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More rules for medical marijuana? By Lauren Dake The Bulletin
SALEM — Changes could be coming for Bend’s newly established cannabis clubs depending on a slew of legislation that would affect Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Act. More than a dozen House bills and a couple of SenIN THE ate bills are LEGISLATURE focused on further regulating the medical marijuana program. Since voters approved the program in 1998, the number of people using medical marijuana cards have increased due to a lack of regulation, some lawmakers say. Targets include preventing anyone with a drug conviction from possessing a medical marijuana card and imposing a tax on medical marijuana clubs. And some lawmakers want to give law enforcement more power and clearer guidelines to regulate the cardholders and clubs. In 2000, there were about 600 Oregonians with medical marijuana cards. In 2005, there were 13,055. This year, there are 38,269 medical marijuana cardholders in Oregon, according to information from the Department of Human Services, which runs the program. Voters approved the program in 1998. See Marijuana / A4
REDMOND SCHOOL DISTRICT
Reading rhyming
Merit may factor into layoffs for teachers
&
Area students celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday for Read Across America Day
By Patrick Cliff The Bulletin
Photos by Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin
M
ary Grant, the media manager at Ensworth Elementary School in Bend, reads “The Cat in the Hat” to Lee Bjorklund’s kindergarten class Wednesday afternoon. The students crafted hats and read the classic children’s book to celebrate
the birthday of Theodor Geisel, known to most young readers as Dr. Seuss. March 2 was
Facing a nearly $10 million budget shortfall, the Redmond School District may have no choice but to lay off teachers. In deciding which employees to dismiss, district administrators might consider merit as well as seniority. Redmond’s teachers union is worried enough about layoffs that it has asked the district to prepare a list of teachers who could be let go. In previous years, the district could have created a prioritized list using the experience of teachers and the areas they’re licensed to teach. In 2009, the district cut nearly 60 teaching positions, some through attrition and others according to experience and licensure. If layoffs do happen this time around, factoring in merit could make the decisions significantly more complicated. But the district hopes the process would leave as many of its best teachers in the classroom as possible. “The school board is looking to us to more strongly ensure we are absolutely doing what it takes to keep the most effective teachers in front of our students,” Human Resources Director Lynn Evans said. “We need to make maybe more careful decisions about who is (laid off) and who is not.” For more than a decade, state law has allowed school officials to consider merit in layoffs, but a majority of districts do not do so, said Jessica Knieling, the labor and employment services director at the Oregon School Boards Association. See Redmond / A4
designated Read Across America Day by the National Education Association.
Jim Wilson / New York Times News Service
Gregory Kang shifts a medical marijuana plant at a marijuana supply store in Oakland, Calif.
Oakland’s plan to tax pot farms hits roadblock By Malia Wollan New York Times News Service
OAKLAND, Calif. — For a brief, smoky moment last fall, this economically challenged city seemed poised to become the nation’s most aggressive when it comes to growing and taxing medical marijuana. Those hopes have been dimmed considerably in recent weeks, though, since an exchange of letters between the city attorney and federal law enforcement officials has made it exceedingly clear that Washington will not tolerate plans for the large-scale marijuana farms the City Council approved last July. City officials had hoped to use the massive indoor growing facilities to raise some $38 million annually in fees and taxes at a time when the city is struggling with a $31 million deficit and 17 percent unemployment. See Oakland / A4
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Top officer to lose child in action fights U.S. indifference to war By Greg Jaffe The Washington Post
Narayan Mahon / New York Times News Service
Before he addressed the crowd that had assembled in the St. Louis Hyatt Regency ballroom last November, Lt. Gen. John Kelly had one request. “Please don’t mention my son,” he asked the Marine Corps officer introducing him. Four days earlier, 2nd Lt. Robert Kelly, 29, had stepped on a land mine while leading a platoon of Marines in southern Afghanistan. He was killed instantly. Without referring to his son’s death, the general delivered a passionate and at times angry speech about the military’s sacrifices and its troops’ growing sense of isolation from society. “Their struggle is your struggle,” he told the ballroom crowd of former Marines and business people. “If anyone thinks you can somehow thank them for their service and not support the cause for which they fight — our country — these people are lying to themselves. ... More important, they are slighting our warriors and mocking their commitment to this nation.” Kelly is the most senior U.S. military officer to lose a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan. He was giving voice to a growing concern among soldiers and Marines: The American public is largely unaware of the price its military pays to fight the United States’ distant conflicts. Less than 1 percent of the population serves in
Erin Parker works with her science students at Madison East High School in Madison, Wis.
Teachers view cuts as attacks on their value By Trip Gabriel New York Times News Service
Nikki Kahn / Washington Post
Lt. Gen. John Kelly chats with Lance Cpl. Nicholas Perales, 22, at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Kelly, the most senior U.S. military officer to lose a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan, visits injured troops regularly. uniform at a time when the country is engaged in one of the longest periods of sustained combat in its history. President Obama devoted only six sentences to the war in Afghanistan in his State of the Union address in January. The 25-second standing ovation that lawmakers lavished on the troops lasted almost as long as the president’s war remarks. Kelly has largely shunned public at-
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tention since his speech and his son’s death. He discussed his speech and his son to provide insight into the lives and the burdens of military families. “We are only one of 5,500 American families who have suffered the loss of a child in this war,” he said in an e-mail. “The death of my boy simply cannot be made to seem any more tragic than the others.” See Military / A4
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The jabs Erin Parker has heard about her job have stunned her. “Oh you pathetic teachers,” read the online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators. “You feel punched in the stomach,” said Parker, a high school science teacher in Madison, Wis., where public employees’ two-week occupation of the State Capitol has stalled but not deterred the governor’s plan to try to strip them of bargaining rights. Parker, a second-year teacher making $36,000, fears that under the proposed legislation class sizes would rise and higher contributions to her benefits would knock her out of the middle class. Around the country, many teachers see demands to cut their income, benefits and say in how schools are run through collective bargaining as attacks not just on their livelihoods, but on their value to society. Even in a country that is of two minds about teachers — Americans glowingly recall the ones who changed their lives, but think the job with its summers off is cushy — education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters. See Teachers / A4
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SUPREME COURT: Justices say First Amendment protects protests at military funerals, Page A3