Bulletin Daily Paper 03/09/10

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Nothing dodgy here

Slam poetry: Teens are hooked

Dodgeball participants say it’s a painfully fun time • SPORTS, D1

COMMUNITY, E1

WEATHER TODAY

TUESDAY

Mostly clear start, clouds increasing, showers late High 41, Low 26 Page C6

• March 9, 2010 50¢

Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com

Lourdes Segade New York Times News Service

The ups and downs of Puertollano, Spain, as a producer of solar power, could have implications for the U.S., where a similar solar push is under way.

A high-tech route to smarter kids?

After boom and bust, solar power finds a place in Spain

But joining another district ‘would be a last resort,’ schools chief says By Sheila G. Miller and Patrick Cliff The Bulletin

By Elisabeth Rosenthal New York Times News Service

PUERTOLLANO, Spain — Two years ago, this gritty mining city underwent a brief, 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun. With generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city aggressively set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: “The Sun Moves Us.” Soon, Puertollano, home to the Museum of the Mining Industry, became a hub of alternative energy, with two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and silicon wafers, and clean energy research institutes. Half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain. Farmers sold land for solar plants. Boutiques opened. And people from all over the world, seeing business opportunities, moved to the city, which had suffered 20 percent unemployment and a population exodus. But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up like weeds on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own. See Solar / A4

TOP NEWS INSIDE HEALTH CARE: Obama kicks off pivotal week on the offensive, Page A3

INDEX Business

B1-4

Calendar

E3

Classified

G1-6

Obituaries

Comics

E4-5

Sports

D1-4

Community E1-6

Stocks

B2-3

Crossword E5, G2

TV listings

E2

Editorial

Weather

C6

C4

Local

C1-6

Movies

E3 C5

We use recycled newsprint The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper

Photos by Rob Kerr / The Bulletin

Buff Elementary teacher Elizabeth Bare helps students Cesar Aguirre, 9, and Kaegan Prevett, 9, with a class project last week. The students were using their laptops to gather information from the Internet about the Iditarod race in Alaska. Bare uses a wireless mouse that operates her SMART board — a display connected to a computer and projector that shows the computer’s desktop on the board in the background.

It’s pricey and of unknown value in boosting achievement, but local districts say this: It gets kids interested and involved By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin

MADRAS — When Elizabeth Bare’s third-grade students study mapping and Alaska’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, they reference the fraying paper map tacked up at the rear of the classroom. The Buff Elementary students also spend quite a bit of time studying directions and map coordinates with the help of a software program called Kidspiration. Their fingers tap persistently on laptops and their eyes rest on the classroom’s SMART board, which Bare operates with a wireless mouse and slate from the With her wireless mouse, rear of the room. Bare can control the This is a 21st-century SMART board from anyclassroom. where in the classroom. Teachers and administrators hope students will become as proficient in technology as they do in reading, writing and arithmetic. It’s not cheap, and there’s no proof that having the latest gadgets available will increase student achievement or help them pass state tests. In fact, districts are beginning to conduct their own research on whether the millions of dollars being spent on technology will help students learn. But anecdotal evidence from area districts indicates the addition of computers, iPods and other technology does what sometimes no standard lesson plan can: get kids engaged and interested. See Technology / A5

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Student-to-computer ratio in Bend-La Pine Schools Bend-La Pine Schools has spent millions over the past several years to increase the number of computers in classrooms and labs in its district schools. Below, a look at the student-to-computer ratio in each Bend-La Pine school. Instructional Technology Coordinator Amy Lundstrom would like to see one computer for every two to three students in the district. For now, some schools have more computers because of private fundraising.

SISTERS — Sisters School District officials are facing such serious budget shortfalls for the next few years that they have begun talking about fundamental changes to the district’s operations, including possibly merging with another school district or reducing its three schools to two. Administrators and board members say it’s unlikely such drastic changes will occur this year. But, “We have some difficult times financially coming,” Superintendent Elaine Drakulich said Monday. Drakulich estimates the district will have to fill a $667,000 gap for the 2010-11 school year. That shortfall will increase to about $1.2 million in 201112. The district has a roughly $12 million budget. As it stands, Drakulich believes the district could try to make cuts in existing programs or in teachers and other staffing. But Sisters residents routinely stress their interest in a district with strong academics, after-school activities and learning opportunities like outdoor school. That’s where Drakulich’s less-traditional costsaving measures come in. While it’s still early in the process, Drakulich said several options are under consideration. For one, she said, Sisters schools could become a part of another school district or regionalize some of its services, like special education or human resources, with other districts or the High Desert Education Service District. See Sisters / A4

School Student-to-computer ratio Elementary schools Amity Creek Magnet Bear Creek Buckingham Elk Meadow Ensworth High Lakes Highland Magnet Juniper La Pine Lava Ridge Pine Ridge Ponderosa R.E. Jewell Three Rivers Westside Village Magnet William E. Miller

3.7 students 4.1 4.3 5.3 2.2 The Associated Press file photo

4.8 5.6

There’s no record of an orca in the wild ever killing a person, but cut one off from its family’s influence, and a fatality like last month’s becomes more likely, scientists say.

2.4 4.8 4.6 3.2 6.5 2.1 2.2 2.6 6.7

Middle schools 3.1

Cascade High Desert La Pine Pilot Butte Sky View

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By Kevin Spear

1.8

The Orlando Sentinel

3.9 3.6

High schools Bend La Pine Marshall Mountain View Summit

4.8 2.8 1.8 3.8 4.5 0

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Massive predator likely smarter than we’ve imagined

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Source: Bend-La Pine Schools Anders Ramberg / The Bulletin

ORLANDO, Fla. — Neuroscientist Lori Marino and a team of researchers have explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence. Killer whales, or orcas, have the second-biggest brains among all ocean mammals, weighing as much as 15 pounds. It’s not clear whether they are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired. Scientists are trying to better understand how killer whales are able to learn local dialects, teach one another specialized methods of hunting and pass on behaviors that can last generations — longer possibly than seen with any other species except humans. See Orcas / A4

Letters capture nation’s grief after Kennedy assassination By Katie Zezima New York Times News Service

Vol. 107, No. 68, 38 pages, 7 sections

Budget may force Sisters schools into merger, cuts

BOSTON — Days after President John F. Kennedy was killed, Dr. Ira Seiler sat at his desk and wrote a letter of condolence to his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. “Today, on Thanksgiving,

I keenly sense his death for it was just three years ago today that I forced my breath into the lungs of his newly born son,” Seiler wrote. John F. Kennedy Jr., was born premature; Seiler, a pediatric resident, said he placed a tube in the baby’s tra-

chea and breathed air into his lungs. “I met your husband only once after this but the part I played in saving his son’s life gave me a feeling of deep closeness to your husband,” Seiler wrote. He added: “I only wish I had been able

to give my life in place of that of your husband. He had so much to offer.” Seiler was one of more than a million people who wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy in the months after her husband’s assassination in 1963. Many of the letters

were destroyed; thousands of others were stored in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, where they were rarely seen, and at the National Archives; even many of the writers forgot what they said. See JFK / A4


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