Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)

Longtime rivals on course for merger.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

DRAIN - Voters here are being asked to do what local Spanish teacher Larry Robbins did symbolically with a football jersey: Stitch two proud, longtime rivals into a single high school.

Drain-area residents have in their hands the ballots that could merge their North Douglas School District with the nearby Yoncalla School District. If they pass the consolidation measure March 9, Yoncalla voters will decide the matter in the May primary election.

If both communities agree, the Eagles of Yoncalla and the Warriors of North Douglas will become a single high school in July 2005, the first merger of high schools in Western Oregon in nearly 40 years. Schools for children in kindergarten through eighth grade would continue to operate in both towns.

Bearded, balding Robbins created the combination jersey as a good-humored display of his dual loyalties after he was hired half time by both schools in 1997.

"It gets a real positive reaction," he said. "When I wear it to games and stuff, people really like it."

Social studies teacher David Frost, Robbins' colleague at North Douglas, believes that consolidation eventually will prove just as popular.

"I've never understood why there's a school five miles away and we're not sharing our resources," he said.

Frost and other supporters have formed the pro-merger "Save Our Schools" committee. There is no organized opposition, and both school boards unanimously endorsed consolidation in the face of deep budget cuts and dwindling enrollment.

But community members who passed petitions to refer the matter to voters say they aren't...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!