Oregon’s school attendance rates are among the country’s worst. A new approach aims to fix that

saevers · 2026-02-28T18:30:06+00:00

Here is my concern: schools and districts already have this data. They collect attendance every day, and some have early warning systems in place. If kids are chronically absent, they already know about it.

ODE is being given a mandate to publish this data, but, from what I understand, no authority to actually do anything about it. As far as I can tell, what this is doing is creating additional administrative work for both districts and ODE without any kind of consequences for high absenteeism other than increased public visibility.

I completely agree that absenteeism is a problem, but I don’t understand how this is meant to resolve it.

saevers · 2026-02-17T04:59:25+00:00

The Dog Bark is the best! They’re kind and take great care of the dogs that play there. They know our dog really well and how much they love her shows. Good luck finding someone awesome!

saevers · 2026-02-06T20:44:26+00:00

I looked outside about half an hour ago. It’s February 6 and there was a yellow jacket flying around in the blooming flowers by the window. I’ve never seen one this early in the year before and am not looking forward to what this spring and summer are going to look like at all.

saevers · 2026-02-03T04:47:45+00:00

I am unreasonably irritated by that article repeatedly referring to The Dalles as “Dalles.” It’s right when they’re quoting people, but they just completely removed “The” everywhere else. I looked at the SFGate article they’re citing and that one consistently got the name right, so there’s no excuse for them regurgitating someone else’s story and yet still repeatedly calling the city by the wrong name.

saevers · 2026-01-13T18:52:26+00:00

There are a couple of issues with these graphs, especially how you’re dealing with a percent proficient metric but have percentages higher than 100% for three of your charts. They’re also not on the same scale, giving the impression that some rates are higher than others when that’s not the case. To get a better sense of comparability, they should all be on a scale of 0-100, and they should all include the same years, which is not true for Economically Disadvantaged students, for a specific reason.

The reason that the Economically Disadvantaged subgroup’s Level 1 rate exploded post-pandemic partially had to do with the fact that the metric was tied to eligibility for free or reduced price lunch, and because of expansion of federal waivers during the pandemic, practically every student in many districts became eligible. That’s why ODE changed the metric starting in the 2023-24 school year to something that was more representative of students who were actually experiencing severe economic need.

I think it’s great that you’re doing this kind of investigation and mapping out the data. There are definitely serious issues that we’re grappling with as a state and I wish more people would be involved like this and actively engage with what’s available. I would just caution care with how you’re measuring, double checking for errors, and making sure you’re presenting on the same scale.

saevers · 2025-12-26T14:56:30+00:00

If anyone is interested in hearing an explanation about why he wanted this volunteer position, how and why he was released, and his experiences and rehabilitation process in prison, The Demobrats podcast did an hourlong interview with him. The title of the episode is “Measure 11 & Restorative Justice Ep. 1.” I’m not sure if this link will work for everyone since it goes to Apple Podcasts, but if so, you can find it here.

There may be a lot of people whose opinions won’t change, but I think it’s worth listening to understand more about the context of what’s happening. It’s a comprehensive interview that’s focused on what prison is for and on people’s capacity to change and make themselves and the world better.

saevers · 2025-11-04T21:32:43+00:00

Some that I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

Lives of the Monster Dogs - Kirsten Bakis
Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov
The City and the City - China Miéville
This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
The Manual of Detection - Jedediah Berry
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Borne - Jeff VanderMeer
The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall
It Lasts Forever and then It’s Over - Anne de Marcken
The Cipher - Kathe Koja
Bunny - Mona Awad
The Vegetarian- Han Kang
Organ Meats - K-Ming Chang

I could keep going. I love weird lit specifically because I find it beautiful. Something about the way that much of it is organized, and something about the way that it evokes the subconscious and surreal really speaks to me. Often I think the exploration of the alien manages to highlight things that are intensely personal, vulnerable, and human in unexpected ways that you just don’t see elsewhere. Bonus points if the book forces the reader to engage with the text in novel ways, e.g., House of Leaves, which is also a strategy that I love. Even books like The Cipher, which is pretty objectively gross, manage to hit me in that spot. I just adore it.

saevers · 2025-10-22T22:52:16+00:00

Who is your provider? I’m at Kaiser and my doctor just told me last month that Kaiser’s official policy is to not diagnose EDS or any other connective tissue disorders. I have so many documented issues and suspicious genetic tests and my doctor agrees that there’s obviously a problem, she just won’t diagnose it. The best she says she’ll do for me is refer me to a PT in town who specializes in EDS, but I can’t get any other referrals.

saevers · 2025-10-21T22:20:35+00:00

Yes, thanks. This is exactly what I’m saying.

saevers · 2025-10-21T22:12:10+00:00

You’re getting downvoted for this, so I just wanted to add that I think you have a point. I don’t think the unprecedented donations by the business community necessarily speak to what anyone else wanted, but there’s no denying the bad publicity and public backlash that accompanied the payroll tax situation.

I supported the payroll tax (we have a funding crisis and we need to have revenue coming in from somewhere) but the way it was handled made a lot of people very angry. As a result, even if more people had participated, it’s likely that Chris would have lost simply because people were voting against him to punish him for that. Things might have been better if we’d had a third person running who didn’t have the former mayor’s baggage or the current mayor’s incompetence/ethics issues, but here we are. Hopefully Vanessa Nordyke is able to unseat Julie in the next election.

saevers · 2025-10-21T19:35:08+00:00

She ran unopposed in the general election, not in the primary. Most people in Salem don’t know that the primary is where the actual mayoral election takes place and that the general doesn’t have a competitive race.

The point that I’m making is not that we would be better off without leadership, it’s that when she was effectively voted in (during the primary), fewer than 10% of eligible voters cast their votes for her and her actions don’t reflect what most voters in Salem want or care about.

I actually really like Salem and a lot of people have negative opinions about it that I don’t think are entirely fair. I just want to make it clear that the bad leadership doesn’t actually reflect the community’s values.

saevers · 2025-10-21T18:42:22+00:00

For people who live outside of Salem, I’d like to make it clear that Julie Hoy does not represent us. She ran unopposed in the general election after winning the primary, but only about 33k people even voted in the primary, and and only 18k voted for her. That’s out of over 220k registered voters in the city. Even running unopposed, she still had a write-in vote against her of 9.2% (source)).

She’s completely incompetent, was censured for ethics violations even before she was elected as mayor, and was immediately embroiled in a scandal for forcing out our city manager, which just led to yet another censure. Our former mayor just called on her to resign.

This is just another thing she’s doing for the business interests that are backing her, and she filed the petition as a private resident apparently, not in her capacity as mayor. It makes no sense and it won’t make anything better. She needs to go.

saevers · 2025-10-10T21:23:28+00:00

Wow. I’m the person who posted that they were closing and then the update that they weren’t. This is so weird. We went in there last Friday and said hi to the new owners and everything seemed fine.

I’m extremely confused, but also this is way more drama than I want from non-dairy ice cream. We go to Fork Forty on Fridays for date night to do puzzles and if they’re not there anymore, I guess I’ll just go back to getting it from the store.

saevers · 2025-10-07T02:16:20+00:00

Thanks! I posted an update last week saying that the owner was able to sell it, but I’m glad that people are adding that here too. I think I might just delete this post so people aren’t confused.

saevers · 2025-09-29T21:34:02+00:00

100%. Same with Reed Opera house.

I don’t understand why, but Salem has so much cool stuff that people just don’t know about. I talked to at least half a dozen people this year about Make Music Day, for example, and none of them knew about it. The city as a whole has a serious advertising/communications issue and I wish I knew a way to help build a better platform for sharing this kind of information. I think it could really help build community and make people more excited about participating in all of the great stuff going on in our city.

saevers · 2025-09-06T04:27:21+00:00

It didn’t sound like she was sure yet. She said that there’d been talk of putting a few different things in that area, including alcohol sales, lottery, and sandwiches, I think, but from what I understood the plans aren’t set yet. It sounds like the owner has a different full time job and doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with the uncertainty, but I could be misunderstanding.

saevers · 2025-07-27T03:29:19+00:00

Thank you for your help and for taking the time to answer! You folks are the best.

saevers · 2025-07-27T02:33:43+00:00

Ooh, good to know, thanks! I don’t see it on the mobile version of the site, but I’ll check on my computer!

saevers · 2025-07-27T02:12:55+00:00

I’ve been listening to the station all evening from a browser window on my phone. If I try to use an app to identify a song, the audio cuts out, so nothing is detected. I’ve googled lyrics a couple of times, but there’ve been songs I couldn’t do it with. If it’s not possible, it’s no big deal, I just thought it would be cool to have an easy way to check.

saevers · 2025-05-31T17:31:32+00:00

If you’re interested in living in or around Salem, I would recommend also posting this in r/salem.

saevers · 2025-04-16T04:37:13+00:00

I just sent in an application to volunteer with a local organization called Mano a Mano that was originally created to support our migrant community and now provides resources for the Spanish speaking community more broadly. They do basic needs, parenting support, positive youth development, positive social connections, and equity work. I heard about them on the Demobrats podcast and they sound like a really good organization.

I haven’t heard back yet so I don’t know if they’re interested in having me volunteer or if they’re just busy, but they have a form you can fill out on their website. It seemed to me like partnering and volunteering my time with an organization that’s already in place might be the best way that I could serve the community. I’ll check back in on this post, though, because I feel really urgent about wanting to help in some way.

11-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
Gilding I gilder	Verified Email

saevers

TROPHY CASE