It should go without saying that the way things have played out in the first month of this Sweet Home School Board’s tenure have been a disaster..
But School Board members displayed some clear thinking and backbone Monday, Aug. 11, in dealing with accusations that some of them had violated open meetings law in discussing a move to oust current school district Supt. Terry Martin and replace him with another candidate more favorable, it appears, to some of them.
Note: These are only accusations. There will be follow-up that will, hopefully, determine what happened and apply appropriate recompense.
There’s been a lot of outrage in the community, some of which was voiced at the meeting by former Board Chair Jason Redick, who stepped down at the end of June after 20 years on the board. Redick called out newly elected Board Chair Floyd Neuschwander for allegedly leading the charge on some of alleged malfeasance, as well as other board members who allegedly were involved.
As stated previously on this page, the timing of this thing was terrible and, frankly, took advantage of brand new members who literally had been sworn in as board members five days before the notice of the July 21 meeting to oust Martin appeared in public view.
But it may be prudent to step back for a moment and look at this situation, which has been deplorable at best, from the 10,000-foot perspective.
New board members get training, but, as any of us know who have gone to seminars likely would agree, often it takes some real-life experience before what you learn in a workshop starts making more than just academic sense.
In this case, the accusations are that board members engaged in serial meetings – meaning they interacted via messaging or otherwise in plotting a course of action before actually meeting, and basically were trying to inject some personal preference and politics into their goals. That’s putting it nicely.
As Redick appropriately reminded board members repeatedly Monday, school district business by law must always take place in public, other than a few exemptions that allow for private discussion of specific topics that for various reasons shouldn’t be public, such as hiring, performance, and discipline of specific employees), real property transactions, legal advice, and pending or anticipated litigation. These are things for which a district may not want the “opposition” sitting in on negotiations.
In addition to making sure business is conducted in public, what else is a school board supposed to be doing?
The Oregon School Boards Association offers a list of guidelines, headed by this one: “The child comes first.” At Monday’s meeting variations of that phrase came up more than once, which indicates that board members at least pay lip service to that principle.
Basically, the role of a school board is to represent the citizens of the district in seeking to ensure that the schools are fulfilling their purpose of getting kids ready for responsible and productive citizenship, for making sure things are on the up-and-up financially, for dealing with issues that come up when hundreds or thousands of individuals interact, and for overseeing an administrative team who do the day-to-day work of making sure all this happens. While political and world views certainly will influence board members’ thinking and actions, they need to consider how their goals will impact the stability and well-being of their schools and the community they serve.
Seeking to fire the hands-on leader of the organization, particularly seemingly without cause, does not lead to stability and well-being for anyone except possibly the few who instigate the action and their supporters.
Yes, in the case of egregious misconduct, unpleasant decisions sometimes must be made and carried out, but in most cases a responsible school board will always opt for corrective steps before dropping the boom.
Getting back to our board, four of these people were rookies in elected public service – “were” because Erin Barstad resigned. Three remain and the community should give any who got caught up in this mess a chance to get back on track.
Being a school board member is not always an enviable job and community members would do well to keep these things in mind as they evaluate what should happen next.
Ultimately, what everybody wants is a well-functioning school district that is serving kids by getting them ready for life.
Yes, this has been a disruptive disaster, but the board took some decisive actions Monday and unless there’s some indication that the newcomers are stubbornly preoccupied with doing the wrong things, they should be given some space to correct their course and get on with what they were elected to do: make sure Sweet Home’s schools are functioning in as healthy and happy manner as possible.