The Oregonian has an interesting (and troubling) story this weekend about how school districts around the state are grappling with tight budgets — and, as budget season looms, some will have to make decisions about possible school closures or consolidations. One of the culprits here, of course, is the statewide decline in public school enrollment. Other factors include the end of pandemic-relief funds from the federal government and the fact that state funding has not kept pace with rising labor costs.

Only a few districts thus far have announced plans to shutter or combine schools, The Oregonian reports, but one of those is the Bethel School District in Lane County. The superintendent there, Kraig Sproles, says this first wave of closures and consolidations could be a sign of more to come: “As the numbers of students in the schools start dropping below 300 and hitting the 250 range, we are operationally not funded from the state to run schools at that level,” he said.

The Oregonian story doesn’t include enrollment numbers for Corvallis, but a quick look through statistics at the Oregon Department of Education provides those: Like many other districts around the state, the Corvallis School District has not recovered from an enrollment drop during the pandemic: Its 2023-24 enrollment is 6,118 and has been dropping since the 2017-18 school year, when it reported 6,875 students. (Enrollment in the district fell by almost 300 students between the 2019-20 school year and the 2020-21 year, in the heart of the pandemic.) Leaving aside the pandemic for the time being, I think it’s fair to say to say that the low supply and relatively high price of housing in Corvallis might be one explanation for the enrollment trend.

Three of the district’s elementary schools are in the 250-300 student range that Sproles mentioned: Mountain View Elementary has 232 students. Kathryn Jones Harrison has 273 students. Franklin has 301 students.

As we race headlong into another election season, it’s a sure thing that we’ll be facing a flood of disinformation. So here’s a timely piece from Arizona journalist Michelle Beaver about how you can protect yourself — and others. The piece was featured on the website of the Oregon Capital Chronicle, the Oregon outpost for the States Newsroom nationwide network of newsrooms based in state capitals.

In Kansas, the States Newsroom operation is called the Kansas Reflector, and it was in the news recently with an incident involving Facebook (speaking of disinformation). The story is complicated, but it basically goes like this: Facebook’s artificial intelligence misclassified a Reflector article about climate change as a security risk, and then, compounding the mistake, blocked the domains of news sites that published the article. Facebook apparently isn’t exactly sure how this happened — and isn’t particularly interested in accountability for the incident, which of course are things you would expect if the company actually was serious about fighting disinformation.

Do you recall watching this year’s thrilling run by the Oregon State University women’s basketball team into the Elite Eight in the NCAA tourney and thinking, hey, this team will be something to watch next year? Well, it might be — I never would count coach Scott Rueck out — but it won’t be the same team: As of this weekend, eight of its players, including stars Raegan Beers and Talia von Oelhoffen, have entered the transfer portal. This is mostly about the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference; Beavers with the resume to go play for a major conference are going to do that, and you can’t blame them. Football star Damien Martinez, in many ways the heart of the Beavers offense, also declared for the portal this week amid rumors that there was friction involving his NIL (name, image and likeness) deal with OSU’s Dam Nation collective. Unless Oregon State (along with fellow Pac-2 refugee Washington State) are able to rejoin or rebuild a major conference, this seems likely to be part of the landscape for those schools.

Former Beavers guard Sydney Wiese had a lengthy (and very thoughtful) Facebook post about this subject this week, and had some nice words for Rueck and the team’s coaching staff as well. Nick Daschel, the Oregonian’s beat writer for the Beavers, wrote about Wiese’s post this week.

It’s been 10 years since the Nevada standoff between rancher Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — an event that, in so many ways, set the stage for events such as the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. This Associated Press story marking the anniversary of the standoff notes that Bundy emerged the victor from his showdown with the BLM: Bundy cattle still graze on the disputed ranchland.

For some reason, that last item made me think of “Civil War,” the provocative new film from British writer-director Alex Garland. In this Q-and-A from The New York Times, Garland talks about the movie — and why he deliberately tried to downplay the politics behind the civil war in the movie. (It’s worth noting that “Civil War” is the rare recent movie in which journalists are the heroes.)

Speaking of the Times and civil wars: The newsroom lately has bounced from one internal crisis to the next. The Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Bruell has a long piece that explains what’s happening at the Gray Lady.

Holy smokes: This edition of the Weekend Reader has been pretty downbeat so far. Let’s see if any of the Reader’s national news desks have anything to cheer us up.

Nope.

Well, that’s not quite true: The Times’ A.O. Scott (it’s unclear exactly what he’s been doing for the Times since he stopped reviewing movies, but let’s ignore that for now) has a delightful “Close Read” of Frank O’Hara’s delightful poem “Having a Coke With You.” This is exactly the sort of thing that benefits from the Times’ considerable multimedia muscle — and it’s a happy reminder that this is National Poetry Month. And Poem in Your Pocket Day is Thursday, April 18 — but it’s not too late to prepare.

That’s it for this weekend. Call me on Thursday and read me your choice for Poem in Your Pocket Day, and I’ll leave my selection on my voicemail message.