Editor’s note: This is the third of a multi-part series on the impact of your vote for School Board Candidates, an OAA Voter Education Project

Who really makes decisions? The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) provides directives and developed ORIS (Oregon Integrated System) as a framework for the Continuous Improvement Process, which integrates equity in every area of the process. A process where school boards are pressured to adopt what ODE recommends. The ORIS centralizes many decisions that rightfully should be made from the ground up, but are actually made top down. Furthermore, decisions made at the school board level are farmed out to the district administration or unelected committees.

What most voters don’t realize is the roll of the school district with the school board. ORS 332.075 allows the school board to authorize the school district office to enter into contracts with board approval. The process deteriorates when the school board, and parents, become the last in line to hear about such contracts that have been negotiated and only aware of them when they are taken to the board for their stamp of approval. By that time deals have been made, the public’s only recourse is a mass display of protest. This type of feedback from parents made the news in Beaverton when the district tried pushing a contract and parents were locked out of the school board meeting. As a result, the National Association of School Boards proposed making parents that demonstrate domestic terrorists.

Parents are increasingly making public records requests to get to the bottom of issues. The Coalition of Oregon School Administrators (COSA) say it is an immoral violation on their personal privacy, even though all government workers are subject to public records requests.

The school superintendent is hired by the district school board to carry out what the school board approves: school budgets, approved curriculum, and policies in schools. If a superintendent is not going to be supportive of the board and the district, then they are hindering what the school board, with parents’ input, deems important in their schools.

The issue of superintendent hiring and firing is now critically important. In Newberg, Albany, and other school districts, school boards dismissed superintendents who did not comport with community values, undermined school board policies and continually placed progressive ideology above academic instruction. This was an essential last-ditch mechanism for school boards to dismiss non-responsive superintendents and preserve academic and community values.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

However, upset with the firing of the Newberg superintendent for not following the board’s policy that only American and Oregon State flags can fly in classrooms, legislative progressives rushed to pass SB 1521 in 2022. The bill made it impossible to fire a superintendent for cause without 12 month notice – despite what the hiring contract may say. The law now limits the ability of the district school board from terminating the superintendent if they are acting in compliance with state and federal law and refuse to follow a board’s policy. It sets state and federal laws or guidelines, including executive orders, orders of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, declarations, directives or other state or federal authorization, policy, statement, guidance, rule or regulation over local school boards. In other words, local control and parents’ voices are not considered.

COSA and ODE pushed SB 1521 to override parents that are flooding board meetings demanding the termination of instruction on gender identity and sexual options, shared bathrooms/showers, and receive abortion drugs without parent consent. Currently, HB 2002 is working its way through the legislature that allows students of any age to start transitioning without parents’ knowledge.

Many suggest this is what tyranny looks like using students as experiments, thwarting the voice of parents, and neutering school boards to keep progressive superintendents and the Department of Education ideological agendas moving forward using public schools as the vehicle.

Oregon Abigail Adams Voter Education Project lists the candidates and those responding to the survey on their website.


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2023-04-24 19:40:42

Last Update: 2023-04-25 01:32:06