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May 8, 2003
McKinleyville
Spanish program expands;
some parents upset
by
HELEN SANDERSON
Over the objection of some parents,
the McKinleyville Unified School District Board of Trustees decided
last week that a third Spanish immersion kindergarten class will
be added to the 3-year-old program at Morris Elementary School,
making three of the four kindergarten classes immersion classes.
Currently, approximately half
of the students in grades K-2 at the school are taught in Spanish
for half of each school day. Instead of creating a separate section
for learning the target language, immersion students are taught
subjects such as math and science entirely in Spanish, thus "immersing"
them in a second language.
Morris School began the program
in the fall of 2000 with one class of kindergarteners. Since
then the school has seen a steady increase of interest and enrollment.
The decision to expand the program
was not without controversy. Some parents who choose not to enroll
their children in the Spanish program feel that their kids are
being pushed aside in the board's effort to expand the language
immersion curriculum.
School Board President Richard
Woods said that in his 25 years of service in the school system
he has never seen a more contentious issue than the language
immersion program.
Often finding himself at the
center of the debate, Woods has received several phone calls
about the issue, a small number of which were threats from anonymous
callers. "One person called me up and said, `If you teach
them kids Mexican, you're gonna have to answer to me,'"
Woods reported. "This whole debate is fraught with misinformation
from parents and staff and I've witnessed a lot of underhanded
tactics."
One rationale behind the program
is that younger children, who are still learning to read and
write, will learn a second language at a faster rate. Additionally,
in line with the district's "strategic plan," school
board members believe the program instills in the children an
appreciation for diverse cultures.
On the flip side, however, is
the opinion of some parents that the school's privileged children
reap the benefits of the program at the expense of others. Next
fall for instance, with the arrival of an additional immersion
kindergarten class, those who choose not to sign up for the Spanish
program may wind up being transferred to Dow's Prairie Elementary
School if not enough students enroll by the Aug. 14 registration
deadline.
For Shannon Medeiros, parent
of a Morris School first-grader and an upcoming kindergartener,
the program separates the haves from the have-nots.
"There's an elite status
view of the immersion kids," she said. "A lot of them
have educated parents with higher incomes. Those kids already
receive more support at home in addition to getting more attention
in school.
"I think that the immersion
program is good for the kids who are in it. I just don't want
to enhance the dividedness between the two groups," Medeiros
added.
Alan Jorgensen, superintendent
of McKinleyville schools, conceded that worried parents have
legitimate concerns. But he believes the "haves and have-nots"
complaint is unfounded. "We make sure that parents from
all demographics are informed about the program so everyone has
an opportunity to enroll," he said.
Since last Thursday's ruling,
Medeiros has opted to enroll her children at Dow's Prairie School
to insure that both her kindergartener and second-grader will
attend the same school in the fall.
In terms of the current school
year, the first 20 applicants were admitted to the immersion
program for each grade, K-2. Remaining applicants were then chosen
by lottery to form another class of 20 students. Those not chosen
rounded out two all-English classes.
As of May 9, 70 students are
registered for kindergarten at Morris; 60 students who live within
the district have applied for the immersion program. Four kids
whose parents have asked for interdistrict transfers to sign
up for the Spanish program have been placed on a waiting list.
McKinleyville schools typically
lose students to other districts though interdistrict transfers.
This year 230 students from McKinleyville transferred out, while
only 65 transferred in. Four of the 65 are in the Spanish program.
As interest in Spanish immersion
continues to grow, it's possible Morris could become an immersion-only
school with Dow's Prairie teaching students who choose an all-English
curriculum.
Dow's Prairie's administration
maintains that all student transfers will be welcomed at their
school next fall. The only concern, it seems, is whether or not
to hire another teacher in order to accommodate more children.
Nothing is certain until registration closes in mid-August.
Making
Arcata more pedestrian friendly
 John
Ash said the reason Arcata hired him as an architect, instead
of an engineer, to redesign its downtown core was "probably
because they wanted someone who colored outside of the lines."
The public gets its first exposure
to Ash's coloring ability at a meeting Monday, May 19 at 7 p.m.
at the Arcata Community Center.
Among his ideas are mid-block
crosswalks, sidewalks up to 20 feet wide to accommodate outdoor
cafés and parking structures near the plaza, possibly
even one underneath the Arcata ballpark.
"These are all ideas --
very preliminary and very long-term," Ash said in a telephone
interview Tuesday. Any changes would come "slowly and incrementally,"
and only after extensive public hearings and adoption by the
City Council.
Certain to raise concern among
business owners in the 18-block downtown core is a reduction
in the number of street parking spaces, a narrowing of vehicle
lanes, the rerouting of traffic onto one-way streets, the addition
of "traffic calming" devices such as roundabouts --
all to reduce the space allocated to vehicular traffic.
That's the whole idea, Ash said:
To make the downtown more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists.
"A person becomes a pedestrian
once they get out of their car anyway. We can create a nicer
environment for them. Malls have been doing it for years and
people love it," he said.
Ash will present some street
section designs at the meeting. He will also ask for comments
that could be incorporated into the final design. A second public
session is scheduled for May 28, then the plan will go to the
city's Design Review, and Transportation and Safety committees.
By June the council will receive the report.
The project, from 7th to 11th
streets and K through F streets, is divided into two phases.
It is partially funded by money set aside for underground utilities.
Ash's firm, the John Ash Group,
is working in conjunction with SHN Engineering, also of Eureka.
Pepper
spray trial postponed
A federal appeals court panel
has delayed the trial in the excessive force case brought by
nine anti-logging protesters who were pepper-sprayed in 1997.
Attorneys for the protesters
filed a motion to dismiss the judge on the case and move the
trial back to San Francisco. On May 8, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court
of Appeals stayed the trial, which was to begin May 12 in Eureka.
Counsel for the defendants, who include the Humboldt County Sheriff's
Department and the City of Eureka police, have until May 20 to
respond.
"I'm delighted," said
Robert Bloom, one of the protesters' attorneys. "The fact
that they're taking this seriously is very encouraging."
Bloom said the judge, Vaughn
Walker, has displayed his bias against the protesters and that
they could not get a fair trial in Eureka.
The nine activists sued the
county and the city after local law enforcement used Q-tips to
apply pepper spray to their eyes during sit-ins at Pacific Lumber's
Scotia headquarters and a congressman's office.
Heads
up! There's a trebuchet in Freshwater
by
ANDREW EDWARDS
"You see that metal roof
out there?" asked Jackie Yarnall, pointing across the field
in Freshwater to his neighbor's house about 200 yards away. "We
could put that bowling ball right through the middle of
that -- no sweat."
 He
grinned.
Standing next to him was his
trebuchet, a sturdy contraption crafted from Pennsylvania hemlock
and welded steel that can hurl a bowling ball, or just about
anything else that's put in its sling-like pouch, hundreds of
yards through the air.
"Your neighbors are awfully
trusting," a friend remarked, looking at the machine, standing
cocked and ready to fire.
"Not really," Yarnall
replied. "But it's amazing how nice they are to me these
days."
The trebuchet was the heavy
siege artillery of the Middle Ages and one of the most powerful
non-explosive weapons ever devised by man. They were large, up
to 50 feet tall, so big in fact that they generally had to be
assembled on site. But the effort was worth it. When completed
a large trebuchet could hurl boulders weighing over 300 pounds
with astonishing accuracy and power, literally shattering castle
walls.
One legendary trebuchet, the
"War Wolf" of Edward I of England, was reputed
to be so powerful that defenders would surrender just at the
sight of it, only to be led back inside so they could be fired
at.
Perilous indeed. But in this
day and age it's just good, clean fun.
"I don't know much about
the history," Yarnall said. "I just build these things
for toys."
For Yarnall, a retired Humboldt
State University professor, medieval artillery is just
one of his extreme hobbies -- several years ago he made his own
hot air balloon so he could take friends up for joy rides.
He got the idea for the trebuchet
last summer "back there in Pennsylvania," as he refers
to his summer home back East. Every year he and a couple of friends,
ironworkers Josh Cunningham and Andrew MacNeal, have constructed
something special for Yarnall's annual Halloween party. The year
before it had been an Edgar Allen Poe theme so they had built
a giant pendulum, a little less than 20 feet high, in honor of
Poe's famous story, "The Pit and the Pendulum."
Last year's theme was "Medieval,"
so over a few beers Yarnall, Cunningham and McNeal came up with
the idea of building the trebuchet. They knew they wanted it
about 10 feet tall, with a 12-foot base. Using those dimensions,
one of them worked up the design on a computerized drafting program
and they went to work, using beams of hemlock that had been cut
on Yarnall's property in Pennsylvania.
Driving it back to California,
Yarnall ran into a little trouble. A truck cut him off, forcing
him onto the shoulder. The small open-bed trailer was upset,
and the disassembled trebuchet was scattered, sliding all over
Interstate 80 in the middle of the Ohio Turnpike. To make things
worse, a glass jug of homemade maple syrup in the back exploded,
coating everything in a sticky-sweet, shard-encrusted paste.
The disaster was complete when a swarm of late-summer Ohio yellow
jackets descended on the remains.
All of that was just a memory,
though, as the machine (yes, he managed to recover all the parts
strewn across the freeway) stood shining with a fresh coat of
linseed oil on Yarnall's lawn beside the large log-cabin ranch
house which he built himself.
Yarnall recalled that earlier
in the year he happened to pass by the Freshwater Grange, where
the Society for Creative Anachronisms -- a group that does medieval
reenactments -- was meeting.
"I said, `You guys seem
like you're having a pretty good time; would you like to see
a trebuchet?'" Yarnall recalled. "`You have a trebuchet?'
they said."
Yes, he did and does. And it
was time to fire it.
Yarnall loaded a 12-pound bowling
ball in the long trough that the sling sits in. The metal safety
was taken off the long steel throwing arm. Everyone got out of
the direct line behind; a firing trebuchet could take your head
off. And then, with the pull of a rope, and a tug-whisk-snack,
the machine fired. The bowling ball spun upwards into the
blue sky only to land with a spray of dirt and an audible thunk
into the far field.
OUR EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT
Meserve makes headlines in Germany
by
ARNO HOLSCHUH
BERLIN -- No matter where you
go, there you are. I used to read that phrase on a lot of bumper
stickers during my time in Humboldt County. What I didn't know
is that the drivers were being very specific: No matter where
you go, you're still in Arcata.
Absurd? Consider this: When
I opened up my morning newspaper recently, I was confronted with
a news story featuring Arcata City Council member David Meserve.
That may not seem that strange; in the wake of the Arcata ordinance
"banning" the Patriot Act, Meserve was in a lot of
newspapers.
But my newspaper, die tageszeitung,
is in German, and the article was in the international, not national,
news section. Arcata's fame just successfully made the leap across
the pond to the German capital.
The story is an outsider's view
of the resistance to the Patriot Act. It details how civil liberties
groups have tried to prevent the erosion of citizens' rights,
and how there is a growing suspicion that the act may be unconstitutional.
Arcata, writes American correspondent Michael Streck, "has
gone one step further. The little town is the first city to pass
an ordinance which forbids the execution of the Patriot Act."
Arcata is described as being at the "forefront" of
movements to stop global warming and the Bush administration's
foreign policy.
It was a joy to read, as most
Germans have a fairly one-sided perception of how Americans feel
about politics. People here know that a majority in the United
States supported the war, and for that reason, scorning America
has become a favorite pastime. In their defense, many Germans
also realize there is criticism -- of Bush, of the war, of the
Patriot Act. But the idea of an American opposition remains abstract,
while Bush's speeches are broadcast live. Most people here have
a gut feeling that Bush is America -- even if they are analytically
aware that isn't the case.
So I thank my lucky stars for
Arcata, and for its 15 minutes -- and counting -- of fame. Here,
in one of the country's important daily newspapers, was an image
that would stick in Germans' minds, competing for space with
the commander in chief: A gang of tough little freedom fighters
holed up in a forested enclave in Northern California, determined
to show the bullies what's what. It's an image that Germans,
who for obvious reasons have a healthy distaste for strong-arm
government, can fall in love with.
There is, of course, the nagging
fact that the ordinance is unlikely to have any real impact.
I know that Arcata is a very small town, and that the ordinance
would probably have met with significantly less support in Eureka.
In my experience, Arcata fosters not only idealism but a haughty
moral superiority.
But in my present context, it
doesn't matter. All that matters is that, thanks to the Arcata
City Council, the current popular German perception of America
as a country gone haywire has gained a few dents and scratches.
The next time one of my German friends asks me what city they
should visit on their American vacation, I know what to answer:
The People's Republic of Arcata, of course.
Arno Holschuh is a former
Journal staff writer.
The
fur is flying
Accusations flew like fur in
a catfight last week as District Attorney Paul Gallegos responded
to what he described as Pacific Lumber Co.'s "unconscionable
hubris" in asking the court for sanctions against him and
the County of Humboldt.
"Welcome to the world of
hardball," said Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen, who
is handling the fraud case Gallegos has filed against PL. "This
is aggressive with a capital A."
PL's motion, filed late last
month, asks the court to throw out the case, which argues that
PL fraudulently withheld information from the California Department
of Forestry during the creation of the Headwaters Agreement.
It also asks that Gallegos and the county be slapped with fines.
That last request raised a few
eyebrows as District Attorneys aren't liable for any actions
they take that are part of their job, even, according to a California
law quoted in the DA's response, if he or she "acts maliciously
without probable cause."
Nevertheless, the complaint
asks for "all attorney's fees and costs" as well as
"other monetary and non-monetary sanctions as appropriate."
"They're not immune,"
said PL attorney Ed Washburn, calling from his San Francisco
office. "They're immune for damages but not for sanctions."
What's the difference?
"[Sanctions are] like a
penalty for doing something they're not supposed to do."
In other words, PL is asking
the court to penalize Gallegos, Stoen and the county for being
bad lawyers. Washburn said DAs had been fined under similar circumstances
in California, though he couldn't recall any specific cases.
That's hogwash, according to
David LaBahn, Executive Director of the California District Attorneys
Association. LaBahn said he couldn't think of any case where
a DA was sanctioned for bringing a case.
"We have absolute immunity
to bring cases," LaBahn said. "We're supposed to be
in the business of protecting the public and personal liability
is not supposed to be part of it.
"[This] sounds like blowing
smoke to me," he added.
PL said its sanctions request
is justified because the case has no lawful basis and was poorly
researched; because PL didn't commit fraud; and because, even
if it did, any fraud that was committed is protected by the company's
First Amendment rights.
PL cannot be sued over the information
it gives to the government when applying for permits, its lawyers
argue, even if the information is "false and fraudulent."
"That's their basic argument
in the case. This is a doctrine that doesn't even apply in this
case," contended Stoen. "They're taking a tidbit here
and a tidbit here and weaving it into something it isn't."
Stoen said that the entire motion,
which his response describes as "specious," was just
a big spin game by PL. Washburn characterized the DA's response
as "grasping for straws."
Accused
killer caught
The suspect in the Bridgeville
murder of earlier this month has been arrested in San Luis Obispo
County on suspicion of committing a separate crime there, the
Humboldt County Sheriff's Office said.
Officials believe Thomas Arthur
Applegate, 40, of Paso Robles (San Luis Obispo County), shot
and killed Joey Patrick Church, 34, of Bridgeville, on the evening
of May 4 at Church's home.
The next afternoon, witnesses
saw Applegate beat and attempt to kidnap a woman as she left
a San Luis Obispo restaurant, according to the San Luis Obispo
Police Department. An Atascadero police officer spotted the suspect
vehicle and arrested Applegate.
Acting on a tip from a Humboldt
County resident, sheriff's detectives here called San Luis Obispo
County, learned of Applegate's arrest, and searched his Paso
Robles home on Thursday, officials said.
There they found evidence that
links him to the Bridgeville murder, the Sheriff's Department
said.
Applegate will be returned to
Humboldt County after his San Luis Obispo case has been processed.
Arcata Plaza,
no
An article in the San Francisco
Chronicle's Sunday Travel section raves about Humboldt County,
expounding on everything from the "silent cathedral of a
redwood grove" to the "finest collection of Victorian
mansions in North America."
The article by Chronicle
writer John Flinn, a former Humboldt resident, is sure to drum
up interest in this year's Kinetic Sculpture Race, which he describes
at length.
"It will be a tremendous
boost for us," said J Warren Hockaday, executive director
of the Eureka Chamber of Commerce. "It will reinforce the
decisions people are already making about us."
Flinn takes a shot, however,
at the Arcata Plaza, which he writes is "home to a sizable
tribe of street people [who] made me uncomfortable." He
found Eureka's Old Town "much more congenial for browsing
and window-shopping."
The Chronicle's Internet
and print circulation is 1.7 million on Sundays.
School gets
$90,000
Pacific Union School has received
a $90,000 grant to help other area schools reduce their waste.
The grant comes from the Environmental
Ambassador Pilot Project of the California Integrated Waste Management
Board, which also gave money to seven other school districts
across the state.
The $90,000 will be used for
resource management and waste diversion, staff development and
service learning.
Pacific Union received the grant
because it has been on the cutting edge of waste management,
said project coordinator and former Pacific Union board member
Mary Lou Cook.
The purpose of the Environmental
Ambassador Pilot Program is to support and expand sustainable
elementary and secondary school programs for environment-based
education and environmental science and technology.
Old growth
bill
The state Legislature is considering
a bill that would ban state purchases of old growth timber.
The bill, introduced by Assemblyman
Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and sponsored by the advocacy
group Environment California, would prevent state agencies and
school districts from buying wood or wood products made from
trees from ancient forests.
"Worldwide, only 20 percent
of the world's ancient forests remain standing, and here in California
less than 10 percent of our ancient forests remain," said
Steinberg in a written statement.
A spokeswoman from Environment
California said no one knows how much old-growth timber is purchased
by the state each year.
The timber industry is lobbying
heavily against the bill.
It is expected to come up for
a vote soon in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Guard Utah
bound
It's off for a year guarding
the chemical weapons dumps in "Utahkistan," as one
army source put it, for 22 of Eureka's Army National Guardsmen
from the 579th Engineering Battalion.
The sites, situated around Provo,
Utah, are getting a security upgrade as part of Operation Enduring
Eagle Three, as a homeland security measure.
"These guys are going out
there to guard sensitive areas," said Major Sam Wallis,
who is coordinating the deployment. "We have some areas
that used to have only four, five security guards. Now we're
really going into overkill."
Some members of the 579th, which
ranges all over northwestern California, may be going to the
Middle East, specifically some landmine sniffing canine units
from Lakeport, but none from Humboldt County, Major Wallis said.
Overall, 130 of the 325-strong
579th are being deployed.
Is it unusual for engineers
to have to pull guard duty?
"Not particularly. There
is no [military] occupational specialty that's guard," Major
Wallis said. "Everybody in the army has to pull guard duty
wherever they're stationed, so we're all eligible."
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