News-Times July 18, 2012 Phone: 503-357-3181 www.fgnewstimes.com NEWS A15

rider in Forest Grove.“I don’t think it was fair and

I don’t think it was just,” Ack-erson said, adding that he was speaking for himself and not the union. “As far as I’m con-cerned, I don’t see how she did anything wrong.”

Ackerson spoke to Hendren Thursday and she is making plans to fi le a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries because of Tri-Met’s actions.

Hendren’s possible dismiss-al was the fi nal act in a series of rider complaints during the

past decade. Last fall, Hendren gained national attention when she ordered a Forest Grove mother with a crying baby off a bus in Hillsboro. Sev-eral passengers on that bus got off in protest of Hendren’s ac-tions. She was suspended for 10 days after the incident, and told that any future complaints could lead to her dismissal.

The latest confrontation hap-pened late at night on June 7, when Hendren, who was driv-ing the Line 57 bus, got in an argument with passenger Ma-ria Ruiz of Cornelius about an expired bus fare. The argument became so heated that Ruiz’s children began to cry. The only other passenger on the bus, a Beaverton man, fl agged down a passing Forest Grove patrol of-fi cer to help in the situation.

An investigation into the June 7 incident found that Ruiz tried to board the bus with ex-pired fare, and when Hendren asked her to pay, Ruiz went to the back of the bus and sat down with her children. Hen-dren turned in her seat and asked Ruiz to pay. Hendren and Ruiz then started arguing. Ruiz said she told Hendren she was

getting her money out to pay.Michael Canoy, the other

passenger on the bus, then also started yelling at Ruiz for be-ing disrespectful to Hendren. He called 9-1-1 at Hendren’s re-quest, and then got off the bus to fl ag down a Forest Grove pa-trol offi cer.

When police offi cer Ernesto Villaraldo got on the bus, Ruiz and her children were all dis-tressed and crying. Hendren said she couldn’t drive the bus with crying children. Villaral-do drove the family to their Cornelius home.

TriMet offi cials could not re-view a video of the June alter-cation, as the tape was taped over before they were made aware of the dispute.

TriMet Executive Director of Operations Shelly Lomax said the incidents with Hendren do not refl ect the level of custom-er service the agency expects from its employees.

“This incident and how the operator handled the situation is not representative of the vast majority of our operators who deliver excellent customer service every day,” Lomax said.

But since last fall, when now-retired human resources direc-tor Dave Willard walked a small group of citizens through the emptied building and, according to Sauber, “promised the library would be available to our kids,” district leaders have come to a different decision: the books will be taken away and used to fi ll in collections at other K-4 schools.

Parent Corrie Bates, who along with Sauber was a regular at school board meetings during the long debate over closing Gales Creek, is disappointed over what she views as a betray-al of trust.

“It was my understanding that the board [and] district made a pledge to the Gales Creek community that, despite the closure of the school, chil-dren and parents could continue to make use of the library as an intact entity,” she said.

District communications di-rector Connie Potter couched the matter differently.

“It’s not a change of heart, but a re-evaluation of the needs of the district,” Connie Potter said Monday. “We allowed [resi-dents] to use the building as much and as long as we could, but it was never meant to be a long-term thing.”

The Gales Creek books will instead enhance the inventories at other schools, Potter said, adding that Forest Grove High School librarian Dee Maderos and a volunteer from Echo Shaw Elementary School’s library helped evaluate book stacks dis-trict-wide.

“The books will be put to good use filling in the gaps,” noted Potter.

Another disappointmentBut to Melinda Fischer, a

Gales Creek mom and past PTO president at the former school, the administrative directive to scatter the books, announced to the school board last month, was another disappointment in a

string of many.“We would like to keep using

the books,” said Fischer, whose two children were the second generation in her family to at-tend Gales Creek Elementary before budgetary constraints set in motion a series of fi nancial decisions by the local school board that included dropping the 152-year-old elementary pro-gram.

Gales Creek’s fi nal year serv-ing as the community’s smallest grade school was 2010-11.

Last academic year, the build-ing on Northwest Sargent Road housed a half-dozen special edu-cation students with behavioral issues under the banner of the Gales Creek Therapeutic Day School. In an at-tempt to provide a chance for former classmates — many who were bused to Dilley Elementary and other grade schools after their school closed down — to stay connected, Bates, Fischer, Sauber and others came up with a mid-week play night concept.

Since January, between 20 and 40 parents and children have gathered at the school on Wednesday evenings to let the community’s kids enjoy time to-gether — and to borrow library books.

“We were told we could check out the Gales Creek books and that a computer would remain on site so we could keep track of the volumes, but that did not happen,” said Fischer, who noted the old library contained “thou-sands of dollars worth” of books whose bookplates “state if they were donated by a family or an individual.”

But Potter insists the books are district property. “The books in our school libraries belong to the district,” she said.

Bates said that after fi nding the school library “in disarray” at its meeting in June, the group created its own portable lending library consisting of “some do-

nated books in a box.”Kids came to the school each

week to check out books from the box by hand, something that was “very popular,” Bates noted. “There was defi nitely interest in getting books.”

Library’s demise imminentWith no strong objection from

the board at a June 25 meeting, when Superintendent Yvonne Curtis told the panel the books were due for removal, it appears the library’s demise is imminent.

Board member Fred Marble, who voted no on the district’s 2010-11 operational budget be-

cause it included plans to shut down Gales Creek School, called Curtis’ notice an “informational item.”

Marble said there’s no ques-tion in his mind that the books are

district property, and with Gales Creek unlikely to re-open as an elementary in the foreseeable future, he’d like to see them used elsewhere.

“I sympathize with Joyce, but this is part of the pain of a school closing,” he noted.

His colleague on the board, Gales Creek resident Kate Gran-dusky, put a different spin on what should happen to the books.

“I have been trying to advo-cate that the Gales Creek library collection go to the [Forest Grove] Community School,” Grandusky wrote in an email Sunday evening. The public charter school, she said, has “room for the library and [does] not have a library at this time.

“The collection could still be shared as needed throughout the district with the computer check-out system.”

Still, she indicated the clean sweep of the Gales Creek library was unfortunate.

With few dollars allocated by the district in recent years to buy library books, Grandusky

added, the Gales Creek PTO “worked at supplementing” the collection by holding book fairs as fundraisers. “Without the parents’ support and energy, new books would not have been purchased,” she said.

Sauber pointed out that the Gales Creek inventory was “spe-cially selected for the student demographics out here,” and that the former school’s dis-placed pupils don’t have easy ac-cess to the Forest Grove public library after school.

“When they get off the school bus late in the afternoon, their parents aren’t going to drive the nine to 15 miles back into town to take them to the library,” she said.

She believes the district has reneged on its pledge to provide the community an open-door policy at its old school.

“This is just one more stab in the back for Gales Creek,” Sau-ber said.

Books: Many purchased with memorial or PTO funds■ From page 1

“This is part of the pain of a school closing.”

— Fred Marble ,Forest Grove School

Board member

TriMet: Customer service was lacking■ From page 1

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