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CB school officials looking for more space BY CHELSEA DAVIS
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The World
COOS BAY — More students are filing in to the younger grades, pushing Coos Bay school administrators to plan their buildings and staffing levels for bigger classes as those kids move up through the schools. It’s a 180-degree turn from years of declining enrollment on the South Coast. “We watched for years as enrollment was declining,” said Coos Bay School District business manager Rod Danielson at the school board’s meeting last week. “It impacted the elementaries and intermediate schools and the high school dropped from 1,200 to 800 kids.
To see how many kids are filling Coos Bay’s schools this fall, go to theworldlink.com.
The same thing is happening with these kids and large classes. As they work their way through, there’s going to have to be some adjustments in staffing at the middle schools and high schools.” Today, Blossom Gulch and Madison elementary schools are at capacity. Nearly every elementary class started this school year with more students than officials predicted, which means the class size debate isn’t dying anytime soon. Danielson talked numbers with the school board and pointed out a
“We try to predict what we think incoming classes will be for each This seems like a school at each grade level based on historical data,” Danielson said. legitimate crisis “The thing is, sometimes you’re situation where you right on and sometimes you’re not. We were off as far as our kinderneed a full-time EA in garten sizes. We had estimated 247 students between Madison and each classroom. Blossom Gulch. We ended up with Rocky Place 274.” School board member This year’s kindergarten class is the biggest the district has seen in years, he said. The number of few areas of concern: Classes are at teachers didn’t increase, but or approaching 30 students in superintendent Dawn Granger said kindergarten at Madison, second she set aside money in the contingrade at Blossom Gulch, fourth and gency fund to put extra educational fifth grade at Millicoma and sixth aides at Blossom Gulch and Madison. grade at Sunset. Classes always fluctuate during
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the year as students move in and out of the district, but enrollment so far shows Marshfield’s class of 2027 is about 100 students larger than the class of 2015. “We’ve got some big class sizes. The problem that we see is not only that, but we also have building capacity problems,” Danielson said. “Down the road what we have to keep in mind is if we have another huge class of kindergartners coming in next year, we’ll have the three biggest classes in K-1 and 2. I’m not sure if there’ll be room to actually house all those students.” School board member Rocky Place said planning needs to start immediately. SEE ENROLLMENT | A8
21 month sentence in drug ring case
Grinding out a win
BY THOMAS MORIARTY The World
broaden the definition of consumer credit so that more loans would fall under the provisions of the 2006 law. Final rules likely won’t take effect until next year; the public and interest groups have 60 days to comment on the plan. Currently, transactions covered by the 36 percent cap on interest are limited to payday loans of $2,000 or less with terms of no more than 91 days, loans that are secured by a personal vehicle with terms of no more than 181 days, and tax refund anticipation loans. But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Pentagon have found that in some cases lenders slightly altered the loans, adding $1 to the loan or one day to the terms to bypass the interest cap. In testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee last year, Holly Petraeus, the head of the
COQUILLE — Court documents filed in the case of a Coos County man sentenced to prison as part of a methamphetamine distribution ring this week paint a picture of Oregon’s modern drug trafficking scene. After being found guilty in a one-day bench trial Thursday, Randy Neal Rossback was sentenced to 21 months in prison for unlawful delivery and possession of meth and being a felon in possession of a firearm. According to the South Coast Interagency Narcotics Team, the events leading to Rossback's arrest began Jan. 15, when a Reedsport police officer stopped a car driven by Sergio Llamas-Fernandez of Washington. In an application for a search warrant for Rossback’s Green Acres home, SCINT Detective Byron Spini wrote that the officer spotted a meth pipe when LlamasFernandez opened the car’s center console. When the officer searched the car, he found two 1-gallon sized plastic freezer bags of meth in a cooler. The drugs weighed out at 3.8 pounds. When interviewed by detectives from SCINT, the Douglas County Interagency Narcotics Team and Oregon State Police, both LlamasFernandez and his passenger, Ashley Dawn Gomez, said that the meth was bound for Rossback, and that they had previously traveled to his home on Upper Loop Road in December to broker a deal. Gomez told police she and Llamas-Fernandez had expected to net roughly $9,500 a pound for the drugs, which they were transporting from Vancouver. According to the affidavit, the suspects’ story was consistent with recent trends in Oregon’s drug scene. Since the Legislature restricted sales of psuedoephedrine in 2006, it’s been difficult for meth labs to
SEE LOANS | A8
SEE SENTENCE | A8
By Lou Sennick, The World
Reedsport's Joey Herr crashes through the Santiam defense to gain more yardage during the first half of their game Friday night in Reedsport. For more on the game, turn to Sports on page B1 and a gallery online at www.theworldlink.com.
The Associated Press
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WASHINGTON — A measure of U.S. consumer confidence reached its highest level since July 2013, led by greater optimism that the economy will grow and incomes will rise. The University of Michigan said Friday that its index of consumer sentiment rose to 84.6 in September from 82.5 in August. That’s the second highest level in the past seven years, although the index has rarely topped 85 since the Great Recession. Before the downturn, it typically stood above 90. Still, the sunnier outlook could spur consumers to spend more, which would accelerate economic growth. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity. But spending growth has been subdued since the recession ended in 2009,
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averaging at an annual rate of 2 percent. It usually rises above 3 percent in a healthy economy. Other measures also indicate that consumers’ outlook is brightening. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index increased to a seven-year high last month. A big reason Americans have been spending less is that their paychecks have barely kept up with inflation over the past five years. Consumers are now starting to anticipate larger raises: More households expect their incomes to rise in the coming year than at any other time in the past six years. The typical household expects its incomes to increase 1.1 percent, the most since late 2008, the Michigan survey found. More optimism about wage gains could also drive more spending. Before SEE CONSUMER | A8
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BY JIM KUHNHENN The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Aiming to restrict lenders who prey on members of the military, the Obama administration on Friday moved to close legal loopholes that have placed hundreds of thousands of service members at risk of excessive payday and other short-term loan fees. The Defense Department proposed new rules to toughen a 2006 law that limits interest rates for certain types of credit available to service members and their dependents. Under current law, lenders cannot charge members of the military more than 36 percent interest. But the loans covered by the law are so narrowly defined that lenders, many of them located near military bases, can make simple adjustments to get around its provisions. The proposed rules would
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