Springfield School Board — April 27, 2026

0:40 All right, let's go ahead. Well, I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order, April 27th, 2026, of the Springfield Board of Education. Call it to order at 5:32 PM. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands,

1:25 one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And I believe Director Brew is going to read the land acknowledgement. We acknowledge that we are in the traditional homeland of the Kalapuya people, specifically the community that was known as Chifen, the area that we now call Springfield. Kalapuya people who have lived here in this region since time immemorial, were illegally dispossessed of their land and forcibly removed to what are now the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations over several years, but most notably in treaties between 1851 and 1855.

2:11 The Kalapuya are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. Indians and members of the Kalapuya still live, work, study, and thrive in this area, and continue to make important contributions here in Springfield, across the land we now refer to as Oregon, and around the globe. This information is shared out of a responsibility to prevent the erasure of Native cultures, heritage, and people, and to ensure a quality contemporary education for future generations. Thank you. Moving to agenda item two, approval of the agenda. I would entertain a motion and then we'll... Yeah. I'll move to approve.

2:56 Second. Approved by Director Light. Seconded by Director Brew. I was going to amend the agenda, which is what I was mentioning earlier. Well, now that we have the motion on the floor, then you said you had something to change or something to offer? Yeah, I would like to amend the agenda to add discussing policy BCB, which would not allow a chair to become leadership again if removed by the board. Which policy is that? BCB. You want to add that to the agenda? Yes. Discussion item. We can go ahead and add that. We'll put it after BG policy. Is there a second? We have to have another motion with the amendment.

3:41 I move to amend the agenda to add policy BCB to the discussion. I'll second. So the approval of the agenda was amended, and the motion was made by Director DeGraff and seconded by Director Cole. Any further comments, changes? Can we get that printed off? Call for the vote. Okay. Sorry. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any against? Motion carries. Approved of the agenda with the amendment. Point of clarification, I didn't hear it. B-C- BCB. P- BCB. BCB. Bravo, Charlie, Bravo. Okay.

4:29 So a clarifying question, given that we don't have that policy in front of us, we could certainly print it. I'm not sure that there's much we can do. Maybe look at the concerns and entertain those, and if that's okay, we can do that maybe when Rob Hess is giving his presentation. Okay. At this time, we're going to adjourn into executive session. Review of confidential attorney-client privileged information under ORS 192.6602F, and we will return when it's complete.Okay,

20:56 so we're reconvening with our special meeting at 5... What a memory. 5:51. So moving on to agenda item number three, we adjourned into executive session, and then we'll now be at number four, the action item. So it's under action item 4A, action on information discussed in executive session. I'd be happy to entertain a motion. I move that the board take no further action related to the complaint discussed in executive session and delegate authority to the chair to draft a response to complaint based upon board's discussion.

21:43 I have a motion on the floor by Director Cole. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Director Brew. Any further comments or questions? I just request that the board get a copy of that. Standard procedure. You're talking about the reply- Yes ... to the complainant? Okay. Yes. No problem. So Johnson, regarding that, I think we got a copy recently, but we also discussed getting copies of past letters, and I don't know if that happened. I thought we did.

22:29 Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. Thank you for the reminder. Okay, so are there any abstentions or are there any declared conflicts? I will declare a conflict. Okay, so let it be noted that Director Langworthy has declared a conflict of interest. So I'll ask the remaining board members to give their vote. Director Cole? Y- yes. Director Brew? Yes. Director DeGraff? No. Director Light? Yes. Motion carries three to one.

23:16 With one abstention. To me. I don't... Thank you. Okay, so we haven't heard from Mr. Hess. Oh, he's jumping on now. So, given that he's coming in via remote, we're flexing our schedule a little bit, and we're going to move agenda item 5B up in the agenda so that we can accommodate his schedule.

24:07 Okay. Can you hear us, Rob? Yes, I can hear you. We can hear you. Well, thank you. Oh, thanks for attending this meeting, Rob. Really appreciate it. When we were setting the agenda, we felt it was important to have the information come straight from the source. So-And you're the lead with Grundmeier Leadership Services. So if you'll please give us an update where we're at on the interim superintendent search. Yeah. So the search application is

24:52 currently in a variety of places, both locally and nationally, to recruit candidates. And then we're in the active recruitment. And then in addition, we're collecting data from your stakeholders through the survey. And I believe there's about 400 so far that have replied. So collecting that data. And then the other key piece that's going on right now is determining who you'd like to help with the screening committee, the semifinal interview, and then interviews on that final day. So I know that I've been working with Jonathan and Jodi on kind of getting names together. So I think if board members have

25:38 different people that they'd like involved, they could work through the chair, be great. And then Jodi's working through the people there in Springfield. I know that we talked today, and she's got some ideas around having students involved, which is great. And then also, staff leaders and then community members and district leadership as well. Want me to talk about that? Sure. Oh, good. Okay. So, just in clarification with what I talked to Rob about today. So the screening is May 20th, and that is screening applications. So it's the board members plus five to seven additional people,

26:24 and Jonathan and I both have a spreadsheet. So if there's names of people, so there's a screening with five to seven people additional to the board that are involved in the screening of the applicants. And then on the 27th of May is the semifinal interviews, and that's the board with, again, five to seven different people involved in this first round of interviews. And then the final day is kind of what I talked to Rob about to see if I was on the right track. But what I'm going to recommend for the final day is four round-robin meetings with an interview with the board. We have an amazing student voice group that is already active that I would love to tap to be with Taylor Madden

27:12 as the facilitator, to also be one of the groups that final interviewists would meet with. And then, so it's the board, student voice, district leaders and/or building level leaders, and then the parent community. So there would be four different groups that they would round robin through. I've seen that done in other districts in the past, and it seems to be really appropriate. And then each group provides feedback back to the board so the board can make the final decision. Yeah. The way that feedback will look like is that they'll participate in the interviews, and those people will have a live link that they put the data into, and so that will all go to the board. When they deliberate that evening,

27:59 they'll have that data on how people are scoring. So they'll be able to look at all of that. That's the way we keep track of it live. So Rob, question, are the questions in each of those groups structured? Yeah, the questions are structured, and what we do to design the questions is look at the data that's coming through the stakeholder survey, what things are important, and then the team will put together kind of a draft set for review. And then we always have if there's a blank spot, so if an interview team

28:44 doesn't see a question, that there's a pressing question that's not being asked, they can create that question, and as long as they ask the same question to every candidate, no problem. You look like you might have a question. I do have a question. I did review the video of the presentation. So I guess my question is, if as a body, we were looking for a candidate with a certain set of qualifications, maybe they spoke Spanish or maybe they had experience with, I don't know, some particular thing that we wanted the new superintendent to

29:29 be particularly well-versed in, when does that come into the mix? We're the only people whose job depends on picking the right person. So, are you following what I'm asking? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I was going to ask Rob. Yeah. So where does the board then weigh in on the questions? Because I think it's really important. Yeah. I kind of assumed that would be part of the recruitment is having that stuff in the recruitment. Yeah. Obviously in the recruitment, we're looking for those things as part of the advertisement that's gone out. And in the screening is when you're really going to look for those things in the

30:14 screening to see who you want to move forward. So remember, the people that are giving you feedback with the screening, they'll give you their input, and then they'll leave the room, and the board will deliberate and decide who moves forward. So you're not going to want to move people forward that aren't meeting that criteria that you're looking for in your leader. And remember also that this is an interim, so the pool will be probably not as strong as for your permanent search.But you'll still have that opportunity to weigh in on the people that you want to see more. And everything's confidential in those first two rounds. This only goes public at the end.

31:01 So the screening, it sounds to me, is like on a rubric, a point system, and they're moved forward to the board. The board will deliberate. I'm just making sure that I've got this right. Is that correct? And then we will select the finalists? Yeah. In the screening meeting, the consultant team will present a list of candidates, and we're going to put them into three tiers, green, yellow, red, based on what you're looking for, based on their qualifications. Now, the team that meets, they can say, "You know what? We'd like to move this person from yellow to green." The screening's based on our

31:49 expertise. But at the same time, the board sees every applicant. So there isn't anyone who applies that you won't see their application. So are we, as a body, going to talk about-- I know the survey is giving us some kind of list of qualifications of what parents might like to see or what teachers might, and so on. But at what point does the board say, "This is what we would like to see-" In that meeting- Or are we just responding to the survey? No, in that meeting, that screening night, is when you're talking about those things. Yes. Which meeting? May 20th. Which meeting is that, Rob? That's on the May 20th when you're- 20th, yeah ... when you're looking at those applicants

32:36 and kind of determining the key factors you're looking for. Because it's important to have those conversations when you're actually looking at the files. Because you may create this huge list of things you want, but in an interim search, you may not see all of that. So you really have to pick from the people that have applied. To me, that makes sense. It also makes sense that we would have opportunity to then collate all the information we're getting from the public, students and staff and all of that, and to help feed. It'll help me to help me come to a conclusion about what I want in a superintendent.

33:21 Yeah, I think you're going to get a lot of data, and you're going to want to-- The reason why every week we're sending you the updated folder of who's in there, board members, is you can start looking now as you see those people, so you get familiar with them, so that when you get your reports, you can think, "Oh, this person has this characteristic that we really see is important." Like CTE is really important. "Oh, they're experienced with CTE." Or bilingual is really important. This person's bilingual, that sort of thing. So I'm fine with that in the interim, but I hope when we do the permanent recruitment that we are, as a board, ahead of that and have some idea of what we want to see in the

34:07 applicants that we get so that we can put that out there. I know that when I've recruited for jobs before, if I put out I want people with experience in CTE, someone's going to see that and say, "You know, I wasn't looking for a job, but this is right up my alley. I have expertise in this. I would have a better than average shot at this job." So I would like to hope that we can be, in the bigger process, more prescriptive in the skills and attributes I'd like to see. Yeah, 100%. Time is not our friend in this process, but

34:53 next year you're going to have a lot more time to have those work sessions, hear from the public, talk amongst yourselves, and really get that recruitment really dialed in, and establish those priorities, exactly what you're looking for, and that will help with that search. That's what we would do if we were helping with your search. So I know you haven't decided who your firm is going to be next year, but that's how we would arrange it. I have a question. So I see the students, admin, building leaders, and parents will be a part of this. Will teachers also be a part of this? Yeah, 100%. Mm-hmm. They would be a part of that final day, or they

35:39 could be a part of either of these committees. Just depends on those lists of people that Jody and Jonathan are putting together. I think it'd be important to have their input. That would be under building, correct? When you say building? Yeah. Right? Classroom. Yeah, you definitely want to talk to your association leaders, both classified and certified, to get their involvement. We've already created the application, correct? How will the information the board members fill out on the survey be utilized?

36:24 Aren't we encouraged to fill out the survey also? Yeah. The survey is good for board members. We'll be able to sort it by, I think board members is one of the stakeholder groups we can sort by. Okay. And so when we meet, then after we've screened the candidates, then we'll have time to have the conversation again What's important? What are we looking for? So at least amongst ourselves, we should have a better idea at that point. It's probably too late to inform the application, but at least among our group, that will help. And then when will we be formulating the questions?

37:09 Because I want the board to have the opportunity to make sure that the questions reflect what's of interest to us. Yeah. You'll get a draft set of questions based on all of the data, and that we're comprising. And then you'll, as a board, we'll get that draft set, and then you'll decide these work or no, we want to add different questions. And then we'll go back and forth to finalize the list. And what date would that be? We'll start doing that as soon as we get the data back from the survey. Okay. And so we'd be looking around that week of May

37:55 20th, like a week before your interview on the 27th. Okay. So when you get back from your wedding, Jonathan, there'll be a pile of work for you to do. One of the things will be to make sure these questions are the right ones. Just a point of clarification, Rob, it's not my wedding. I know. I'm sorry. You mentioned getting the applicants every Monday the board gets sent who the new applicants are and stuff. Mm-hmm. Can you make sure you include Marty on that as board secretary, so she has in case there's questions that come up? Yes. Yeah, I can do that. Okay, thanks. Did they go out today? Do you know?

38:40 Yes. Okay, thanks. So also, Rob, the screening meeting with the five to seven plus the board, is that a public meeting? Does that happen in the public- Screening is executive session. Okay. And the same then with our discussion- Yep ... and selection of finals? It's all executive session. Okay. It's one of the protected areas that you can meet in executive session around. Thank you. And the semifinal interview will be executive session as well. Any other questions for Rob or for anybody?

39:26 So this might be a question for the board, because I'm new to this. Since deliberations require a public meeting, except in the case of the selecting of the superintendent, can we discuss the selection of the superintendent among ourselves, since there is no public board meeting where we would do that? Are you talking about outside of the board meeting? Yeah. Yeah. No, you can't. Still, that- No ... falls under the domain of public meetings law. Yeah. You can discuss amongst yourselves in executive session, and that's it.

40:16 That does not give time for a very thorough process, but I understand. Thank you. Well, this is why we're sending... You're able to- Part of the board asks ... review the applications, all of those things, on your own as far as, as much time as it takes to deliberate, we'll deliberate, so. And we're going to... I don't know if you noticed the time of some of the meetings. They're four to six hours. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't quite hear that one. Oh, sorry. I'm not speaking in the microphone. I was just reminding that our meetings are going to be long for this, screenings and interviews. The other thing to remember, and this is not a... Well, it is a shameless plug for our Oregon Government Ethics Commission training on May 5th. So if we really want

41:02 clarification, bring them to that two and a half hour session, and then we should be sitting pretty good, at least from their interpretation. Okay. Well, thank you, Rob. All right. Thank you. Appreciate you taking the time, and look forward to working with you- All right ... down the road. Thank you. Take care. So we'll move then back to agenda item 5A, the discussion on future board agenda topic priorities. And part of this is driven because we have a new board member, Bob Brew.

41:47 So he's unfamiliar with this. And then just looking at the notes, if we're going to set an agenda item, I want to be clear with what the outcome is wanted from all the board members. So the notes at the time, I think, were a little cryptic, and that's okay because we were in the discussion end of it. But I just want to make sure that we're in agreement, this board is in agreement with what we place on the agenda. Tonight's meeting will still be somewhat broad, as I'm suggesting we only maybe look at the top three. The first question for me is: Do we want to change the prioritization?

42:32 And then within that then or after that is when we'll take a look and see, are we specific enough in what we want to accomplish? So I have a question, Jonathan. So part of the packet was this board agenda topics from October 13th, 2025. And my recollection was there were at least the two of those lists. So I'm not sure, is this your list or was this the list thatUm, Heather had brought forward to move forward? Or what was the- Yeah, because we had prioritized this months ago. We did indeed, but as I have stated on numerous occasions, her notes and mine do closely align, but there were some things

43:19 that she did not include that I specifically mentioned in that board meeting, wanted them to be included because they were topics of importance to me. Not a big deal that she didn't include them. She was co-chairing or co-driving the discussion with Director Cole, but- No, we all had the meeting, and we all actually spoke about what... We sat there right then and said, "This is one, two, and three." Yes, I didn't add things after the meeting. What I did is mention them during the meeting, and the minutes or the outline from Heather did not include these topics. So which things of this is... I'll give you an example, but I'm not going to go through the whole list. So John, so this is your list? Just so I'm clear.

44:06 No, the list you're given here is Heather's. That was the- It was dated October 13th. Okay. I wasn't clear on it. Thank you, Marty. Yeah. Okay. So hers is dated October 13th, even though the meeting was in September, and I think maybe mine, the date is the 9/22 as far as when the meeting was. As an example, under priorities number five, there's nothing put under the community involvement heading, and I mentioned listening, listening sessions. Priority six, board development, I mentioned an interest in a retreat or a discussion around that. Under priority seven, facilities and maintenance,

44:52 I bullet pointed the Hamlin Sports Complex, a turf fields report, and nutrition services. So that didn't make the list. So in the interest of clarity or full disclosure, I think that those should have been on there. And again, I... So go ahead. So my recollection is we went through the list and we prioritized, and we kind of ranked. And so not every board member got everything on their list, was those on their list on the master list. We prioritized based on what was consistent or highly ranked amongst all the board members.

45:38 So, I guess I could see why maybe some of those things weren't on the list. Yeah. But I was assured by Heather at the time that those would be on the list, and that's why I mentioned them. K-5 curriculum, for example. Director Brew? I don't really know what we're doing here. Well, if we're doing a list, how are we going to use this list? Thank you. So this came about because the board was wanting knowledge in certain areas, and it varied by individual board member. So, in order to place items on the agenda in some kind of an order, we came up... Well, we had quite a long process on developing

46:25 a list of agenda topics, and then the next step was going through and prioritizing them. And then the following step was, well, what do we mean under that topic? And any board member can jump in, if their recollection is different or the same. I would like to have a... It would've been nice months ago if we would've had a list, and because we've talked about a lot of this stuff this year, and now we're coming into the end of the year, and so we're going to have to reprioritize for the next school year. But I mean, we had a presentation on PBIS. We have had a lot of this, benchmarks and EasyCBM attendance. So it's kind of like, "Ugh." Actually, the only thing that I explicitly remember that addressed anything on

47:13 this list was the PBIS and a little bit on mental health, was actually not priority one, but priority two, and items one, sub one, A one. We didn't get Swiss data. We didn't get anything on Safe Oregon. Well, I'm pretty sure we talked about- We didn't talk about a survey ... this presentation. Huh? I'm pretty sure that was brought up during our PBIS and mental health presentation. Okay, and this was never set up as a one year necessarily. It was sort of ongoing, and that's why we're revisiting, and that's why we talked about it briefly at our last board meeting, and I think I sent out documents to

48:00 all board members with both Heather's notes and mine, if I'm correct. And so tonight- It's going to be ongoing ... so Director DeGraff, do you want to change the prioritization? No, there are going to be annual things, so it'd be nice if here's our annual topics and here's the ones that you want to add ongoing. Because even on this it says it doesn't necessarily need to be ongoing, the student support systems. So it's not very clear, it's very vague, and it's really hard to set goals. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. That's why we're having this discussion to both- It feels like you should set the goals before you brainstorm all this.

48:46 And this was all, I think the result- What did I say? ... of like four meetings or something. So I think it's just become kind of confusing to me as far as the priority, and yes, my things were on the bottom, so I understood that we were tackling the top three things first, like Ken said. So when I read, "Does not necessarily need ongoing discussion, can just be information to review," I read that as it can just be a report that's presented, handed to the board quarterly or half-yearly, rather than being a discussion topic. Am I misunderstanding that? I think, well, again, my recollection, the reason to create

49:32 this was so that we would have the opportunity to ask questions. So it would be a report with the opportunity for individual board members to ask questions of interest to them. Therefore, it would be on an agenda. Yeah. But it could be as simple as a presentation and no questions, we move on. Because a great deal of this is just providing a here and now for what we're currently doing. What are we doing in community involvement? What does board development mean to board members, and how will we address that? Facilities maintenance, et cetera. Because all of these questions come before the board at some point for a decision, usually financial, and the premise being, which again comes out of OSBA, the

50:19 better informed the board is, then the better quality of the decision. And I didn't realize until I had been on the board, that there's a season for everything. But, I just didn't know that. For instance, November is Division 22, and then, help me out here. There's certain things that are happening every month that are presented to the board, that we can count on. And it would be nice to actually have that calendar before

51:04 us, so we know ahead of time what to expect, and then maybe we could align perhaps. We have that calendar. It was the spreadsheet that Matt gave us. Yeah. Which I have this- I think we need to add you to it, though. Yeah. Add you to it. Yeah. I do recall the spreadsheet. Yeah. Okay. And that would allow then to have pull that up and say, "Okay, let's add what's going to be where," based on, like you said, the season of it. Yeah. Well, and that was the intent of our, what do we want to know as a board? And then, what do we currently have to deal with as a district? So the district sort of has a calendar of what's going to come up by

51:49 month or whatever. Right now, it's set up for this happens in October, but we have two meetings in October. And my preference would be to have almost go by meeting so that we know where we have time. There are some meetings literally where I don't think we have time to get in-depth on a topic, or maybe we pick a short one. But the idea, at least in my recollection, was to sort of marry the two and be very efficient with our time, and let staff know sort of what the board interests were, and give them adequate time to plan for that. And Director Cole? Yeah. My recollection is we had the spreadsheet for the previous school year.

52:34 No. We got the updated one. I didn't remember that going out for this year. Yeah. A lot has happened. Okay. That'd be good to all board members. Mm-hmm. Just a little bit more of that ongoing thing, because that's where it would happen. Mm-hmm. Amber, do you want to mention something else? So when it comes to... So are we going to unpack right now what...

53:21 So we're looking to see what we would like as a priority in this present time in moving forward from here to fall? Is- I would like, at the discretion of the board, I would like to retain this list, and I'm in favor of retaining the prioritization and not putting a timeframe on it. We hardly have any time for the end of this year, and I honestly don't... We've got an interim search process to get through, so that's going to take up some time. If everybody else is okay with the prioritization, no reason to change. But I would at least like to better define priority one, student performance, so that we can start

54:06 down this path. We'll have more time in other board meetings to revisit this. But the outcome for tonight, are we okay with the prioritization? Do we want to change it up? What does that mean? You're going to put something off this list on the next agenda? We have student performance. We already have an item that is coming up on the agenda on May 11th. Okay. So that's it then? You're not going to put- That- You don't want to put something else on there from this list? I'm just curious what your goal is. Only if we have time, and I don't think we will. That's our budget meeting also, on May 11th, so. So you wanted the K-5 presentation to happen on May 11th? That's what we talked about in our agenda-setting meeting, yeah.

54:53 What is a K-5 presentation? It's a 30-minute overview, sort of a here and now of where we're at as far as what we're teaching and when we're teaching it. And I have a list to send to the board, but I was waiting till after tonight's meeting. Is that during state testing with fifth... When does state testing start? That's what I thought. State testing has started and it goes on to May 16th, I think. Is that- Yes. Is it longer than that? About three weeks. So who's doing that K five presentation? I've asked Joyce to facilitate it, so I'm assuming it's going to involve some other staff other than just herself.

55:41 Okay. And we have determined that I think we're capping it at 30 minutes, so it's not a very long thing, because I believe we have probably quite a few other things, too. Just because it's only a half an hour here doesn't mean it only takes them a half an hour to come up with a presentation. Oh, I didn't say that. Yeah, no. Didn't want to infer that. So- I'm very interested in seeing this calendar, and that will, I think, inform... I'm a data guy, so I would love to be able to see some metrics each month, not all at once, and when they make sense. Because I think that it's really important,

56:28 for me as a board member anyway, to know where we stand as a district, both where our strengths are and where we're struggling. And we've got to be really honest about that if we're going to be doing a good job hiring a superintendent, because we want to find out where we're weak and they're strong. So yeah, I think that's really important, at least to me. Well, and if you look under prioritization one, number three, the key metric is actually Ken's idea. I envision a three-ring binder of the information, and every board member gets to weigh in. But this would be something, at least to me, would be done no less than annually.

57:14 And maybe we do one at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year, and then use it as our guide as we move forward. But also, if we bring a new board member in, this is sort of like, here's the district. It's sort of the state's at a glance, but more expanded and district specific so that you can say, "Well, here's where we're at." I like definitive information, so I'd like information by building on some things and some things district-wide. But I think it's very helpful for giving the board that common knowledge, that shared understanding. Because other than that, it can be a long process.

58:02 So right now we're looking to... Are we going to be adding anything to here, or are we just confirming our priorities? Well, let me ask the question. And we purposely didn't adopt this because we wanted it to be flexible. And that was the conversation, so we could change things. Is there any interest from other board members in changing the prioritization, or is it fine as it stands? So for me, I guess I would think it would be helpful if the key metrics, if we had more information on the key metrics, because then that helps give you a basis to understand when we're talking about the K

58:47 five, where we're at, the curriculums and all that, if we understand where we're at as a district and how our kids are doing. And so to me, having more information on the metrics and, yeah. Well, and that is on priority one. And I think it also will add information on other priorities, but a lot of that's going to be student information also, or building specific information. So that doesn't necessarily change the prioritization, but it does help as we move forward as far as what we want that conversation within the performance area. I'd like to add one item for consideration, and we don't have to prioritize it at this time, but I'd like to add onto the

59:34 list somewhere, a survey of families that have left the district. I'd like to know why and where they went and- Mm-hmm. Well, and if you look at... It's sort of alluded to on some of these. But again, I agree with you that it could be slotted under number four, parent and family involvement. But I think it could be set as a standalone. And then again, we talked about at the time, a year ago, we didn't necessarily know what today would bring and the interest, so...

1:00:21 I don't really care where it lives, as long as it's on there somewhere. Yeah. Well, I'm going to add that. Bob, can I ask you to speak closer to the mic? So- Sorry. I watch the videos sometimes and I'm like, "Oh, no one was speaking in the mic." The other thing is it would be nice to, and I think this is too much work for right now with everything that's going on. A lot of these either overlap with the accountability bill and things that the district is supposed to bring to the board every year as a report or to have as a presentation. And there's also other things that don't really align with board roles, such as whether or not teachers have microwaves in their room, that sort of thing, which is what I brought up

1:01:07 back in September and October. So there's things on here that can be weeded out. And I don't know how easy that is as far asUm, I don't know who's going to do that, but it seems like there's three different board agenda topic lanes here. Well, and I would suggest, my idea of the process, so if you'll see after the bullet points under student performance, it says K-5/6-8, 9-12. I don't know what that means. I honestly don't know. So it came from one of our board members at the time, but honestly, I don't know. Staff presentations at each

1:01:54 grade level. I'm not sure what that looks like. It wasn't my suggestion. If it was my suggestion, I would have a better idea. Who-- It wasn't your suggestion for May 11th? Huh? The staff presentation or the- Oh. That's not on the agenda. Okay. I'm just talking about the- K through 12 one. Yeah. Student presentations, specialized/group or clubs. Again, these are things that I don't think have enough definition that we can act on them now. Key metrics, I have a pretty good idea because Ken and I have had conversations around that, but I have some specific things that I would like to add to that. And I think maybe other board members do, too. The only thing that I have with any certainty is the top four bullets, and at the time, we,

1:02:40 I in specific, talked about the K-5 curriculum. So this lists three. Computer/tech is not part of the eight subjects prescribed by ODE, so the intent was to have a discussion around what we're currently doing. And that's sort of part one that we've talked about scheduling for May 11th. Jonathan, I guess I'm not following, I'm not seeing. You said four bullets and- Oh, sorry. Not a board bullet on your copy. So focus on subjects other than math and reading, and then in parentheses it says, art, science, social studies, computers, technology.

1:03:26 So that list is the four bullets? And then it says possible presentations from staff. K-5, 6-8, 9-12. Student presentations, specialized groups or clubs. I don't know what that looks like. It wasn't my suggestion. Um. Key metrics, like I say, we've had enough conversation over coffee that I think I have an idea there, but that's the ambiguity that I see in prioritization number one. My ambiguity is how often are we going to talk about the topics? So you want to leave this as an open thing, but I don't think that's really good for planning for staff or the board. So I'm a little confused as to... So you want to bring this agenda topics up

1:04:14 frequently? Like, how often? I'd like to be one and done with enough clarity from this board. Now, I'm totally okay if you want to delegate the authority to the chair and vice-chair to set these agendas and interpret them as we interpret them. I don't think that's inclusive of the board. No. So that's hence this discussion. And this is enough information out on this. We're almost to the end of the year, so just leave it. So other board members? I'm fine moving forward. But- I would be interested if to have the staff weigh in on what of this

1:04:59 information are they already collecting, like the HR report on recruitment, retention, retirements, and so on. I'm sure that's already being collected somewhere. Mm-hmm. It's just a matter of getting it scheduled. Um, and some of these are heavier lifts that will require a more in-depth presentation, but some of them are, it's just a matter of taking the report from here and giving it to the board. Um, and some of these things, it makes sense to maybe do annually. Some of these things, it's like, gosh, we'd like to hear from K3 every couple years, or something. I don't know. But just my perspective. Yeah. For me as a

1:05:45 parent, I'm curious... Well, I'm just curious in general, like, how many tests are we doing in a year on students? I really don't know. What's that look like? How many are being done? Um, another thing too, I have my kiddo's report card, her EasyCBM. Um, I're not the only parent that doesn't really know how to read it. It's really hard to read, and we only have one meeting a year with teachers. So it's just in the fall that we meet with the teachers. So springtime, we get this, you know, a few print offs of what our kid

1:06:32 has... Can you contact your kid's teacher and ask her? So I, um... Excuse me. So yeah, it just would be nice to have a little explanation on, like, what are we... We're testing on i-Ready, which is math, so what are they looking for in that? We got a student progress report, the passage reading fluency. What are they looking for in that? Is that something that parents would want to hear about? I know as a parent- Yes ... I would like to hear more. And I have met with the teacher. Thank you. But I'm not the only one, and a lot of people just don't have

1:07:19 the time to meet with a teacher or, um-I mean, just sometimes we just don't, or there's just a lot going on all the time. It just would be better to understand. And also, I'd like to look at the report card templates and see how it aligns with what we're teaching in school. Is that on one, two, or three? Where would that be on the agenda? That would be, I don't know, I would assume under student performance maybe, because it would go with science, social study, or to look at... So much paperwork.

1:08:04 Yeah, I think that it needs to make sense to our families if we're going to have them participate. So to send the data out without explanation, I think we might be missing some people. And again, we say every student, every day, I would say that includes every family. So how do we... And it was sort of our discussion tonight, in the curriculum review, which I thought was great. How are we engaging parents? We only get kids six and a half hours a day. If we need more time, doesn't it make sense to engage families in that effort in ways that they can help? Which means, how many, I can only speak for myself, I've had numerous parents say, "I can't

1:08:51 teach my third grader math. It's so different than when I went to school." Well, how can we help them engage? Because we do, I feel, need that involvement. So the report card, for example, if it's difficult to understand or doesn't reflect the outcomes we want, then we should have that discussion. I'm not saying given any direction. That's up to the superintendent to do that. But if it's confusing to the board, would it be confusing to the families? So I think it's very appropriate- It's not confusing to the whole board. Just to be clear, it's not confusing to the whole board. Oh, I know. I know you've got this, but it's confusing to me. Now I don't have kids in the school, so I don't deal with it. But, Amber, does it make sense to you? So I have a 27-year-old, well, soon to be

1:09:39 27, and I got a 10-year-old, and it's vastly different from those two eras of my life, going through the school system with them. People who have children that are already grown, you're probably assuming that it's running the same way that it used to. I mean, we've evolved. Technology's evolved, and things are just being done differently. And I personally think it would be great to have a conversation with... Just to find out where we're at as a community to get you guys who have grown kids up to date with what we are as parents with kids in elementary school or

1:10:26 are dealing with or doing or seeing. There's so many great things and there's also some weaknesses that I think some of us parents would be really grateful to be heard on, and that's from my personal perspective there. I've spent the last two weeks doing scholarship review, and I have reviewed the transcripts, the high school transcripts from 80 different school districts. I can tell you no two of them are alike. None of them are intuitive. And if report cards today are in any way at all like as confusing as transcripts,

1:11:12 I'm sure it can be challenging, particularly if you're not involved with it every day. So... And the intent of the information is not necessarily to make changes, but it's just to understand them. And then if we can improve, I believe in continuous improvement, let's do that. But how do we bring those that aren't... I mean, we sit in the boardroom forever, right? So we're probably privy to more information than most other people. So, but what do our families feel? I mean, that's probably where the listening came in, our family surveys came in.

1:11:59 We need to understand that so we can build a district so we're not losing students, we're meeting state standards, and it all starts by asking questions and being curious and seeing if we can put ourselves in the shoes of our students and our families. So thank you, Amber, and thank you, Ken. So survey exit of families, testing on students, elementary report card. Look at that. That does give us more definition. I'm going to delineate the key metrics, Ken. We've talked about it, but I'll make a list because I think that's a great

1:12:45 idea. Something, a document that can really be sort of the at a glance for the district. We have at a glance. It's already created. Does it talk about school capacity? Yeah. There's- Well, I'm just- We actually have the school capacity, but that hasn't been updated in 10 years. But yeah- Yeah. Okay ... we've had all that. So- We have EasyCBM. They've done it, it's three times a year, and they brought us the data to that. Uh-huh. Attendance, the same thing. Same with ninth grade on track, and test scores, of course. So yeah. Okay. So I don't recall that we've got the last two EasyCBM We've been a little busy. Yeah, we have, but you said we've got all that, and I don't recall seeing that.

1:13:31 I mean, as a district, they do everything. We did it last year, but we've had a few things happen this year. So I'm sure if you wanted it, they could've provided that, but not maybe in a public meeting. And do we need, again, a board discussion? Do we need easy CBM, or do we just look at the third-grade data, the fifth-grade, ninth-grade data, include that, even though it is in the state report? If I had it all in one book, it would sure be easier. What's our SWIS data, which is our behavior data by school? Number of incidences. Right now, like you say, it's sort of push of the button stuff. So the challenge is to build the report, the mechanism, then that pulls that together. So the first time around, like anything new,

1:14:17 it's going to, I think, be a challenge. But then once it's set up as a turnkey, you push the button, generate the report. You can even update monthly, whether the board wants to get it monthly or not. But there's certain data that rolls in in different times of the year. If we had a central repository of that, I think it would be so helpful to board members. And I don't know how you would evaluate a superintendent without that data. Mm-hmm. So, we do have the annual data. There's the at a glance, and on our district website, we've copied from the Northwest Education Service District.

1:15:02 They have a wonderful website where they put together and show historical data for five or six years, and it breaks down by grade level, by race. There's a lot of that data there, but it's based on what we report typically annually. So what I was looking for was the stuff that's more immediate, and was hoping to get, like we get a monthly financial report, we get a monthly HR report. Could we get a monthly education status report, whether it's ninth grade on tack, attendance. What are we looking for for attendance, and where are we at, and- Is this just like a five-minute thing, or what do you want from HR?

1:15:51 I said we get the HR report every month. I'm looking for- I thought you're saying you wanted another- I was envisioning that it'd just be in our packet. There'd be a one or a two-page thing that would say, "For the year, here's our attendance, how it's trending, how we're doing. Here's ninth grade on track, how it's trending, how we've been doing since the beginning of the year." So we can see if we're improving or if we have issues that... And hopefully if there are issues, then the administration is saying, "We see this, and we're addressing it, and this is how." But some more immediate information rather than waiting six months or a year, for a year and a half for graduation date or whatever we wait to get the information in the at a glance report.

1:16:38 I'm not sure how often they do. We wouldn't get test scores and stuff like that every month, but it's possible maybe to get attendance more frequently. So if board members will send their ideas, let's start fleshing that out. Let's set a direction there. Wait, what do you mean send our ideas? So we're doing another list? What do you want to see in this report? What's the frequency you want to see it? I thought you meant- I would settle for twice a year right now. Once at the beginning of the year and once at the end of the year. It depends on what the data is. I think the superintendent would need to be able to tell us what's available and what... Because I know the staff are going to be busy at certain times of

1:17:25 year doing these major reports that are due to ODE. So it's not, like if we say, "Oh, we want something every month," but November's taken. Well, that's what- You know what I mean? Yeah. There has to be some coordination there. And for me, I don't necessarily need the monthly information, but I would certainly know, like in a couple of data points, where are we at. Student population comes in the end of September. And where are we? And it might not be a state report at the end of the year, but did we gain or lose students? Yeah, I know enrollment changes, but I think if they send something to the board and we say, "This is our enrollment," we can't take it as gospel that that's what it is, because it changes

1:18:10 for enrollment. Yeah. It does change. But at least it gives us better than nothing, where, and if particularly a new board member comes in, and what was our population in September? What was our enrollment? I guess that could segue into perhaps exit interviews for families as well. Is that- Well, yeah. Yeah. And that might be something we want to do sooner than later because it's so closely tied to revenue, and revenues are tied to shortfalls. You mentioned getting the academic reports twice a year. I think we're going to get them more often than that because I believe the legislature- Accountability ... yeah, the accountability measures require three times a year.

1:18:56 I think that those, does that go into effect this next school year? Yeah. So, I guess we'll get there with the legislature mandates, but- Well, that should help guide us. There are things that are required. But it doesn't mean necessarily that we print something. It could, particularly if it's just available online and we can go take a look at, then updated weekly can happen. Whether we want that degree of work to put into it or not, butAnyway, please let me know what your ideas are, and Amber and I will look it over and we'll work with Jody. And this isn't something we're going to probably be able to do immediately, though

1:19:41 we are trying to do things around priority one. So I haven't heard any interest in changing the prioritization, and as we move through these, then we will need to provide enough detail to give staff guidances for their preparation. That make sense? Okay. Moving on then to the discussion around policy BG, which is board staff communications. I sent out information. Did everybody get that?

1:20:26 It was late, admittedly, with the work that I've done, and also I forwarded an email from Ken. Ken has done some work looking at other districts around that. Our operating agreements and policy need to align in this particular policy because the operating agreement references C policy BG. And right now, it's a challenge, at least for me, to get out into the schools. And some of our policy ignores some possible First Amendment rights, and

1:21:11 so I want to make sure that we talk about these. So Jonathan, I saw you sent them. I didn't get a chance to see it or review what you sent out. Okay. Well, this is not- I have the email, and just so it doesn't appear that there's a consensus being shaped, outside of a public setting, I printed it off for the record. But, he forwarded your research on school districts, Eugene and Bethel, and what their policies are for visits. And he sent... So, first of all, it looked like to me you've created your own draft of changing the visit policy. I didn't know that. But I wasn't aware of that,

1:21:58 and this email just stated your position. So I just want to be clear, you wanted to change the visiting policy to school? I want to have a discussion around that, and of course, it's at the option- You said it's a first reading ... of the board to change policy. You said this is a first reading, and then you gave us a copy of a- First reading in parentheses, meaning it's my version, or my terminology for a discussion. And if the board so chooses to change policy, that would not be at this meeting. So your intent, though, is to change it. Otherwise you wouldn't- Yes. So why are you doing that when we have an acting superintendent? Why do you want to change a school visit policy that is best practice? Because policy is not tied to an individual, my understanding. What are you- The policy is at the discretion of the school board, isn't that correct?

1:22:44 And then it's up to the superintendent to implement. So the board does set policy, and yes, the superintendent does implement it. But strong governance depends on clear rules. So I'm just curious why you want to change the policy that coordinates visits with the superintendent and building administrators. And I did reach out to some building administrators and, since I got your email after 3:00, I did ask on social media, and I got quite a few letters from the public, and the consensus was this blurs a line, and it would violate trust between board members and the school buildings. And then I had the parents weigh in, and they are similarly aligned, especially in light of the fact that we need to attract a good superintendent, and we have budget issues.

1:23:29 So I would think that we should just shelve this talk for maybe when we have a permanent superintendent. I feel differently about that. I have not been able to get into schools. I have not been in school since November at ask- That's incorrect. You've made numerous visits. And you're interrupting me. Excuse me. I will allow every board member to speak fully. I don't know. I have to go through somebody to be able to get scheduled in. Yeah, so I guess the problem I...

1:24:14 Sorry, let me collect myself a little bit. So can we just read the current policy? Mm-hmm. Regarding the visits, "Visits by members will be conducted with full knowledge of staff, including the superintendent, principals, and other supervisors. School visits by board members will be regarded as informal expressions of interest in school affairs and not as inspections or visits for supervisory or administrative purposes." None of this violates First Amendment because we are a collective board. So visiting, having the board secretary and the superintendent be aware and make the appointment with the staff there, it's safety reasons, it's predictability, it's so that we don't disrupt.

1:25:00 There's all kinds of reasons for that. So I don't understand what problem you have with coordinating with the superintendent, whose role is to manage the school. Whereas if you go, or I go by myself unannounced with no plan, what is that showing the building? What is that showing staff? That we are blurring the lines between our governance roles. I don't think anyone was suggesting just showing up. It's more of... Because I was looking at West LinnUm, operating agreements. I saw, I think Bethel, is that right? Something that was forwarded. Um- No, Bethel's still- Is it Bethel? Maybe I'm thinking, um- Bethel and Eugene still

1:25:46 require the superintendent being involved. Yeah. Oh yeah, and I think the superintendent should know, should be involved with the knowing. But having somebody schedule it, it creates a lot of issues. At least it's created a lot of issues for myself, and I haven't been able to get into schools. And it's great that you have been able to get into schools, but I haven't. I've been officially invited and I've requested multiple times to be able to go, and it was communicated to me that I should not have one-on-one conversations with teachers during school hours. And I never intend to. I want to just be a witness

1:26:32 and just go in and see what's going on. Go have lunch. I'm not there to investigate or come around with a clipboard. That's not at all me. I just want to be present with the students and staff, and it's been very challenging to get in. To be clear, Jonathan, or Chair Light's changes aren't what you're saying. They are to go unannounced without any kind of approval. And your things about what you want are exactly why this policy exists. So I'm still

1:27:19 unclear about why we would just allow board members when adults ... Nobody can just go to schools unannounced. Do you have what I have sent out earlier? Yes, I've read it. So I'll read the last sentence to my proposed changed. Even though other districts don't have this, first of all, this is the policy that was almost identical. Our policy and Bethel's was almost identical years ago. Sorry. I want to make sure. Thank you. So our policy and Bethel's were almost identical, and then they got changed, and ours became more restrictive. The other thing I want to say, that even though the policies may look similar with districts in practice, which I also checked out, is different and similar to what I'm going to propose.

1:28:05 So Bethel's policy differentiates between official visits and unofficial visits. So visits to address specific concerns with staff members will be considered official visits. Official visits by board members will be carried out only under board authorization and with the full knowledge of staff, including the superintendent, principals, and other supervisors. Okay? So let me speak to that, okay? In my 21 years of the board, I don't recall ever going on an official visit that was evaluative in any way. The only official visits that I've experienced has been when a delegation was here to look at a school or what we were doing

1:28:51 with our CTE, and it was a request to the board to go. I would call that an official invitation. Okay? But furthermore then, Bethel's policy goes on to state, "Unofficial school visits by board members will be regarded as informal expressions of interest in school affairs and are encouraged. These visits are not inspections or visits for supervisory or administrative purposes." And then for clarity, I added, "Unofficial visits may be directly scheduled by contacting building leadership with a courtesy notification to the superintendent." And both Bethel board members and 4J board members have stated that's their practice.

1:29:37 They never just drop in. Okay? Although admittedly, in a previous administration, I did do that. I didn't tour the school. I would stop into the front office and just say hi to the support staff up front. The principal was there saying, "Thank you. How's it going?" And then be on my way. But I had that flexibility of schedule. So this is not meant to exclude the superintendent from the knowledge, but it's very cumbersome and, to be honest, a year ago, last January, I requested to visit 12 elementaries before the end of the year. And using the policy as it stood, I got to four before the end of the year.

1:30:25 Director Brew? So I'm new, and I guess the way I understood the policy from my onboarding was that I not only had to ask for permission from the superintendent to visit school, but I had to be accompanied by someone from the district. Now, I may have misunderstood that. And when I re-read the policy most recently, I did understand it as I need to schedule that visit through the superintendent's office. If the issue, as you explained it, if it can be made more clear that I'm free to make an appointment with

1:31:11 the principal of the school with a courtesy notification to the superintendent's office, that's very different in my mind. I- Well, and that's actually the way it used to be in this district. I would email or call the school a day ahead of time andAsk if it was okay if I just dropped in, and invariably it was. And I wasn't there to do anything but just sort of look at the artwork on the wall and maybe say hi to a teacher I knew. Definitely greet the custodian if they're sweeping the floors. But it was just because I think it's valuable for board members to be seen in the schools on a couple of fronts. One is just that it informs you of the operations and how we're doing things and

1:31:57 the excitement of the kids and the facility itself. The other is, if you're not going to do that, then what's your basis for understanding the very important work that a school board does? If our kids aren't learning, if our kids are dropping out, if our kids are leaving, you get a certain sense of that. And, yeah, I think it's a critical responsibility for board members to visit schools. I know there's other thoughts around that. We don't belong in the schools, and it sends fear through the staff. That hasn't been my experience. I have had numerous staff say, "I wish you would come to the school. I wish you would come look at my program.

1:32:42 I'm proud of what I do, and I'd be happy to share that with you." And I never ever offer criticism, ever. That's not that visit. So, Director Cole? Yeah, there was a lot there. But I think, and I hear that too from teachers wanting us to come visit. To me, that doesn't preclude us from coordinating that through the superintendent. And having worked for public agencies on the other side, as an employee, if there was an elected official that wanted something and called you directly, usually you dropped everything you were doing. And I can imagine they would be

1:33:30 reluctant to say no if we were to contact them directly. Mm-hmm. So to me, coordinating it through the superintendent seems reasonable. And if that's not happening, if the superintendent isn't facilitating that, then that's something we need to have a discussion with the superintendent about. So, one other thing I would point out is you've referenced Policy BG. Policy BBAA specifically says the visits have to be approved through the superintendent. So, that may be one where currently BG just says we just

1:34:18 conduct it with the full knowledge of the superintendent. Do you know what the language was on Policy BBAA prior to April 28th of 2025? Yeah, I don't believe it had that language. But yeah, that was what the board approved. So that's what's in the current policy that the board approved. And then furthermore, BG Board Staff Communications of 04/28/2025, was that language that you highlighted with the full knowledge of staff, including the superintendent, was that in there? I believe so. For what it's worth, I think OSBA has sent out a policy update, specifically

1:35:05 includes BBBA, BBAA, and it doesn't have the language about approving it through the superintendent, and nobody else seems to have that. That seems to be a unique thing, and I think at the time we were told that that was direction that the district got from OSBA, but it doesn't appear to be where OSBA is going. That specific language about approving through the superintendent is not in the proposed policy update or was in the previous policy for that matter. Where am I missing at? Is this on your information that you sent out? I believe it is. I didn't have that- The OSBA. No, I didn't. In that information, I didn't send

1:35:51 out the current OSBA language and the proposed OSBA language. Okay. Other board- I would like to read a letter from one of the administrators, if I could. Sure. From my perspective as a building administrator, the current operating agreement reflects and policy what to understand to be sound governance practice. Board members should work most effectively when operating as a collective body, and communication is coordinated through the superintendent and administrative team. That structure provides clarity and protects staff and allows us to do our work well. When board members engage directly with staff or visits without

1:36:36 coordination, even with the best intentions, it can create confusion. Because of the position authority of the role, those interactions can feel evaluative or directive to staff. That puts staff and administrators in a difficult position and can blur the lines between governance and day-to-day operations. Unscheduled visits in particularly are challenging. As a principal, I would want to understand the purpose of the visit, what information is being sought, and how I can support it. We ask all visitors to provide notice so we can prepare staff and ensure the visit is appropriate for the instructional setting. Teachers are professionals and deserve to know when someone may be entering their classroom. Even when meant to be informal, visits from individuals in positions of authority can disrupt instruction. Teachers often feel obligated to engage in the flow of classroom shifts. When visits are scheduled, I can be intentional about where we go,

1:37:23 ensure that instruction is not interrupted, and provide context so that what is observed reflects the full picture of our work.I genuinely value opportunities to host board members. When visits are coordinated, I can highlight the strong work happening in our building, answer questions, and provide a systems-level understanding that leads to a much more accurate and meaningful experience than what can be gathered through brief, unstructured interactions. In terms of communication, I believe it's important that interactions with staff are coordinated through the superintendent and building administrator. We have established processes to support staff voice and concerns, and those processes exist for a reason. I just want to say that whenever I've gone on a visit with a director, the way you say it, like, "Oh, you have to ask permission, and you have to have

1:38:10 somebody accompany you." It's been so nice and casual. I go to visit elementary school, and I say, "Oh, hey, what are they doing, a science project?" Then the teacher says, "Yeah, we're doing this science project." And I said, "Oh, we have hands-on experiment supplies." And they say, "Yeah, look, here's our box over here," and they pull out the supply. It's been very rich. It's been very unscripted. I've been there for room clears. I've been there for when all corners of the room have been occupied by naughty kids. So it's not scripted, and it's been very valuable to actually ask questions right then and there. So I never looked at it the way certain board members have looked at it. And my point in bringing up my visits last meeting was to just show you that I think some patience is also

1:38:57 required because you're not going to see a whole lot of schools every week. It took me almost three years to visit almost all of our schools but one. And I was just trying to convey that I've seen a lot of schools, but it's taken some time, and I don't think that this should be a priority of the board to change at this point. I'd just like to point out, Nicole, I'm not sure your experience with still then getting out to all the schools is shared by all the board members. It's been a little bit more challenging for me to get out- I've been to a few this year- Can I finish? So... Yes. It's been more challenging for me to get... I got some, and I would get repeat schools, and so I didn't

1:39:42 always get out to all the schools and yeah, it was a challenge. It's been a challenge. Yeah. I didn't see any schools from November to a couple of weeks ago because of budget issues and holidays, and yeah. So I've barely been back. I want to make sure that you understand, I'm not saying that the way we're doing it by going through the superintendent and having Marty schedule is... That's still on the table. It doesn't change. Your proposal said you wanted to take that out. You wanted to just do visits on your own. I want to take out the fact that it's the only way to visit schools currently. That's the same thing. No, it isn't. The board member in Bethel,

1:40:28 remaining nameless, said that sometimes he just calls because it's easier. How many schools does Bethel have? Well, not as many as we have, and which lends to a bigger problem just getting access to all the schools. But he said, "Sometimes I just go to the school, let them know that I'm going to go to the school and then let the superintendent know." So he utilizes both techniques. Says if he hasn't been in a school before and doesn't know the physical layout, he tends to go through the superintendent's office because that seems to work out better, but he's not limited to that. And 4J is similar, at least the board members that I talk to. So, I'm not suggesting you can't go through the superintendent's office.

1:41:14 I just don't find it to be the most efficient and effective way for board members to visit buildings. Not in my experience. When you go visit a school, Nicole, who's there with you when you go? It's been different times. Either a director or the superintendent or one of the directors. So one. Or administrators, and then definitely a principal. Sure. Well, my experience is different. When I showed up at a school, it would be the superintendent, the director of communications, human resources director,

1:42:00 sometimes the assistant superintendent, and the school principal. So when it moved from a couple of people to what I call entourage style, I felt it be very disruptive, and I felt I was embarrassed because we'd walk into a class, one person walking in doesn't get any attention at all from the students. But when five people, most of them wearing suits and name badges, every head turned, and I was embarrassed. I felt I was really distracting from what the teacher was trying to do. I felt distracting, too. Oh. But it doesn't matter. I think as a member of the public, and also, I don't know what visit that was or how long ago that was.

1:42:45 I've been there for visits that were actually events happening. So a lot of staff was there, and yeah. Sometimes I take photos and yeah. Director Cole? So I'm not sure that getting at your issue, Jonathan, I'm not sure how the policy affects that. Your concerns about multiple directors going on, that's nowhere in policy. All it talks about is coordinating with the superintendent. Well, or giving a heads up notice. So generally, that's been my experience. Before, I'd give a heads up to the school superintendent, I'd show up, the principal would be there. Sometimes the principal wouldn't be there, and I'd walk around either unescorted, which I'm maybe more comfortable with

1:43:30 schools than some of you, the physical layout. But sometimes it was their designee to walk around, and that's always enjoyable, just talking one-on-one, librarian or whoever wants to do that. SoBut the other end of the policy is also on the restriction on communication. Under staff communication, staff to board, let me see where that's at. Got too much paper. So under board staff communications, just again, to get the information out on the table, all formal communications or reports to the board or any board committee from staff

1:44:15 members will be submitted through the superintendent. Now I get that. If it's formal, notice the word formal. So I think that absolutely has to go through the superintendent. Then there's sort of the disclaimer, which doesn't make total sense to me. This procedure will not be construed as denying the right of any employee to address the board about issues which are neither part of an active administrative procedure nor disruptive to the operation of the district. Okay. I'm not sure what that means. In addition, this procedure does not restrict protected labor relations communications of bargaining unit members. Now, my guess is it's sort of an end run around every individual's First Amendment rights, freedom of speech.

1:45:03 So in consulting with a legal person, they said that the board actually cannot be prohibited from speaking to any district employee outside of school hours, assuming the employee agrees and is not coerced or prohibit any employee from speaking to board members when outside of school hours or off of district premises. So I think that's a flaw in the policy that should be addressed. We're basically saying that when you become an employee of the Springfield School District, you cannot talk or visit with any board member at any time. I don't think I have that printed out. So this- It's on the sheet that I sent you. This one?

1:45:49 Yeah. Staff communications to the board. This one's from 2019. Staff communication to the board. Yeah. It says it's from 2019. I don't have the date on that, but I thought it was the most recent. Adopted 3/11/19. Okay. So who's the counsel- Is it also revised, the 4/28? Right below where it says adopted 3/11/19, does it say revised, readopted 4/28/25? Right below that. Who's the attorney that... What do you mean the counsel you talked to? Her name is Eileen Akins. She has an office in Portland. Oh, your attorney. Okay. Where does it say that it's vi... I'm confused about the violating boards person.

1:46:35 You'll see the italicized below. So you'll see my comment, which is, "As written, this policy is in violation of an individual's First Amendment rights." That's my read on it. Sorry, is that printed out here? And then I named the two things, and then I also added then the legal opinion, which I got in November of '23. I don't have that. Hmm. I don't see any italicized. So I guess if we think there is a problem, the legal interpretation is, it seems to me that's a question that would go to OSBA drafts since they have attorneys that did this. There's actually legal references at the bottom of the policy, the specific lawsuits, and so I don't know what those cover, but maybe that's a

1:47:23 question that should go to- The district counsel or OSBA. I would say our district counsel. I would say, yeah, go to OSBA, who writes the policy. Was it Spencer Lewis I think is that, drafts these, and they're reviewing the legal authority on those. I'm a little less enamored with OSBA because I think over the years, they've become pretty restrictive, and I think sometimes it seems that their interpretations are more geared to supporting COSA, the admin group, than it is school boards. That's a personal opinion. So I would rather reach out to our legal representation. If it's a First Amendment right, they probably have experience, or we have seven different legal firms on our list of preferred

1:48:10 clients, so. So you're saying the board members' First Amendment rights are violated? I don't have that. No. So I don't know what you're saying. No. An employee's. This is staff. It's under staff communications to the board. And then under board communications to staff, and again, I thought it was current, says all official board communications, policies, and directives of staff interest and concern will be communicated to staff members through the superintendent. And again, anytime that I see official, then I want to know what unofficial is. When I see formal, I want to know what informal is. Because I think in education, you deal with both a

1:48:56 lot. So unofficial communications, by my definition, is notes of thanks, congratulations, scheduling, response to a question, et cetera, and should be able to communicate. Again, it's fine if we CC our superintendent and let them know. But written policy, policy as it's stated says that we need to then send the congratulations to the superintendent, and then they forward it to them and/or their supervisor. And I think that's rather clunky, for lack of a better term, and we should be able to just say, "Hey, great job at state. Fantastic." And I don't think there should be a policy that does not allow that.

1:49:43 So those are my concerns on BG. I just think they need to be reviewed and updated, umYou look like you're formulating a question. Yeah. It's kind of confusing because we talk about us as acting as a body, and that when we state our opinion outside of this, we have to say, "That's my opinion, though." Mm-hmm. That's not necessarily the position of the body, right? So, it seems strange to me that me, as an individual, I can be down at Papa's Pizza and talk to anybody I want to about their job, unless they work here. That seems weird.

1:50:32 You- So that would, to me, be a violation of my First Amendment rights, to have a conversation as a private citizen with another private citizen about their job. And they're not on district property, and they're not in their workday. And that's what I'm saying is this is not definitive. And if there is a restriction, then it should be clearly stated, and the rationale. And to me, the policy as it originally stood has been changed over time to be something that is no longer clear and does not give guidance. I don't think that a board member, if you run into somebody at the restaurant or whatever, should be able to talk.

1:51:18 Conversely, if a staff wanted to reach out, and they're not on in their workday and they're not on school property, isn't that their First Amendment right also? But I think none of those would be considered official communication. Neither of those situations that I can think of would be interpreted as official communication. So our policy should reflect that, the official versus unofficial. If it uses the word formal, then we should define what informal is, so that not only the board has that guidance, but also our community and our staff.

1:52:06 So as stated, my suggestion, this was put on the agenda as a discussion item. But I'd like people to think about that and the realities. Sometimes legislators pass legislation, and there's what I call unintended consequences. So is it serving the board, is it serving our community to have our policy as it's written now? I would say no, but I'm one of five. It's an adjustment for me. I've worked for the City of Eugene, the City of Springfield, Lane County, and the State of Oregon. It is not unusual to see city councilors going into

1:52:51 different offices without telling the city manager. It's not unusual to see county commissioners going into county offices without going through the county administrator. So this is an adjustment for me, admittedly. And I'm not talking about just randomly wandering into a classroom, but I am saying it's much harder to coordinate three people's agendas than two. So, if I have the opportunity to go by Ridgeview, and so I'd like the permission to just call the superintendent and say, "I'm going to go by

1:53:36 Ridgeview. I've made an appointment with the principal," or whatever. I'd like that to be sufficient. I just also want to bring up the fact that a lot of things have changed in schools. I don't know if you've noticed the gates and our security issues. So we are having more secure buildings, and we have to, unfortunately. But, as a parent of kids that are currently in school, I do like those precautions. And there's things that superintendent knows that's on the schedule that we don't know as board members because we don't have anything to do with the day-to-day operations. So I've never felt like, "Oh, it's going to be unapproved if I ask, 'Hey, can I go visit?' whatever, or, "I haven't been in the

1:54:21 schools in a while," and someone will say, "Well, there..." And the other thing I do is I look at our calendar and I would ask the superintendent, "What is on the calendar for this school? They're having SOC day. Can I go see SOC day?" So I think it's been flexible before the end of last year and pretty open, but we do have to think about security. So- Oh, absolutely. And I'm sorry, I interrupted you. It's okay. So, and I'm absolutely saying I would make an appointment with the principal. The principal would know what was going on that day. The principal could say, "Tomorrow's not good. How about Thursday?" Yeah. And that's kind of how it's been before this last year.

1:55:07 I don't have that privilege. I have never had that privilege. I- Never visited any schools? I don't... Come on, Nicole. No, let's be honest here. Have you visited any schools? Yes. Because it's been different for all of us this year. So that's why I'm just saying, let's be honest. You have visited schools. I have not said I haven't visited schools. You didn't really, so. I've made public comment before on visiting Thurston High Middle. Okay. I think it was stated earlier that everybody's individual experience is not necessarily a shared experience. Would you agree with that? No, I wouldn't. I would say- Oh, you know what my experience is ... we have a level playing field, that we're starting out on a level playing field, and you guys want to make all these different rules about it because you

1:55:55 don't want to. It seems like you just don't want to make those appointments or whatever, and I don't know. That's why I started this out with, what is your outcome? What is it you want to do? Because the policy, it looked like you just crossed that out and wanted to go to a school whenever you wanted. So, yeah. Well, I'd urge you to readThrough there. That isn't my suggestion and never has been. And that- Yeah, that's not the suggestion here. This would- In his email it was ... it's what Bob said. It's what Bob was saying. If we can, like other districts, if we can get ahold of the principal, "Hi, is there a time this week or next week that would work to come in?" That's great. So you want all the board members, instead of just the board secretary, you want five of us doing random...

1:56:41 Because other, correct me if I'm wrong, but Bethel and Eugene don't do that. Do you? So I did have a chance last week to talk to all of the superintendents in Lane County at our monthly meeting, and Bethel and Eugene adopted the policy similar to ours. And I checked with the majority of the superintendents from Lane County, and all schedules for board members visiting schools do go through the superintendent. There are unofficial versus official visits as well, but they do all go through the superintendent, and sometimes it's, "Gosh, you know what?" Amber calls and says, "I was invited to come observe field day. Is that okay?" "That is absolutely great. Go." Right? That's kind of a

1:57:28 come and volunteer and help us out. But they definitely notify the superintendent just to ensure that the superintendent is in the loop as to where the board members are. Because you have to remember, I think Bob said it the best, you're a governing body when you're together, but when you're not, you're not. So you're a board when you're together. So, correct, because you said a couple things that are different. You just said- Mm-hmm ... they notify the superintendent. They don't ask the superintendent. No, they ask. They call and say, "I've been invited to this. Is it okay to go?" That's different, notify. Right. "Is there anything that you see happening that day that might prevent me from being able to..." So that everybody's on the same page. Yeah. We know where the board members are showing up. It's all based in trust, not truth.

1:58:13 It's nice to have one person be the person that knows who's going where, especially in the district into our schools. So. Okay. So, in the interim, I would ask board members, reach out to other board members in other districts and find out what their experience is. So- Are you interested in maybe doing this in a public meeting where a public comment can be taken? Could as well. I don't know if it's just a board member thing. This is about parents and their kids at school and building administrators and teachers. Oh, I'd welcome that. In fact, since this is just- When- ... a discussion item only, when we bring it back around, it would be in a public meeting and probably an action item address, and then absolutely,

1:59:01 with public comment. And I would welcome comment not from just an administrator, but many administrators. I would like to hear from the SEA. I would like to hear from the OSEA, because the things I'm hearing have not been my experience and are not the conversations I have. But I'm just one person, so it may be different for everybody. Can I make a suggestion? Yes. We have a really full board meeting in May. Yeah. And then, not to mention, seven meetings scheduled in May, as well as in June. You also are looking to hire an interim and then an official permanent superintendent. So might I suggest

1:59:47 that this be tabled until you do have your interim superintendent for next year? Just for consistency of that person will be here next year to be able to answer the questions and have the conversation around the changing of the policy. It's just the next two months are going to be really, really busy with different priorities. So that's just a suggestion. So board, you can be thinking about that. Jody's right. It is a very busy schedule here on out. It doesn't mean we won't have opportunity somewhere, particularly in June. I would say definitely not the May 11th meeting. Meanwhile,

2:00:32 comment can come in, written, virtual, whatever the public would like to do, and we can gather more information. So, if it's okay, we'll move on then to agenda item 5D, Policy BCB. Nicole? Okay. Yeah, so I saw that since we're discussing clear boundaries and accountability, that maybe we should discuss changing Policy BCB. Right now BCB is about board officers, and I had come up with two draft ideas. You guys can

2:01:17 take one and pass it down. Just proposed policy addition is that a board member who's been formally censured by the board or removed from board leadership position by board action shall not be eligible for election or appointment to any board leadership role. Eligibility may be restored only after the board has determined by a majority vote in a public meeting the member has taken appropriate corrective action and/or the board has reaffirmed eligibility that's in the best interest of the board's effective governance. This is just an idea. The other proposal is that possible eligibility after a certain period, like a six months or a year.So

2:02:06 I just- Do you have any idea... No, I have a question. Do you have any idea whether there is legal support for this? No, since I have been asking to put this on the agenda for multiple times, it hasn't gotten far enough. So no, it hasn't been to OSBA or District Council, which is basically action the board has to take. I just thought it'd be good to have this discussion since we're talking about changing our boundaries and yeah, I think it's an important discussion. We're changing boundaries? Well, you're talking about changing the- Oh, oh ... boundaries of what board members' roles are. Sorry, I meant like school boundaries. Governance boundaries. So you did receive the

2:02:54 communication from Rebecca? Yeah, that there is no- That there is- ... legal Okay ... reason not to change this. It's up to the board. So are you asking then this to be placed on a future agenda for action? Yes. Discussion now, and yeah- Okay ... placing it on agenda for possible action of changing it then. So board comment or questions? So I view this maybe kind of like term limits for legislators, and I think that it should be up to the will of the voters, and I guess I would say if- Well, you mean the actual board? I think in this case then the board is the people voting on who the leadership is going to be, and so I think it should be

2:03:43 to the will of the board, and not preclude... I'm not in favor of, like I said, as an example, term limits, because I think it should be up to if the voters want to elect the same person or even whatever qualifications. That's the will of voters, and I think that the same would apply to the board. Okay. Director Brew. So I'm new. So what problem is this designed to fix? Has there been a case where there's been someone formally censured or removed from board leadership in the past that they- Yes. Jonathan and Chair Lait and Ken

2:04:29 Cole, Director Cole were both removed, but Chair Lait was board chair and the board also censured him. So I would ask the board, what does that mean, especially since the corrective action wasn't taken other than re-administering the oath of office. And I feel like, and I'd mentioned this before, that I wanted to see the board mitigate our risk, and nobody had spoke on that, so yeah, this has happened. Okay. So in that example, let's say that the board wanted to elect somebody or consider somebody to be in that leadership role again, they would

2:05:14 first affirm the restoration of eligibility by an election, and then they would elect the person? This is just a draft. Basically, when a board member is censured or when a board chair is removed by the vote of the board, then that has come with corrective action, and what has happened in this case is the corrective action wasn't completed, and it also doesn't show that there is no risk that's... There's still risk there. So that was my concern is that we're not holding ourselves accountable, and the outcome of this was to hold ourselves accountable.

2:06:04 What exactly is the risk? Just remind me. I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that when there's unethical governance decisions that are made, and complaints, policy violations that are substantiated, and things, I suppose we don't have any guarantee that that's not going to happen again, but at least somebody that's a board chair isn't in that position to violate those policies again. School boards are not the only boards or governing bodies that are subject to censure, and I don't believe it's been determined in any case law for any board that

2:06:50 removal as chair or vice chair precludes them from being in that position with future elections. That was the point of changing our policy. I don't know what other boards do. I was just- So are you suggesting changing our policy to be not supported by legal precedent? I didn't know you're a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know about- I'm not either. Okay ... I don't know about that. I'm just saying, and since you've already asked our lawyer, our district counsel, she said she didn't see a problem with it, I'm asking the board if we can hold ourselves accountable. Okay. I think I'm the one that asked when we were... My one day as chair when we were nominating

2:07:35 a new chair and vice chair, because this question was brought up whether a censured board member can resume leadership. And I reached out to OSBA, I reached out to our legal counsel, I reached out far and wide, and it was nobody's ever heard of this before. And it was- I think there's other schools that have that. I would have to get back to you on that, but just- Oh, okay ... your email to us was that Jonathan Lait was still eligible to be board chair again because we don't have anything in policy that says he wasn't. And Ken Cole

2:08:24 If someone is censured, does it automatically follow that they're removed from their board chair position, or are those two separate actions? No, it's a separate action. It just happens to be the action that we took back in November. So- It was removal or censure ... if someone was censured, and then the punishment for that censure was being removed from the- No ... board chair position? No, that was one. So one was being removed as chair, and the other one was censured. Oh. And then the other one was training, and another one was administering the oath of office, and the other one was just reaffirming they knew their

2:09:09 board roles and responsibilities. Okay. Thank you. Any further comment? Okay, I'll take the item under advisement. So our next meetings, bunch of them. Our OGEHC training on May 5th. I'm excited about that. How can I be excited about that? But I really am. There's been a lot of change in laws, and I think it'll be valuable to the board. Fortunately or not fortunately, the legislation 4177 was vetoed by the governor, so it doesn't add another wrinkle in the interpretation from

2:09:54 OGEHC will be on the, basically their interpretation of public meetings laws that have been effect for two years. Then May 11th, we have a business meeting at 7:00 p.m. May 14th, we have the second budget committee meeting. And are those if needed, right? Yeah. So May 14th is as when needed. Then we have a special meeting at 1:00 p.m. on May 20th. That, I believe, is the screening- Mm-hmm ... and selection, and that's the long meeting that Nicole mentioned. May 21st, I don't think we've ever had a third budget meeting, but if we did,

2:10:40 it'll be at 6:00 p.m. And then May 27th, the other special meeting, again related to the interim search. So this meeting is adjourned at 7:40.