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• August 11, 2010 50¢
Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com
Bend-La Pine overhauling substitute system By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin
To ensure classroom time isn’t wasted when substitute teachers are at the helm, Bend-La Pine Schools this fall are training administrators and office managers, changing the way the “Subfinder” system works and beefing up district policies.
The changes come after school board members last spring expressed outrage about their kids coming home with tales of Disney movies and American Idol in music classes and substitute teachers incapable of teaching the high-level math or foreign language classes they’d been hired to teach.
Watchdog group works to expose fake veterans
After hearing the stories, BendLa Pine Schools Human Resources Director Jim Widsteen worked with Jayel Hayden, the human resources director for High Desert Education Service District, which runs the Subfinder system that connects substitute teachers to area school districts.
The two have created new lists that districts and schools can use to determine which substitutes might be the best fit for a class: Now, teachers can create a personal preference list, while schools and districts can create subject-based preference lists of substitutes. See Substitutes / A5
A local Tradition
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Medals ‘didn’t add up’ But the more Howard read, the more “those medals and his account of it all didn’t add up,” he said. He called friends to ask about the different medals. He emailed the photo and story. He wanted to know. “I work with guys here who have PTSD, soldiers who have lost legs and stuff, and they don’t have these super-cool medals and badges,” Howard said. See Fakers / A5
By Dan Barry New York Times News Service
STEVENS: Former Alaskan senator killed in plane crash, Page A3
INDEX Business
B1-6
Calendar
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
C1-6
J
ohn
Campbell,
above,
Movies
E3
E3
Obituaries
C5
Classified
F1-8
Education
C3
Comics
E4-5
Shopping
E1-6
Crossword E5, F2
Sports
D1-6
Editorial
C4
Stocks
B4-5
Crosswater Golf Course, south
Environment
A2
TV listings
E2
of Sunriver, in preparation for
Horoscope
E5
Weather
C6
the
We use recycled newsprint The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 107, No. 223, 38 pages, 6 sections
MON-SAT
The Bulletin
Ill-served convict picks exile over possible execution
TOP NEWS INSIDE
Local
By Keith Chu
IN CONGRESS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Army Capt. Joshua Howard, a physician’s assistant at Fort Riley, Kan., ran across the newspaper story online about a Korean War veteran who was to be inducted into the Kansas National Guard Hall of Fame. In the accompanying photo, the veteran wore a khaki shirt covered with ribbons and medals, black bars and stripes. The story told how this veteran had received the military’s No. 2 and 3 awards for valor along with two Purple Heart medals, one pinned on by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. And how he had been a prisoner of war in Korea for 5½ months.
E2
Democrats welcome the aid, while GOP decries unsustainable ‘bailout’ WASHINGTON — Central Oregon school districts will receive about $6 million in extra federal funding, as part of a $26 billion bill designed to aid state governments that passed the U.S. House on Tuesday. Oregon officials called the measure “an immediate boost,” and Democrats trumpeted education funding as an economic injection that will save thousands of teacher jobs. But Republicans, including Rep. Greg Walden, RHood River, decried the measure as a “bailout” to state governments and the latest example of unsustainable federal spending. The measure includes $10 billion for schools and $16 billion to shore up state Medicaid programs. In all, it is expected to mean $117 million for schools and about $155 million for Oregon’s Medicaid costs. It passed the U.S. Senate last week and President Barack Obama signed the measure into law late Tuesday afternoon. In Central Oregon, the bill will mean about $3 million for Bend-La Pine Schools, $1.3 million for the Redmond School District, $654,822 for Jefferson County and $591,000 for Crook County School District, according to the Oregon Education Department. Redmond Superintendent Shay Mikalson said the district has to wait until the state’s next revenue forecast, on Aug. 26, before it knows whether the budget will increase. A lower revenue forecast could mean more state K-12 budget cuts. See State aid / A5
By Lee Hill Kavanaugh
Abby
State secures federal funds for schools, Medicaid
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Tradition
COMING SUNDAY
golf
tournament. The first round of the four-day Champions Tour tournament begins Aug. 19, though other golfers will begin competing Monday.
Course maps, golfer profiles and much more ...
Tournament Guide
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — You can never come back, ever. If you plead guilty to that long-ago murder in Oklahoma City, you will be released from prison, where you have spent most of the past 27 years on death row. But once free, you will be banished from Oklahoma. OK? OK, said James Fisher, trading his black-andwhite-striped prison top for a blue-and-whitestriped dress shirt. Then, without shackles or escort, he stepped into the late afternoon of a state that once wanted him dead and now just wanted him gone. First, though, Fisher’s lawyers and supporters thought that the end to his Hitchcockian case, a study in the cost of appalling legal representation, warranted at least dinner. So they took him to Earl’s Rib Palace for the celebratory opposite of a last meal. With brown eyes wide behind large glasses and incarceration-gray hair cut close to the scalp, the ex-inmate dined on ribs, coleslaw, fried okra and root beer. While he ate, a gospel singer from Georgia introduced herself, sang out a song of redemption and handed him a $100 bill. See Exile / A5
James Fisher, who was released from Oklahoma’s death row in a plea deal that includes banishment from the state, is starting over in Montgomery, Ala. Nicole Bengiveno New York Times News Service