Benny Westcott
The Sweet Home School Board on Monday, July 11, unanimously approved an employment contract for Interim Superintendent Terry Martin to continue in that capacity through the 2022-23 academic year.
The academic year began July 1 and runs through June 30, 2023.
Martin took on the role of acting superintendent on May 2 after former Superintendent Lisa Riggs took a leave of absence beginning on that date. Riggs officially resigned from the role of superintendent on June 30.
As interim superintendent, Martin will be paid a salary of $147,600 for the year.
Martin started working in the district when he became principal of the Sweet Home Junior High School in the fall of 2020. He has 26 years of educational experience, including 22 years in education administration.
He started his career in education in Oregon as an English teacher at Stanfield Middle School from 1996 to 2000. That role preceded a long stint in Alaska for Martin, during which he held various administrative roles.
Martin was the principal at Nikolaevsk Elementary-High School in Nikolaevsk, Alaska, from 2001 to 2004. He was then principal at the Ninilchik School in Ninilchik, Alaska from 2004 to 2011, and principal at Marshall School in Marshall, Alaska, for one year after that. He then served as director of human resources at the Northwest Arctic Borough School District from 2014 to 2020, before becoming principal at Sweet Home Junior High School in the fall of 2020.
He received his associate of arts degree in liberal arts at Blue Mountain Community College in 1990, then his bachelor’s of arts in language arts from Western Oregon State College in 1993. He received his master of education in school leadership from Eastern Washington University in 2000.
Also during the meeting, board members accepted the resignation of the district’s Director of Instructional Technology Colleen Henry, effective June 30.
In a letter to Martin announcing her intent to resign, Henry, who had worked for the district for 20 years, had some things to say about
the district, as well as former Supt. Riggs.
Henry noted that Riggs was the sixth superintendent she had worked with in Sweet Home.
“I was initially intimidated by her experience and expertise, but later came to understand that she saw Sweet Home like I did: a great
district in need of stronger systems and more support in the classroom,” Henry wrote. “Her experience and expertise were the exact things our district
needed to move out of pandemic learning, and in the first months on the job, she did what she was hired to do: operationalize Superintendent Yahraes’ (the district’s previous superintendent) vision by using her work in school improvement to connect Sweet Home with expert consultants.”
Henry wrote, “She saw the urgency to act and moved quickly, which made some people uncomfortable. I get it: change is hard, and complex change – the type of change needed to improve school systems – is harder. Yet at every turn this year, Superintendent Riggs was met with passive-aggressive resistance to change, and when that wasn’t enough to derail her improvement initiatives, gossip mixed with innuendo resulted in outright lies about her character, which spread throughout the district.”
Henry noted that during her own time at Sweet Home, “I believed I was making a positive difference for my students, colleagues, staff, and community – even when the job wasn’t easy, I persisted.”
But she went on to say that “After the events of this year, it is clear to me that the direction of the district has shifted, and instead of working collaboratively to move us forward, it appears our trajectory will result in taking the district backward.”
She wrote that “for years I have observed that the operational responsibility for making strategic decisions in our district has been left in the hands of those few who lack the instructional experience or educational background to fully understand and address the needs of all of our students. Rather than empowering those with educational experience and expertise to lead, too much time is spent reacting to issues instead of proactively working to resolve them by following established district policies, building supportive school systems, and managing personnel effectively.”
She concluded by asserting “I believe in Sweet Home – this town, this community, and this district will always hold a special place in
my heart. I hope Sweet Home’s best days are yet to come. Thank you and good luck, Terry [Martin] – my thoughts are with you as you work
to lead this district forward.”
Twenty years ago, Henry started working in the district as a long-term substitute Title 1 teacher at the Junior High. She spent the next decade as a junior high teacher, teaching Title 1 reading, 7th and 8th grade language arts, WEB, TLC Leadership, journalism, and GEAR-UP. She also coached the
junior high’s Drama Club. She then worked one year in administration at Oak Heights Elementary School before returning to the Junior High as the principal. She remained in that role until she accepted the district’s director of instructional technology position two years ago.
Henry wrote in her letter to Martin that she’s accepted the position of Oregon Data Suite Coordinator for Willamette ESD.
In his superintendent’s report, Martin told the board that the district’s worker shortage is continuing, with nine certified openings.
“That’s not specific to Sweet Home. It’s all across the country,” he said. “We’re working on this and we’ll continue working on it. We offer excellent benefits.”
He added that the shifts are Monday through Friday with weekends off.
The district has three elementary physical education positions open.
“It’s kind of funny, because when I went through school, the biggest group of folks going through were in PE,” Martin said. “There was a big pile of PE teachers.”
The openings include five more elementary teaching positions and a high-school English position.
Martin said the district has a number of classified openings as well, and that the district has increased pay for classified roles.
“Everybody loves to say ‘McDonald’s is starting at $14 an hour.’ But the shifts are random, they’re weekends, everything else,” Martin said. “We pay the employer portion of the retirement. We have medical, dental, vision. Th ere’s a lot of really good things that we’re doing here.”
Speaking of the current hiring market, he said, “Everybody that I’ve talked to everywhere is really struggling with just folks being willing to show up and report.”
Looking ahead to his future plans for the district, Martin said, “I want to get us back on track with student attendance, student safety, student achievement and increasing our graduation rate. All of those things slid, as they did everywhere, during the two years of COVID.”
In other action, board members:
— Appointed Mike Reynolds as chairman for the 2022-23 academic year, after he served as vice chairman last year. Jason Redick,
who served as chairman last year, was named vice chairman. Debra Brown will continue as secretary, a role she also assumed last year.
— District Business Manager Kevin Strong noted that the district’s ending fund balance grew during the 2021-22 school year
from 11.6% to 13.1%, primarily due to spending less than what was budgeted. He said that the district utilized federal Emergency Relief
Funds and State Student Investment Account funds, resulting in lower General Fund expenditures.
He added that some General Fund savings resulted from the fact that the district did not fill all of its open staff positions.
— Approved the hire of Amanda GaVett, Junior High assistant principal, effective Aug. 1, 2022.
— Approved the hire of Deborah Suing, fifth- and sixth-grade teacher at Oak Heights Elementary for the 2022-23 school year.
— Approved the hire of Kate Virtue, fourth-grade teacher at Foster Elementary for the 2022-23 school year.
— Approved the hire of Summer Anderson, second- and third-grade teacher at Hawthorne Elementary for the 2022-23 school year.
— Accepted the resignation of Sarah Peterson, science teacher at the Junior High School, effective June 30, 2022.
— Approved the hire of Tamara White, life skills coordinator/district behavior specialist, for the 2022-23 school year.
— Approved the hire of Alecia Gardner, .50 PE teacher at the Junior High School, for the 2022-23 school year.
— Approved the hire of Ryan Kildea, science teacher at the Junior High School for the 2022-23 school year.
— Accepted resignation from Mitch Robinson, behavior specialist for the district, effective immediately.
— Accepted the resignation of Milli Horton, nutrition services director, effective June 30, 2022.
— Approved the hire of Marissa Ziemer, third-grade teacher at Foster Elementary, for the 2022-23 school year.
— Approved the hire of Jeffrey VanEpps, PALS teacher at Hawthorne Elementary School for the 2022-23 school year.
— Designated the Local Government Investment Pool and Key Bank as depositories for the District for 2022-23.
— Designated Pauly Rogers as auditors of record for 2022-23.
— Designated The Hungerford Law Firm as the district’s attorney of record for 2022-23.
— Approved a resolution to expend Federal Forest Timber receipts received in 2022-23 on salaries in the General Fund.
— Designated Brown & Brown as the District’s liability insurance agent of record for 2022-23.
— Approved the extension of a contract for food products and non-food supplies with Sysco for the 2022-23 school year.
The school board will next meet at the District Office at 6:30 p.m. on Monday.