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Largest schools see enrollment plummet By Motoko Rich New York Times News Service
Enrollment in nearly half of the nation’s largest school districts has dropped steadily over the last five years, triggering school closures that have destabilized neighborhoods, caused layoffs of essential staff and concerns in many cities that the students who remain are some of the neediest and most difficult to educate. While the losses have been especially steep in long-battered cities like Cleveland and Detroit, enrollment has also fallen significantly in places suffering through the recent economic downturn, like Broward County, Fla., San Bernardino, Calif., and Tucson, Ariz., according to the latest available data from the Department of Education, analyzed for The New York Times. Urban districts like Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio, are facing an exodus even as the school-age population has increased. Enrollment in the New York City schools, the largest district in the country, was flat from 2005 to 2010, but both Chicago and Los Angeles lost students, with declining birthrates and competition from charter schools cited as among the reasons. Because school financing is often allocated on a per-pupil basis, plummeting enrollment can mean fewer teachers will be needed. But it can also affect the depth of a district’s curriculum, jeopardizing programs in foreign languages, music or art. While large districts lost students in the 1970s as middle class families left big cities for the suburbs, districts are losing students now for a variety of reasons. The economy and home foreclosure crisis drove some families from one school system into another. See Schools / A6
TOP NEWS SYRIA: A threat of chemical weapons, A6 IRAQ: Insurgent attacks kill more than 100, A6
OSU president: Penn State scandal is ‘just appalling’ • The NCAA executive committee chairman says the penalties are not a sports story abused, because people in power who simply had to say ‘stop’ and could have called the authorities and ended the nightmare, chose not to,” Ray said. Ray “It’s just appalling.” The penalties, which came in the wake of the child sexual abuse scandal involving Penn State’s former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, will likely prevent Penn State from regaining its place as one of the sport’s elite programs for at least a decade.
Staff and wire reports The real story is not the penalties levied against Penn State on Monday. It’s not the stripping of the football program of wins over a 14-year period, barring it from postseason games for four years or the NCAA fining the university $60 million. No, what NCAA executive committee chairman and Oregon State University President Ed Ray wants everyone to remember is that this is not a sports story. “This is about young children who for years, because of a conspiracy of silence, were abused and new victims were
By Hillary Borrud
Inside • Two views of the Penn State scandal, D1
The NCAA stopped short of shutting down Penn State’s program, but officials insisted that the breadth and significance of the penalties were nearly as debilitating. Ray said there was discussion of enacting the so-called “death penalty,” in which the program would have been completely suspended. See Penn State / A5
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Former Crook County Judge Scott Cooper says legislative oversight of Oregon’s affordable housing agency could help cure some of the problems cited by local officials, who have complained the agency sometimes shortchanges communities east of the Cascades. Cooper would like lawmakers on existing committees, such as those that deal with economic development or “general government” issues, to begin annually reviewing the operations and policies of Oregon Housing and Community Services. Currently, the agency’s budget is reviewed by a subcommittee, but most other oversight comes from the Housing Council, a group appointed by the governor. “This is a $1 billion (biennial) budget, and most people don’t even know it exists,” Cooper said of Oregon Housing and Community Services. Cooper is currently the executive director of the Redmond-based nonprofit Partnership to End Poverty. Adding legislative oversight of Oregon Housing and Community Services would be as simple as leaders in the Oregon House and Senate deciding to make the change. See Housing / A5
SALLY RIDE 1951 — 2012
Photos by Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Sun and warm summer temperatures brought people to the water Monday at Elk Lake Resort.
First U.S. woman in space was feminist icon By Brian Vastag The Washington Post
ABOVE: Drake Vasquez, 13, from El Segundo, Calif., flips his sister Grace Vasquez, 10. The Vasquez siblings are spending the summer in Bend with their family. RIGHT: Summit High seniors Lexie Campbell, 17, (from left) Hannah Ermisch, 16, Allie Foy, 17, and Taylor Laidlaw, 17, cool off with a jump off the dock. The girls were spending the sunny afternoon aboard the Ermisch family sailboat.
TODAY’S WEATHER Mostly sunny High 84, Low 47 Page C6
Ex-official seeks better oversight on housing
COLORADO MASSACRE
Odd signals from a sequestered world By Carol D. Leonnig The Washington Post
AURORA, Colo. — James Holmes was good at being invisible. He spoke only when spoken to, said little about himself and spurned his close-knit group of classmates for a solitary life in his apartment. This used to seem like Holmes’ curse, the result of a shyness that cut him off from the world. This spring, however, it became a cover. When something apparently snapped in Holmes’s head — turning a pleasant, pun-loving 24-year-old into a man allegedly planning a mass murder — his lonely life meant there were few people close enough to see any change. On Sunday, new details emerged about the way Holmes allegedly began assembling ammunition and
explosives, attracting little attention from acquaintances. Signals of his apparently troubled mind — an odd online personal ad, a bizarre phone message heard by a gun-shop owner — leaked out, but to strangers. Many of those closest to him didn’t know anything had changed — not until everybody else knew, too. “I was always trying to get into his head,” said one fellow neuroscience student, who spent dozens of hours in class with Holmes at the University of Colorado campus in Aurora. “If no one had ever said anything to him, he wouldn’t have said a word” all year. Police say Holmes, wearing a gas mask and SWAT-style protective gear, killed 12 people in a shooting rampage at an Aurora theater early Friday. See Holmes / A3
RJ Sangosti / The Denver Post
James Holmes appears Monday in Arapahoe County District Court. At right is Public Defender Tamara Brady. See story on Page A3.
Sally Ride, an astronaut and physicist who in 1983 became the first American woman sent into space and reluctantly served as an idol of feminist strength and a hero of women’s progress, died Monday at her home in La Jolla, Calif. She was 61. She had pancreatic cancer, said Terry McEntee, her assistant. Ride Ride made history on June 18, 1983, when she orbited the Earth aboard the space shuttle Challenger. At 32 years and 23 days old, she was the youngest American to go into space. In a statement, President Barack Obama said that Ride “inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars.” He continued, “Sally’s life showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve and I have no doubt that her legacy will endure for years to come.” Yet the legacy Ride had earned as a space pioneer was one that she was reluctant to embrace. She rarely gave interviews, enjoyed not being recognized in public, and — unlike some of the daredevil pilots in the first class of astronauts — avoided attracting attention to herself. See Ride / A5