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Homebuyer tax credit ends soon Returning Keep it in mind if you’re thinking of buying, • House flipping, vets to get local care Substitutes scrutinized at Bend site BUSINESS, B1
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by school board, parents
Plans for a VA center had stalled, but the city is providing a space in downtown as an interim solution By Erin Golden
Sandy Johnson, who has worked 15 years as a substitute teacher, helps, from left, fifth-graders Kiara Goodman, Haylee Perkins, Mabel Keller and Haily Blewett, all 11, with maps of Colonial America during class Monday at Jewell Elementary School.
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When the more than 450 soldiers who serve with a Bend-based Oregon National Guard unit come home from Iraq this month, they’ll be among the first veterans able to get counseling and other services at a new U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs center in New Bend. por tA ve. Plans for the R E IV R Greenwood Ave. S E Ore center — the gon Ave first of its kind Temporary . Fra on the east side n vet center klin Ave of the Cascades Tumalo Ave. . — have been oad R a in the works Lav for years but Eric Baker / The Bulletin had recently stalled. The VA announced its plans for a Bend center in August, and officials said they hoped to have it up and running by the time the Guard’s 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, which include’s Bend’s 1st Squadron, 82nd Cavalry, finished its year-long deployment. The soldiers are scheduled to return later this month, but the VA is still taking bids for the project and won’t be ready to select a contractor until May. In the meantime, however, local veteran advocates, the office of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and the city of Bend have come up with a solution. Last week, Wyden’s office asked the city if it had any space it could use for a veterans center. City officials offered up an empty 3,000-square-foot office building on Northwest Franklin Avenue in downtown Bend, and on Monday, organizers announced that they’d scheduled a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Wednesday and hope to have the center open soon after. See Vets / A5
— Sandy Johnson Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
State testing, fewer school days up the ante on worries By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin
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hen 16-year-old Summit High sophomore Madi Mintz thinks about substitute teachers, she immediately thinks of the one who liked to talk about “The Dog Whisperer.” For junior AJ Cowan, 17, it’s the ones who like to tell their personal life stories. And they both remember the one in middle school who liked to take their pictures. It’s an age-old issue: When teachers are out and substitutes take over, how much learning actually takes place? But it’s a question getting more attention now that schools have fewer class days
and students are tested to ensure they’re meeting state benchmarks. Last month, several Bend-La Pine School Board members brought up their concerns, and now the school district is working to make the Subfinder system more effective. School board member Nori Juba has been particularly vocal about his sons’ substitutes. He said one of his son’s music classes has watched “American Idol” when that teacher is out, while his other son has lost days of high school math because the substitutes who show up aren’t capable of teaching high-level math. Other times, his sons have spoken of substitutes who don’t speak the foreign language they’re expected to teach. “My kids come home and I ask them how was
school and they say fine,” he said. “The only time I hear about it is when they had a sub, and they say, ‘We had a sub and we didn’t learn. We watched a video.’” Bend-La Pine School Board member Kelly Goff said one of her children watched the cartoon movie “Madagascar” for three consecutive days when a math teacher was out. “Who’s dropping the ball?” she asked. “Is it that the teacher is not leaving a lesson plan behind? Aren’t they supposed to have those done ahead of time? … Because I highly doubt that substitutes travel with movies in their backpacks, that they travel around and carry ‘Madagascar.’” See Substitutes / A4
Warner Brothers via New York Times News Service
Astronauts Andrew Feustel and John Grunsfeld, both at right, repair the Hubble Space Telescope during a mission in May 2009 in a scene from the film “Hubble 3D.”
TOP NEWS INSIDE MINE: West Virginia blast kills at least 12, Page A3
Cracking a Accused of abuse in U.S., cyberspying priest still works in India Fixing the Hubble network – and seeing what By Patrick Condon and Ravi Nessman The Associated Press
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TORONTO — Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and U.S. computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defense Ministry. In a report issued Monday night, the researchers, based at the University of Toronto, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network hacked into computers in government offices on several continents. See Cyberspying / A4
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A Roman Catholic priest was in his native India in 2007 when he was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl at his former post in Minnesota. Three years later, he is still serving as a priest in India with the blessing of his local bishop. And the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul has no intention of returning to the U.S. to answer the charges. His bishop said Jeyapaul handles paperwork for schools in the diocese office and does not work with children. “We cannot simply throw out the priest, so he is just staying in the bishop’s house, and he is helping me with the appointment of teachers,” said the Most Rev. A. Almaraj of the Diocese of Ootacamund in southern India. “He says he is innocent, and these are only allegations. … I don’t know what else to do.” See Priest / A5
it sees – in 3-D By Dennis Overbye New York Times News Service
Jim Mone / The Associated Press
Attorney Jeff Anderson points to a photo of the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul during a news conference Monday in St. Paul, Minn. Anderson represents a teenage girl Jeyapaul is charged with sexually assaulting.
What goes through an astronaut’s head when things go wrong, and he is floating in space 350 miles above the Earth? Six days into a mission last May to repair and rehabilitate the Hubble Space Telescope, Michael Massimino, an astronaut, robotics expert and honorary New York City fireman, was getting ready to rip a handrail off the side of the fabled telescope. Beneath the handrail, behind a panel secured by 111 tiny screws, was a broken spectrograph needing electronic repair to go back to its job, which included inspecting faraway planets. Massimino had trained for years to do this on-orbit “brain surgery,” but first, having stripped a crucial bolt, he would have to resort to brute force. See Hubble / A6