Thank you for your interest in reading The Astorian. Here are a few stories that you might have missed this week:

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Confronted with enrollment declines and the end of federal stimulus money, school districts in Oregon and across the country are grappling with ways to balance budgets ahead of the new fiscal year.

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund was a lifeline for many school districts during the coronavirus pandemic, supplying about $200 billion nationally across three funding rounds in 2020 and 2021.

The first two rounds were aimed at supporting online instruction and reopening schools safely. The third round — by far the most substantial, at $122 billion — came with a requirement that schools spend at least 20% of the money on mitigating learning loss.

That money, which included $1.1 billion for schools in Oregon, is expiring this September.

Now, school districts that used those funds to hire staff and support student needs are struggling to come up with other ways to fit expenses into budgets for the fiscal year that starts in July.

See the story by Rebecca Norden-Bright by clicking here.

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The Cannon Beach City Council has unanimously agreed to move forward with a resolution authorizing $33.6 million in bond financing for a new City Hall and police station and the redevelopment of a former elementary school.

The projects, which have been on the drawing board in different forms for years, represent a significant city investment in infrastructure. The new City Hall is planned at the existing location on E. Gower Avenue and the new police station will be located at the city’s Tolovana cache site east of U.S. Highway 101. The redevelopment of the former elementary school and NeCus’ Park site is on the north side.

Mayor Barb Knop, in an email, said “these projects are way overdue. The current city hall and police station building is 70 years old. Our city staff and community deserve adequate buildings to house city hall and our police department. Cannon Beach Elementary closed in 2013. The city purchased the site in 2020 and the planning began to develop a tourism-related facility.”

The full faith and credit obligation bond will be paid through existing revenues. City staff will prepare for the auction and bidding process.

Read the story by Julia Eastham by clicking here.

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On an overcast afternoon, seated in a booth at the Labor Temple in Astoria, Robert Michael Pyle picked up the book — not “The Last Man in Willapa,” his latest collection of poems, but a smaller blue chapbook — and started to read a few lines.

“The children of the night went forth / into the soft evenings of suburbia.”

This poem had come from a dream, Pyle said, which brought back childhood memories of exploring with his brother where he grew up in Colorado. Twenty other poems followed it in a series that became the chapbook, “The Children of the Night,” and later part of the newest collection.

Much of “The Last Man in Willapa,” which is out on Tuesday and contains more than 75 poems, is familiar Pyle territory, place-based writing that dwells near Grays River, Washington, where he has lived and studied the landscape for more than 45 years.

Take a look at the report by Lissa Brewer by clicking here.

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— Derrick DePledge