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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Dan Hansen

This individual is no longer an employee with The Spokesman-Review.

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News >  Spokane

Keeping their heads up

PULLMAN – It was cloudy when Washington State University held its May commencement ceremony – the showers on the Palouse matching the chill in the national economy. That was nothing like the storm Saturday when about 1,400 graduates picked up their diplomas during midyear commencement at WSU and nearby University of Idaho. Posing for pictures in their caps and gowns with a backdrop of wet, blowing snow, some graduates wondered how they’re going to find work in the worst job market in decades.
News >  Spokane

Teachers’ new status earns them raises

More than 900 Washington teachers will get pay raises of $5,000 or $10,000 a year because they’ve passed a rigorous national certification process designed to produce better educators. Only two states – Florida and North Carolina – saw more teachers gain certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards when annual results were released on Tuesday. Like Washington, those states offer big financial incentives to teachers who go through the process: pay raises of anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent.
News >  Spokane

Friendship stars in lead role

Watching students from Gonzaga University practice lines with developmentally disabled adults won’t solve the world’s problems. The economy was still tanking after play rehearsal this week. Winter was still coming. If your candidate lost the election, the other guy was still in.
News >  Spokane

School bond, levy set for March vote

Spokane voters will have a chance early next year to continue a streak of generosity toward schools. Despite the recession and growing concerns over the global financial crisis, the board of directors for Spokane Public Schools on Wednesday voted unanimously to put a $288 million bond issue on the March 10 ballot.
News >  Spokane

Boy’s death accidental

The archery death of a Deer Park Middle School student was unintentional, the Stevens County coroner said Sunday. Alex Niskanen died Thanksgiving afternoon, after being shot with a hunting arrow while visiting friends south of Chewelah.
News >  Spokane

EWU professor digs up ancient history in Cyprus

It helps to record a conversation with Georgia Bonny Bazemore so you can listen to it later with the benefit of Google. Because you may have forgotten that Adonis was the incestuous lover of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love; that asps are venomous; that Barnabas was an associate of the Apostle Paul. Any of those subjects – heck, all of them – might be delivered in a single paragraph from a woman with blaze-red lipstick and purple-and-jet-black hair.
News >  Spokane

Sounds like cooperation

One percussionist wore a Ferris T-shirt. Someone from Shadle Park draped a letterman’s jacket over a French horn case.
News >  Spokane

Departing Bergeson cites schools’ progress

A boy named Bobby and a girl named Lupita represented the past and present when Washington’s top educator gave her final State of Education address Friday in Spokane. Bobby was a struggling student 45 years ago when Terry Bergeson was a first-year teacher. Lupita is a girl she met in June who graduated with honors while teaching her parents to speak English.
News >  Spokane

Education funding increase urged

Two days after Washington’s colleges and universities were told to prepare for $600 million in cuts, the board that oversees higher education in the state urged the Legislature to instead adopt a “modest” $512 million increase. The investment is warranted because higher education is “one of the most powerful tools at the state’s disposal to help us grow our way out of the current economic downturn,” states a press release from the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board, which met Friday.
News >  Spokane

WSU chief takes $100,000 pay cut

With state colleges and universities facing the potential for historic budget cuts, the president of Washington State University is taking a $100,000 salary cut. WSU’s Board of Regents voted to approve Elson S. Floyd’s pay cut Friday, upon his request.
News >  Spokane

Whitworth University’s culture a legacy of beloved longtime professor

When two alumni gave $2 million toward construction of a dorm at Whitworth University, they asked that it be named Duvall Hall. But Duvall isn’t the donors’ name. Instead, they chose to honor R. Fenton Duvall, a history professor who’d last taught more than two decades earlier when the residence hall was dedicated in 2006.
News >  Spokane

Higher education cuts of 20 percent could cancel classes, shrink enrollment

As the state’s budget crisis worsens, Washington’s colleges and universities are being told to plan for $600 million in cuts over the next two years, a loss that would mean program cuts, layoffs and enrollment reductions. “We’re just asking them to prepare for us a plan that they could use to reach a 20 percent cut,” said Glenn Kuper, spokesman for the state’s Office of Financial Management. “We don’t know yet how all the cuts are going to be apportioned out, but we want to have those options in front of us.
News >  Spokane

Alternative-fuel Honda is a car of controversy

Spokane Community College is being cited as evidence by those who believe Honda is suppressing sales of a car the federal government calls “the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle in the world.” The college, which plans to begin training mechanics to work on hybrid cars this winter, hopes also to become a training center for those who would work on cars burning compressed natural gas, or CNG.
News >  Spokane

Honda’s Civic GX is a car of controversy

Spokane Community College is being cited as evidence by those who believe Honda is suppressing sales of a car the federal government calls “the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle in the world.” The college, which plans to begin training mechanics to work on hybrid cars this winter, hopes also to become a training center for those who would work on cars burning compressed natural gas, or CNG.
News >  Spokane

Sayonara

MOSES LAKE – A driver on Interstate 90 would not guess that this Eastern Washington farm community has formed strong bonds with Japan. There’s no hint in the clusters of fast-food restaurants and motels at the exits, or in the irrigated fields and open spaces that surround Moses Lake. You might be greeted with “hola” at the McDonald’s, but not likely with “konnichiwa.”
News >  Spokane

School officials ready next bond

Spokane Public Schools officials say the worsening national economy won’t derail plans to ask voters for $288 million next year for school construction and technology improvements. But an old argument is likely to get new emphasis as supporters of that six-year replacement bond try to convince voters that it’s worth the investment: Spending hundreds of millions on construction projects will keep local people working.
News >  Spokane

WASL facing another go-round

Sorry, kids. Tests are here to stay. Multiple-choice, true-and-false, show-your-work, essay – none of them will be going away.
News >  Spokane

Motorists get pumped about prices

Gasoline fell below $2 a gallon at some North Idaho stations Monday – a buck less than it was a month ago and half the price drivers paid during the peak of the summer travel season. “I was shocked,” said Tom Reed, of Rathdrum, as he filled his Ford Taurus at Coeur d’Alene’s Fred Meyer, where club-card customers paid $1.87 a gallon.
News >  Spokane

Brother says shooting victim always had smile on his face

For Marcus Ridgely, it seems so random. His younger brother wasn’t a troublemaker and didn’t have enemies, Ridgely said. Yet 22-year-old Joshua Ridgely became a victim of violence early Saturday, dying in his girlfriend’s lap after being shot in the chest.