Local News

Last year, five-year-old Madi Sebulsky attended Summit High School - sort of. Madi, along with approximately 35 other four, five and six-year-olds went to kindergarten at the high school because their school, High Lakes Elementary, didn't have enough classroom space to house all the newly arrived kindergartners. In an effort to keep class sizes from ballooning, High Lakes set up kindergarten classes at the nearby high school.

Getting creative is something that Oregonian educators, and students, have gotten accustomed to given the state's notoriously poor record of funding schools. But the results have been mixed. And one of the biggest, and largely unmet, challenges remains shrinking class sizes at the elementary level - something that researchers say is key to helping kids succeed later in life.
For the past decade, Oregon has been known for having class sizes well
above the national average. The Chalkboard Project, an independent
non-partisan organization created by five of Oregon's leading
foundations, shows Oregon's class sizes as being fourth highest in the
country. The Bend-La Pine School District has addressed this issue by
setting a goal of 18 students per teacher in grades K-3, but like other
districts throughout the state, local schools are finding it difficult
to maintain these target ratios, especially in tough economic times
when schools typically face cutbacks because of Oregon's centralized
funding system.
And right now there is a storm growing.
 

You want a skatepark? Then get your ass out there and build yourself one. That is the philosophy that fuels a group of local skateboarders looking to build a park below the Highway 97/Division Street underpass.

The fact that there is a faction of Bend's skateboard community out to create a new facility is hardly news - the issue of skate parks in Central Oregon has been a hot button topic for more than a year. First it was the vandalism and petty crime going down at the skate park at Ponderosa Park, then it was the debacle surrounding the skate facility at Awbrey Butte's Quail park, which ultimately led to the beginner's park being removed. But it's when you hear Jason Chinchen of the Division Street Skatepark Project discuss his goals that the polyurethane wheels of intrigue start to spin.
Chinchen has been riding a skateboard since 1984 and in short, his plan for the Division Street project, is to create a skate park for the people and by the people. This is how he describes, albeit perhaps less Lincoln-esque, his plans for creating a premier-level skateboard park. It's not a city project or a Parks and Rec project, it's a skater project, Chinchen says while leaning against one of the many boulders that currently occupy the patch of land currently under the control of the Oregon Department of Transportation.
"People don't really realize that we're going to build it. You're going to build it. The guys reading this article are going to build it," Chinchen says as we stroll through the currently vacant lot that he wants to transform into 15,000 square feet of skateboarder paradise.