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Headlight Herald
Tuesday, August 20 | Vol. 136, Issue 34
Tillamook school board removes book from curriculum
Tillamook library transitioning to new system WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
WILL CHAPPELL
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illamook County Library is set to move to a new integrated library systems provider after the board of county commissioners approved contracts with ByWater Solutions to migrate data to and support a new system on August 13. Transitioning will lead to considerable cost savings for the library and integrate Tillamook’s libraries with those at Tillamook Bay Community College and across Lincoln County when the new system goes live on March 11, 2025. “This is one of those rare opportunities where I think that the service that we will be able to provide will really improve and costs will go down,” said Tillamook County Library Director Donald Allgeier. Integrated Library Systems (ILS) are the software programs that libraries use to manage their collections and lending. Currently, Tillamook County Library uses a proprietary system called Sierra and is part of a consortium called Oceanbooks with the libraries in Newport and Driftwood. Meanwhile, the rest of Lincoln County’s libraries and the library at Tillamook Bay Community College use the opensource Koha system, which is offered by ByWater solutions, and are part of the Chinook consortium. In 2020, the previous director of Lincoln County’s libraries applied for and received a state grant to evaluate the system’s services and ways to better integrate them with other libraries on the coast. The consultant hired as part of that process recommended that the library should work to implement a unified system on the coast, with an initial focus on bringing Lincoln County libraries together. Given the close relationship between Lincoln County libraries and the Tillamook County Library, which already allow for intersystem borrowing, Lincoln County Library District Director Brian Miyagishima approached Allgeier about joining the Driftwood and Newport libraries in their transition. Allgeier first took the suggestion to his board late last year and they voted to move forward with the plan this spring. The decision came down to several primary factors, according to Allgeier, with cost being the most prominent. Tillamook County Library currently pays over $160,000 annually to Sierra to license its system, whereas the new contract with ByWater is for just $26,000 annually for server space and technical support. Allgeier said that he hopes to use the money saved to support building maintenance and to replace the library’s aging van and bookmobile. Beyond the savings, Allgeier said that the open-source format of the new software will present novel opportunities for the library system. One of these will be the opportunity to give feedback on the system’s future developments, which Allgeier thinks will be more impactful given the new consortium’s larger footprint in the system. “We can work together to kind of identify what are the priorities we have and influence the development over time,” Allgeier said. Koha’s open-source format will also allow the library to add its own tools or applications on top of the base software, should a need arise. Allgeier also touted the Aspen Discovery System, which will be implemented in conjunction with the new ILS and provide users enhanced search functionality. See LIBRARY, Page A4
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situations. City hall itself will house the city council chamber at the west end of the building, three offices and working area to accommodate the city’s six staff, several smaller meeting spaces, with a conference room for meetings with the public, and a secure garage for police vehicles at the east end, with a short driveway off Classic Street. The facility will also have an outdoor staff parking lot behind the garage off Classic Street and public parking at the west end, accessible off Manzanita Avenue. The building’s entryway will feature a 16-foot ceiling at the front, sloping down to nine feet at the rear of the building. Wooden beams from the Quonset hut that used to stand on the site were salvaged for use in feature walls, as were large glass globes from the school building that will be repurposed
ollowing parent and student complaints and a recommendation from the district’s instructional materials committee, the Tillamook School Board voted 3-1 to remove the book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents from the 10th grade honors English curriculum on August 12. Board members were also briefed on a recently completed long-range facilities plan and asked by multiple commenters to treat the district’s classified staff fairly in contract negotiations that are dragging on even after a recent wage cut for those employees. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents became a subject of discussion for school district leadership following complaints from students in the 10th grade honors English class at Tillamook High School last spring, as well as their parents. Complaints centered on several sexually explicit passages in the novel, which tells the story of four sisters immigrating to the United States from the Dominican Republic. Those complaints triggered a review of the book by the district’s instructional materials committee at a late July meeting. After reviewing the book, four committee members voted not to retain the book in the class’s curriculum, two voted to retain it as part of the curriculum while offering students alternate texts to read and one voted to retain it without restriction. Community focus fell on the issue in the weeks leading up to the school board meeting and the meeting room was packed with spectators for the meeting. Serving as the board’s chair, Justin Aufdermauer told the assembled crowd that in the interest of time he would be limiting the public comment section to 15 minutes, which would only allow time for five commenters. Three of those five addressed the question of the book, with two speaking in favor of its removal from the curriculum and one against. Former board member and current member of the instructional committee Jesse Werner spoke first, excoriating the book and saying that it was completely inappropriate for the classroom before reading several excerpts. A second commenter continued reading excerpts before also voicing his support for the book’s removal and characterizing its inclusion in the curriculum as “grooming.” A third commenter spoke in defense of the book, saying that as a Latina mother in the district, she felt that the book reflected her mother’s lived experience as an immigrant. She also argued that students were exposed to more sexual material than what was in the book in the school’s hallways on the internet. Each of the commenters received applause and the last two commented on the classified staff issue (see below). When the school board took up the removal, it voted 3-1 in favor of accepting the instructional material committee’s recommendation to remove the book from the curriculum, with Kris Lachenmeier voting against. The book will still be available in the school’s library. Classified staff compensation was another hot topic at the meeting, as the district is currently in the middle of protracted negotiations with the union representing those employees.
See WORK, Page A4
See SCHOOL, Page A4
WILL CHAPPELL / COUNTRY MEDIA, INC.
The excavator moves a legacy stone from the jetty’s original construction. Some of these stones are being moved to make place for new stones, but they will all end up back in the jetty, usually near their original location.
South jetty repair work ahead of schedule WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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ontractors from Civil West working on the repair of the south jetty at the entrance to Tillamook Bay are making substantial progress putting the project several months ahead of schedule. Project Superintendent Dan Bryner said that they had completed half of the work on the trunk section of the jetty and expected to
complete the section soon before spending the rest of the year stockpiling stones for next year’s work. Placement of stones began in late July with work on the beachside portion of the 600-foot section of the jetty’s trunk. Bryner said that the crew working to place stones had first had to excavate six to ten feet of sand at the base of the jetty to prepare for the work, which had taken just two weeks and two days.
With that work complete, the stone placing team is now working on the channel side of the same section and making good progress, placing an average of 40 and 60 stones a day. Bryner said that at the jetty in Coos Bay, teams have placed more than 100 stones a day but explained that the current work at the Tillamook jetty was more painstaking as there is less infilling See SOUTH JETTY, Page A4
Work progressing smoothly on Manzanita city hall and police station
WILL CHAPPELL / COUNTRY MEDIA, INC.
The concrete pads that will serve as the foundation for Manzanita’s new city hall and police station as seen from the west end of the property. WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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onstruction of a new city hall and police station in Manzanita is on budget and ahead of schedule for a summer 2025 grand opening, with cement pads poured for both structures and work beginning on walls. Jason Stegner, owner of Cove Built, the company leading construction on the project, said that he was having fun working on the project and that he hopes to have the building roofed by early October, ahead of wet winter weather. The new city hall and police station are being constructed at the corner of Manzanita Avenue and Classic Street, on the same property where Manzanita’s weekly famers’ market is held. Work began this spring with extensive site preparations, including knocking down the old school building and Quonset hut that stood on the property, grading the site and
IN THIS ISSUE Music Fest News Opinion Obituaries Sports Classifieds
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doing preparatory seismic mitigation work for the police station. That work consisted of drilling 100 four-foot-diameter holes to a depth of 40 to 50 feet and filling them with a mixture of sand, concrete and water to stabilize the building’s foundation in the event of soil liquefaction during a seismic event. The holes cover the footprint of the police station, which was separated from the main city hall facility and given more seismic resistance so that it can serve as the city’s emergency management center. A mistake by a subcontractor also led to the drilling of superfluous holes to the east of the police station for about 20 feet, meaning that area can accommodate a future expansion, should the need arise. The police station building will also house the city’s information technology equipment in a room with a separate entrance, which will help to preserve the city’s communications capabilities in emergent
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