Cuts very real

I’m not sure what message was intended in the “Five Percent” editorial of April 1, but it seemed to downplay the significance of the budget cuts the state of Oregon faces.

True, the current 5-percent cut may not seem like much; however, that 5 percent is to an entire two-year budget and must be absorbed in the last three months of the biennium. So in reality, it represents a 40-percent cut — very significant, especially to social services.

The real story, however, is the 30-percent cut (or even more) that we face for the upcoming 2009-11 biennium. To put this into perspective, I offer the example of my state-funded Healthy Start home visiting program for higher-risk parents:

A 30-percent cut to Hood River County’s program would mean scaling back from $217,000 last biennium to $152,000 for 2009-11. This loss of $65,000 represents dropping approximately 25 families and their babies from services that have been proven to reduce child abuse and neglect.

The state’s inability to fund programs that serve struggling families is nothing to downplay. Quite the opposite — it demands our attention and action. Now more than ever, our legislators need to hear from us if we want to preserve important social services for our state’s most vulnerable residents.

Karen Enns
Program director
New Parent Services
Hood River

Sin and guns

I understand Mr. Cliff Mansfield’s frustrations (Our Readers Write, April 4) with the present administration and the gun control issue.

But an even greater concern for me, and I suspect other law abiding citizens in this sin-cursed world, is how guns are being used in tragic mass murders throughout the U.S. Our Founding Fathers would be aghast at how guns are being used today, even though they also lived under the curse of sin.

While guns seem to be the purveyor for the increase in killings, solving the root cause of the problem is a better solution. So what is the answer to the sin curse?

In this Easter week, it’s a good idea to look at the solution God laid out in the Bible. When God allowed sin to come into the world, He also had a remedy for each individual caught in sin’s trap. He brought forth His Son, Jesus Christ, to give His life for the forgiveness of our sins.

Therefore, when a person puts his or her trust in Christ, not only are their sins past, present and future forgiven, but God’s Spirit begins to counter the sin nature in each person who wants to live his or her life for God and love others.

Only God’s Son is able to conquer sin and provide genuine love. It has and will always remain the best hope for mankind.

Tom Yates
Hood River

GOP in denial

Watching C-SPAN for the past two months, it is very clear that Republicans in Washington have no intention of helping out the new administration in its attempts to improve our economy and the environment.

The Republican senators and representatives go on for hours with nonstop criticism of everything the new administration is proposing and offering zero alternatives other than tax cuts. They claim that they do not want to leave the next generations with a huge debt, but their business-as-usual is exactly what got us in this mess in the first place.

Instead of supporting clean energy to reduce carbon emissions, they elect to drill for even more oil offshore and build new coal-fired power plants. One senator had the audacity to suggest that we take a step backward in our efforts to protect endangered species; all for the benefit of financial gain!

This type of thinking will ensure that the next generations will not have a planet to live on; and the economy will be the least of their worries.

Republicans in Washington are either in denial or just ignorant of the current global environmental crisis we are in. Many of them come from states that depend on dirty energy for their economy; but that doesn’t mean they can’t find a better way and join the 21st century.

Einstein, a smart man I have heard, once said, “Problems can’t be solved within the mind-set that created them.” Republicans had eight years in control and really made a mess of things, now its time they stepped back to give the new administration a chance to fix it.

Colleen O’Donnell
Hood River

Thank you for Wilderness

Last week, President Barack Obama signed legislation designating new wilderness lands throughout our country. We Oregonians will be able to enjoy over 200,000 acres of new wilderness in our state.

Here in Hood River County, the Act created Mt. Hood Wilderness additions, new wilderness in the Columbia River Gorge, Wild and Scenic Rivers and National Recreation Areas.

The legislation came about because of the work of many people. Thank you Congressmen Greg Walden and Earl Blumenauer and Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith. Thank you to the many, many citizens who gathered petition signatures, gave statements at hearings and wrote letters.

Thank you, Hood River Valley Residents Committee, Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Oregon Wild, especially Erik Fernandez, Cooper Spur Wild and Free, Sierra Club and many other organizations.

Thank you Hood River County Commission and Hood River News for your support. Thank you Mt. Hood Meadows and our many local businesses. Thank you, especially, Kate McCarthy, for devoting your life to protecting Mount Hood.

The final solution was a compromise. Some wanted more wilderness; some less. But people worked hard to find solutions.

Is the work done? No way. The U.S. Forest Service has to exchange Government Camp lands for land at Cooper Spur. People and the county will need to monitor the process to ensure the exchange happens in a timely manner.

We all have to help the Forest Service find solutions for managing these lands, whether volunteering for trail maintenance, lobbying Congress for wilderness funding or working to restore fire as a natural element of forests.

The Act creates a legacy for countless generations of Oregonians. Wildlife, plants, waters and creatures of all kinds will be protected for their future generations, too.

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”—Terry Tempest Williams

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— The Hood River Wilderness Committee: Jurgen Hess, Margo Earley, Hugh McMahan, Darryl Lloyd, Peter Cornelison, Jim Denton, Keith Harding

ANOTHER VOICE

Charter school planning: For CL, small is beautiful

By JAMES HOLMAN

Since January, when the Hood River County School Board voted to close Cascade Locks High School in September, parents and the community have worked to come up with an alternative to busing the students 21 miles to Hood River Valley High.

Anyone who has lived in a small town and attended its small high school will understand that this was like a death in the family. Small town life revolves around its schools. They are a community’s heart and soul, almost living things, evolving over the years to reflect and shape the community’s values.

So it is no exaggeration to say that in the past two months, the community of Cascade Locks has gone through many of the stages of grieving, from denial through anger and deep sorrow at the loss.

The final stage, of course, would be acceptance of reality. We know the school board is unlikely to reverse its decision, which we understand is a financial one. Closing the high school will save the school district an estimated $450,000, which will go some way toward filling what is expected to be a nearly $2-million hole in the district’s overall budget. In this economy, those are hard facts.

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But the community’s acceptance of reality emphatically does not mean acceptance of the loss of its high school. Parents and the community rallied to the cause, joined by scores of alumni who have never forgotten the solid education and memorable experiences of their student years at Cascade Locks High. After researching the alternatives, it quickly became clear that the best way forward was creating the community’s own charter school.

In just 14 days, facing a deadline of March 6, a group led by parents completed a complex application for planning grant money available through the Oregon Department of Education. Although it is a competitive grant, and other groups in Oregon also are applying for the money, Cascade Locks has outlined a compelling case for a charter school. In time, it could become a magnet for students from other schools and districts, offering a nurturing small school setting with an educational focus that the charter school group has enthusiastically embraced.

That plan envisions a curriculum that is place-based, taking as its organizing principle the environmental sciences, sustainability and stewardship of the Columbia Gorge and the Northwest’s diverse natural resources. As its name suggests, place-based education promotes learning rooted in the students’ surroundings — their school, neighborhoods, community and region. Student projects are central, and always related to the real world.

For example, high school students studying biological systems might design long-term projects in which they would learn from locally based state, federal and tribal biologists working to restore the Columbia River Basin’s salmon runs. The possibilities for such learning partnerships would be limited only by the students’ and teachers’ imagination.

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The parents and the community members who have put their hearts and countless hours of work into this plan are excited about the positive energy it has created. What was already a tight-knit community has been drawn even closer, working toward a goal that both can be done and is worth doing.

While we await the decision about the planning grant money, due April 16, the group is forging ahead. Much work remains, but this community has pulled together many times in the face of adversity. In a year, we hope to be planning graduation for the first senior class to call this fledgling charter school their alma mater. What a celebration that would be.

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James Holman graduated from Cascade Locks High School in 1966 and now lives in Lake Oswego. He retired in November after 30 years as a journalist.