Everyone wants to open classrooms, ‘it’s just a matter of how to do it’ safely amid virus, Portland Public Schools health advisers say
Updated Dec 16, 2020;
Posted Dec 15, 2020
Portland Public Schools has relied on a group of medical professionals to advise the district on its reopening strategy. On Monday, the school board heard from some of them, many of whom said district officials are tasked with a balancing act in considering education and public health.Photo courtesy Portland Public Schools
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When the Portland school board gathered a panel of medical experts, educators and students to discuss the district’s reopening strategy Monday, representatives from each corner of the Zoom room agreed: distance learning pales in comparison to in-person interactions between teachers and their pupils.
The death of Fred Goetz still reverberates
Updated Dec 12, 2020;
Posted Dec 09, 2020
Protesters built barricades outside of a house on North Mississippi Ave. in Portland on December 8, 2020Brooke Herbert/The Oregonian
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He disappeared on Tuesdays. He never said where. He didn’t leave a trail of bread crumbs.
He didn’t feel the need to explain where he was going or why.
Week after week, Fred Goetz crept under the bridges. He marched down the alleys and the dim hallways. Sometimes he went alone, sometimes with a street minister named Gary Smith.
“They went into what Father Gary called the bat caves, the terrible dark rooms where people suffer in loneliness,” said Mary Sue Richen of the Macdonald Center in Portland’s Old Town.