Springfield School Board — May 27, 2026

3:00 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the May 27th, 2026 Springfield Board of Education special meeting. Call this meeting to order at 10:04. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And Director Cole, if you'd be so kind as to read the land acknowledgement. We acknowledge that our district is situated in the traditional homeland of the

3:47 Kalapuya people, specifically the community that was known as Chifen, the area that we now call Springfield. Kalapuya people who have lived 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. 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

4:32 prevent the erasure of Native culture, heritage, and people, and to ensure a quality contemporary education for future generations. Thank you. Moving on then to agenda item two, approval of the agenda. I would entertain a motion. I'll move approval. I'll second. Move for approval by Director Cole, seconded by Director Langworthy. Any comments, questions, suggestions? Hearing none, call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries four to nothing. I will note that Director Brew could not be with us this morning. But I'm sure we'll be catching him up.

5:17 So then at this point, we move into item three, which is discussion. Is this you, Rob? Or do we adjourn into execs first? No, we need to talk about process questions- Okay ... publicly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, item three is a discussion around process, I believe. So Nicole, you brought this forward? Yeah, processes were going to be one of the- Rob, the microphone. Yeah, thank you.

6:18 Yeah, the processes will be adjourning into executive session to conduct semifinalist interviews. And the goal of this session will be to advance forward the candidates for the final day on June 9th, and prepare for that. Okay, thank you. Board, any comments or questions? I just had questions that I had sent on email that haven't been answered. So, I understand that there's a board member or more, and you, Rob, organizing some listening session on the 29th. So I just am curious about that because I don't remember the board having that, or are you having that part of the proposal and what's the significance of that?

7:03 Yeah. When we came on that first day, when Aaron and I were here, talked about the process that we're going to use, and one of the questions was: Would there be an opportunity to do a listening session with the Latino community? I remember you had asked that, and I said that based on the short timeframe of this and the interim, that it would be hard to pull off, but I would try if it was possible. And so we did some outreach and nothing had been announced because nothing had been confirmed, the time, the location, the date, and so that's how that stands. We're close to confirmation. It's something that during the executive session with the board, we can discuss whether or not we'd like to do that. Why would we discuss that in executive session? This is a public process.

7:50 It's a public process, but everything regarding whether or not-- Or you could vote right now to decide whether or not you want to do that session with the Latino community. I believe it's something that if... There's nothing to hide here, so if that's a process we want to go forward, Jody, then that would be something that you could vote on right now. Yeah, I just have concerns that it's maybe coming in the middle of or after our semifinalist candidate, and it's not fair to the wider community that we did a stakeholder survey, but then we're only going to have a listening session for one group. Yeah. So what we could do, if the board prefers, is to

8:37 do something like that in the fall. Do multiple of those in the fall as you look for the permanent, and just keep this interim session just with what's already been scheduled. So that's this meeting today, along with the June 9th finals. Yeah. So if we want to keep it to that, then we stand at the direction of the board. When I made the suggestion, it was because I'm not sure that in the normal context of things that our Latinx community feels comfortable, and so that was the suggestion. And one of the reasons that attracted me to GLS, was George Mendoza, fluent Spanish speaker.

9:24 So I would be interested in moving forward with that to hear from that community in specific. I don't think it necessarily just informs us on this search, but maybe informs us of where this community is at and how we can better serve them. As a mother of a daughter with autism, I would also like to open it up to parents with children with IEPs and 504s if we're going to do that. Because I specifically asked if we can open up the screening committees to all parents and all community members, and I was told, "No, this is a short timeframe. We're not doing listening sessions and other stakeholders at this point." It's just who the board members know.

10:11 Sounds... Other board comment? I guess I feel like it's kind of short notice and how applicable it will be, how we'll be able to apply that information when we're down to just a few candidates, final candidates. And so I like the idea of doing the outreach. Actually, I think you and I at least attended one that Kate put on a few weeks ago. So we've had some experience with that. But I'm open to doing that more in the future. I just think right now it's not the right time to have that selected group only provide input. We've done the broader community input, and they had an opportunity to do that. So I would be for let's just

10:58 move on as we've already planned and not do that listening session at this time. Thank you. Director Langworthy? Yeah, I'm in favor of that, too. I agree with Nicole that it would be great to have other groups involved as well. I love the outreach idea. I really do. I think it's needed. But I do think right now is really hard, especially since we have graduations and everything coming up for this Friday. I didn't know about it until Monday, I think, or this weekend. It's been a lot to catch up with on the emails. But I really love this idea for the future.

11:43 I really do. Okay. Well, I think you've got a leaning from the board. Yeah, definitely. But I think this also, the broader conversation informs us of going forward with a permanent search, things we'd like to see. Admittedly, it's a short timeframe on the interim search. But with a permanent search, of course, we have a much longer runway, and we do want to be collaborative and inclusive as we move through that process. So can you give our gratitude to Anselm- Yep Working to put this together, and you can explain the reasons why. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I can do that for Judge George as well. Thank you. Okay.

12:28 So then, at this point, we move into the adjournment in- I have another question. Oh. Being that there's a candidate that is working with GLS, how are we safeguarding that whole process in how we're interviewing semi-finalists and ranking what criteria, and how are we safeguarding any bias? We're safeguarding bias by having a process that's open and transparent, and we can't talk about the candidates in open session. But that's something we can discuss in executive session, but we can't discuss that in open session, any particular candidates at this time. Yeah. It would've been nice in the beginning to have that disclosed, and

13:13 there was no disclosure of any potential conflict of interest, and I'd like to see that in the future. Any other comments from the board? Okay, so moving on then to agenda item four. At this point, we'll adjourn into executive session under ORS 192.660 (2) , employment of a public officer, employee, staff member, or individual agent, specifically for initial hiring. So I don't think we're actually moving anywhere. We can clean it up.

14:07 Right. I'm going to be very task oriented because we've got someone coming online in 15 minutes, right?