Editor’s note: Former Sweet Home School Board Chair Floyd Neuschwander was the focus of a number of accusations made at the board’s Aug. 11 meeting, at which both he and former Secretary Mary Massey/Speck were voted out of those roles by a majority of the board. Neuschwander contacted The New Era through an intermediary to ask if he could give his side of the story. Here is what he had to say.
Floyd Neuschwander, recently returned from a trip to Alaska to see his daughter’s Coast Guard ship commissioned, says there’s a lot more to the story than what was discussed at the School Board’s Aug. 11 meeting.
Neuschwander met with The New Era to give his side, which includes the cancellation of an announced July 21 School Board meeting to discuss the termination of Supt. Terry Martin and Neuschwander’s removal as chair of the board at the Aug. 11 meeting.
The July 21 board meeting was announced on Friday, July 15, four days after three newly elected board members were sworn in. It was canceled several hours before it was scheduled to occur. Despite the cancellation, a protest held outside the School District headquarters on Long Street drew approximately two dozen people on the evening of July 21.
At the board’s regular monthly meeting, on Aug. 11, former Board Chair Jason Redick, who stepped down in June after 20 years on the board, lambasted the board, which included one returning and three newly elected members after the resignation on July 28, of Erin Barstad, also newly elected. Redick accused members of meeting illegally – through electronic communication and in-person conversations – to negotiate Martin’s termination.
He also charged Neuschwander, who was elected board chair on July 14 over Mike Adams, of violating board policy in scheduling a meeting without a 10-day notice, which he said was contractually required. Redick suggested that those actions were taken to “minimize public scrutiny.”
Neuschwander told The New Era that was not the case, and that he believes all – or nearly so – that took place was within the rules.
Serial Meeting Accusations
In response to accusations from Redick and four other individuals who have filed complaints to the School District alleging illegal communication among board members, Neuschwander said any serial meeting “was not intended, not planned.”
Redick alleged that there were “conversations and text messages between board members that constituted an illegal serial board meeting” and said he believed Neuschwander had contacted “multiple board members to gain support for his termination of the superintendent’s contract.”
Neuschwander said that wasn’t true.
“There was no serial meeting, and some of the complaints that were bandied about that I called this meeting illegally, and I unilaterally called this meeting, well, that’s absolutely untrue.”
Neuschwander said that serial meeting laws are “confusing,” and noted that at the beginning of this month the Oregon Government Ethics Commission “published a clarification about it because so many people were having problems trying to understand this.”
He said that if a serial meeting were “planned by some, I still don’t think five people were ever involved, but if somehow, accidentally, they were, it was inadvertent. It wasn’t malicious.”
Neuschwander said he did attempt to communicate with Board Member Jenna Northern, but said that was about an entirely different matter – a near-miss between their vehicles on Highway 20 that, he said, sent Northern’s vehicle into the ditch.
“She was visibly shaken,” he said, “so we talked and I was like, ‘Are you OK?’”
He said he made two follow-up calls to check on Northern, who was at the Fair by that time.
“I wanted to make sure she’s not going to look at me and have PTSD or some kind of trigger in any way, shape or form,” Neuschwander said.
“I kind of felt like, as one of the older members on the board and now the board chair, I kind of felt like I gotta mother hen these people, it’s kind of my job to take care of them.
“So there’s really nothing I see in these complaints that is founded and maybe they have more.”
July 21 Scheduled Meeting
Neuschwander denies that his main objective as the new board chair was to unseat Martin.
“I need to make it clear I don’t hate Terry Martin,” he said. “He’s a man like anyone else.
“Do I think he’s not the best fit as a superintendent in our district? I think I’ve made that pretty clear in board meetings. Jason Redick said (in his remarks at the Aug. 11 board meeting) that he had to several times stop me from attacking Terry Martin. That’s not true. Many times I questioned Terry Martin, and many times I was shut down immediately by Jason Redick and anybody that’s ever watched a board meeting can see that; that’s pretty obvious.”
He said he had been approached during his two years on the board prior to the May election “and before I ever got elected to the board” by people concerned “that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark.
“They didn’t think things were going the way they should be.”
He said those concerned included “administrators, teachers and staff, classified, everything from bus drivers to administrators.”
“They are all fearful to come forward because of the might and power given to the superintendent,” he added that the school district “is the biggest employer in town, they pay some of the highest wages in this town and if you have a job with the school district, you don’t want to lose it, right?
“So it’s been this culture of go along to get along and the grease keeps flowing and everybody keeps their mouth shut.”
Neuschwander said he had checked with the district’s attorney, Nancy Hungerford, a veteran in educational law, and spoke to her “at length” about the meeting. He said she sent him a “very detailed” email on the steps that would need to be followed to do things legally.
He also talked with an attorney representing the district’s insurance company, Pace, which represents most of the school districts in the state.
“They sent me an email that said, ‘Yes, you can do this, blah, blah, blah, thanks for letting us know.”
Also, Neuschwander said, he contacted the Oregon School Boards Association “and the OSBA lawyers chimed in and so everybody said, ‘You’re doing it right. Go ahead.’
“So it wasn’t unilateral. I didn’t just fly off the handle out of some hatred.”
He noted that Dale Keene is the only current member who was on the board when Martin was hired, in November 2022, leaving seven – following Barstad’s resignation, who had joined the board since Martin’s arrival.
“It’s an entirely new board,” Neuschwander said. “We weren’t involved in any of that process at all. So we have some two-year-old board members and some brand new board members.”
The board’s most important role, he said, “the No. 1 job, is to hire and fire our superintendent.
“The board has one employee and that’s the superintendent. Everybody else in the district works for the superintendent.
“Any board anywhere in the world, whether it’s a board of a private corporation, whether it’s a board anywhere, has the right to pick their CEO.”
Neuschwander acknowledged that the “timing wasn’t good, but if you’re going to get rid of a superintendent or even have a discussion about getting rid of a superintendent and you decide to get rid of a superintendent, before the new school year starts is the best time to do that.”
“So time was of the essence, and knowing that I was going to be gone on a two-week trip to Alaska, it sucked. I wish Terry would have been here; it would have been a whole lot better.”
He said he believes that the “no-cause termination” wording in the agenda for the planned meeting prompted an “outpouring of sympathy.”
Neuschwander said he had to remind the former board – “I said this several times in public meetings, I tried to remind our superintendent that we don’t work for him. He works for us.
“The previous board, especially Redick and Mike Adams and Dale (Keene) and (Jim) Gourley, they thought they worked for him. He set the tone for the meetings. He set the agenda for the meetings. He ran the board, not the other way around, and I bided my time for two years, and I sat there with a board that was weak, ineffectual and complacent, apathetic and that’s at best, at worst, downright corrupt.
“But I bided my time for two years until Redick decided not to run again, Gourley decided not to run again. I was sorry Jim had health problems, but I wasn’t sorry that they didn’t run because I thought maybe we have a chance as a board to have some action, do some things and, you know, make a difference in this community.
“I mean, we’ve had falling scores, our enrollments are down, and we need to look at those things, not just poo poo them, like the previous board has.”
He acknowledged that firing the superintendent would have been “a tough sell,” particularly after, he said, he learned from Business Manager Kevin Strong that it would likely cost the district $250,000 if Martin were dismissed without cause.
“So, 250 grand, that was going to be a jagged pill.”
He said that the alternative, firing for cause, “is a pretty slippery slope” that would likely result in a lawsuit, and when he spoke again to Hungerford, she warned him that a clause in Martin’s contract providing a 10-day notice if he were to be terminated, though common in such contracts, could be construed to mean that the superintendent must be given 10 days notice “to even discuss firing him, at which point our meeting would have been premature.
Redick, in his comments to the board on Aug. 11, said that clause was in the contract to “to protect the district from the liability of a large expenditure, if necessary.”
“His due process would have been violated, which I don’t want to do. That’s not ethical and also that could have opened the district up for a giant lawsuit.”
So, Neuschwander said, he “unilaterally canceled the meeting.”
“I did that to protect the district, not to protect my own reputation, obviously.”
August 11 Meeting
Redick and board members questioned Neuschawnder’s absence at the board’s Aug. 11 meeting, though Board Member Mary Speck/Massey told them he was in Alaska on a pre-planned trip.
Neuschwander said he had scheduled a two-week trip to Kodiak, Alaska, months before the meeting to witness the commissioning on Aug. 11 of a brand new Coast Guard cutter, the Earl
Cunningham, on which his daughter Madelyn Neuschwander will serve as an officer.
He said he had held a board officers meeting on Aug. 4, with Adams, who was vice chair at the time, and then-Secretary Mary Speck/Massey “and at that meeting I asked Michael if he could take the reins for me, because I wasn’t going to be able to be there.”
He said he explained to Adams that he had a “Coast Guard thing” that prevented him from flying home early.
Neuschwander said Adams asked him “very specifically in that meeting, ‘Well, what are we going to do about this special meeting, and are we going to proceed with what we talked about before and what’s going on?’
“Make no mistake, Michael Adams was in this from the very beginning,” Neuschwander said. “All three board officers were together, wanting to call this special meeting. You can’t, according to board policy, call a meeting without the request of three board people.
“Well, Mary and Mike requested it to me. I was the mouthpiece. I made the call to (district Confidential Secretary) Julie (Emmert), but they were in on it. He asked me in the presence of the superintendent.”
In response to Redick’s questioning of why Barstad’s resignation letter was dated July 27 but was not stamped as received by the district until Aug. 7, Neuschwander said that Barstad had emailed the letter to both him and Emmert simultaneously, “but Erin had entered the wrong email address so Julie didn’t get it.
“I had assumed that everyone had been made aware. It slipped my mind at the board officers meeting on the 4th.”
When reports appeared about Barstad, including the fact that she said she had resigned, “it jogged my memory and I called Julie and forwarded her the email I had received from Erin on the 28th.
“I have an email from Julie that states Erin had the wrong email address, so it had not been received by the district office before that.
“I was on the road to Alaska, so I may not have been 100% on top of things.”
Neuschwander complained that he and Speck were removed from their board officer positions in the Aug. 12 meeting without a full board present, which, he said, violated state law.
He said the district does not have a policy for removing a board officer.
“That’s never happened. There’s no precedent.
“State law says if you’re going to remove a sitting board chair, it takes a full board. We didn’t have a full board. I was gone. Erin had resigned. There’s only seven people in the room, so you can’t just willy-nilly cherry pick the ones you think are going to vote your way and vote on the night that they’re there.
“I wasn’t there to defend myself, and we did not have a full board.”
So there’s, there is no policy removing a board officer, okay? That’s never happened. Okay?
‘Not a Vendetta’
He also complained about Redick’s accusation that Neuschwander had a conflict of interest that put in him violation of district policies and state law regarding employment actions taken against Neuschwander’s wife, who works for the district.
“I’m not an employee in the district, but when he brought my wife into it, that was wrong; that should have been shut off, and Michael didn’t do that.iu
“Terry didn’t do anything to my wife. He just didn’t do anything for her. After four months, she was put back in place. I tried to question about OTIS in an open meeting, Redick shut me down.
“I tried a couple of different times. Redick said, ‘You’ve got to talk to Terry privately in his office. We can’t have that. That could damage the district.’
“I said, ‘Hey man, what’s the deal?’ and he told me, ‘Once OTIS takes over, we have to cease and desist; there’s nothing we can do.
“But for him to bring up the fact that my wife had even been on leave, that’s none of anybody’s business if I can’t talk about it in a board meeting with the superintendent, right? He shouldn’t be able to talk about it as an audience member. That’s ridiculous. But Michael let that happen.”
Neuschwander reiterated that he “didn’t think Terry was doing a good job long before that.”
“So no, it was not a vendetta.”
Silence ‘Deafening’
Neuschwander insists his motives are upright.
“I didn’t do this because I hate one man. I did it because I love my town,” he said.
“ I’ve been around here a long time, and I’ve taken some hits. I’ve been pretty vocal about things here and there, but I thought I had enough respect in the community.
“But I think there’s a silent majority, and so far their silence has been deafening. I think there’s some people need to step forward, and if they don’t, and they want to leave me hanging out in the breeze, I’ll gladly be the scapegoat, you know, but I will say this: that Jason Redick is attacking all these other board members when all he really wants to do is attack me. He should have just left them out of it.
“If they can somehow prove that I crossed some imaginary line by talking to a couple of my board members, I’ll take the hit. I’ll pay the fine. I’m a big boy. If they want to drum me out of town, they want to kick me off the board, they’ve already, I think, illegally taken my board chair seat. They didn’t follow the proper procedure there.”