which the district has used for five years and administrators like.
Athletics – other than a few pre-season jamborees that were cancelled last week because they involved up to 12 teams – are scheduled to begin under mostly normal conditions. Unlike last year, athletes will not be required to wear masks during competition and there will not be limits on spectators, who will be required to wear masks.
The district gets the bulk of its money from the state based on its average enrollment during the year. After a loss of 400 students last school year, Gray said she expects enrollment to rebound some this year to between 5,250 and 5,300 students. Enrollment in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic was 5,500.
“We had a tremendous drop last year,” she said. “People just left. So far, our numbers are looking good … we want to get them back.”
New at Waldport’s schools
Enthusiasm is high at Waldport Middle/High and Crestview Heights schools where 45 teachers spent the week in training and getting their classrooms and instructional material organized.
Crestview Principal Mike Gass expects 250 students to be enrolled by the end of the first week of classes.
He’s excited about the return of full day pre-kindergarten for 3- to 5-year-olds that already has 16 to 17 children enrolled. And, the district is starting music programs for its elementary schools – with a music teacher setting up his classroom at Crestview.
“We hope to build a strong feeder program for the middle and high school,” Gass said.
He doesn’t expect much pushback over distancing – each classroom has room for 20-24 kids and desks are at least three feet apart and students and staff are used to the other protocols.
“We bought a lot of trust last year when we brought people back,” he said.
At the high school, there’s a new/old face with the return of Les Keele as assistant principal/athletic director. He was assistant principal and girls basketball coach from 2016-18 before retiring for the second time. Now he’s back again, replacing Steve Cooper who returned to the McMinnville area to become principal of Yamhill-Carlton High School.
Another new face at Waldport High School is Alissa Rickborn, who joins the staff to teach biology and environmental science. Rickborn, who lives near Yachats and worked summers at the Drift Inn restaurant, has a doctorate in zoology from Oregon State University and conducted research on ocean acidification.
She has seven years teaching experience at the university level while at OSU and Boston University, published research papers on best practices in science education, and worked as a substitute teacher last year in the Lincoln County district.
“I really have an interest in our community. And, I think it’s really important to get kids interested in science,” Rickborn said. Helping aspiring college students find funding for their education, especially science education, is important to me.”