Retired principal Cynthia Richardson elected school board chair
Cynthia Richardson, a retired educator and longtime Salem principal, will lead the Salem-Keizer School Board for the next year, becoming its first Black chair.
The board voted unanimously Tuesday night to name Richardson chair of the board for the upcoming year. The chair runs meetings and helps determine what issues will be on the board’s agenda.
Director Satya Chandragiri nominated Richardson for the post, citing her work on the state Board of Education, which she joined in 2023, and her long tenure as a principal at Stephens Middle School and North and McKay High Schools.
“She brings with her the collective wisdom of four generations of educators. They have given everything they have to educate all our children and uplift all our communities,” Chandragiri said while nominating Richardson. “It has been a blessing for me to work alongside her and learn from her the important lesson that good education is the only way of making a way out of no way.”
Richardson was elected to a four-year term on the school board in 2023, taking office the day after retiring as the district’s director of equity, access and advancement. She is the second Black school board director in district history, after Willie Richardson, who served from 1987 to 1991.
“I just want to thank each and every one of you for your confidence and me,” Richardson told the board after the vote. “My mom and dad and grandmother are dead but I know they’re proud and they’re looking down.”
The board elected outgoing Chair Karina Guzmán Ortiz as its vice chair, and Director Lisa Harnisch as second vice chair.
Board members also unanimously approved contracts for two new administrators: Deputy Superintendent Danielle Neves and Jonathan McIlroy, director of data and strategy.
Both come to Salem-Keizer from Tulsa Public Schools, Superintendent Andrea Castañeda’s former district.
They are replacing administrators who left Salem-Keizer this summer to become superintendents in other Oregon districts.
Each administrator will be paid a salary of $188,328.
The board also swore in one of two student advisers for the upcoming school year: Kaiden Armstead, who will be a senior at McKay in the fall. The board’s other student adviser, South Salem senior Sofia Castellanos, will be sworn in at a future meeting.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers education, economic development and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade and is a past president of Oregon's Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Outside of work, you can often find her gardening or with her nose buried in a book.
