Wyden was originally scheduled to hold a public town hall at Phoenix High School. But leaflets were found promising a disruption, which shut down the event to the public.
Students still got their chance to ask Oregon's senior senator some questions, including Tanner Schuh, who asked about homelessness and the opioid crisis.
鈥淭hey're having to pay all these fines to the government," Schuh said. "I don't think that's helping perchance. But I think that there's a lot that could help, like mental health and stuff.鈥�
Schuh says he didn鈥檛 think Wyden鈥檚 answer really touched on the issue of homelessness, instead talking about a bill that would curb the shipment of fentanyl into the U.S.
"There's been a law in the past that allows for small packages to come into the United States without a lot of checking and oversight and stuff like that," said Wyden. "And now these drug cartels and criminals are using it to flood Oregon 鈥� and particularly the West Coast 鈥� with fentanyl."
Wyden also addressed school funding, including an effort to reauthorize a bill that stabilized federal funding for rural schools in Oregon.
"We're trying some new approaches that are going to allow us to kind of grow some interest, extra money on how we do it," Wyden said. "But if we didn't have that $4 billion in the law that I wrote, we'd have school about three days a week in a lot of rural Oregon."
Wyden is talking about the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which passed back in 2000. That funding program has been reauthorized a number of times, and will expire if it isn't reauthorized this fiscal year. Currently, has been sitting on the senate floor since April.
