Update, 3 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12:
The Salem-Keizer School Board on Tuesday unanimously approved a legislative agenda calling on Oregon lawmakers to boost funding and focus efforts on core school operations, not new projects or mandates.
The board approved the two-page document with little discussion following an August work session where district executives explained their priorities at length and asked for the board’s backing.
The board also approved an equity resolution articulating the board’s commitment to antiracism and dismantling white supremacy in a split 5-2 vote. Directors Satya Chandragiri and Krissy Hudson voted no. Chandragiri had proposed an alternate resolution and said he objected to the focus on white supremacy in the wording, saying the board needs to emphasize “racial healing” and focus on progress that’s been made in healing from historical racism.
“I find the current version comes across as very divisive and distracts us from holding ourselves accountable for some of the real issues our children and parents and families and teachers and staff are actually experiencing now,” Chandragiri said. “They are not really going around looking for a white supremacist. They are looking for, how can my child be safe today to go to school and come back and not get attacked by somebody or a gang?”
Hudson said it should be a given that no supremacy is tolerated, but urged the board to “create more resolutions that do meet our standards that we’ve given our district to try to come out of our low academic levels that we’ve been in.”
Following the vote, Director Maria Hinojos Pressey said the purpose of naming white supremacy as a problem is not to demonize individual students, but to focus on systems ingrained in the U.S. that have disadvantaged people of color and other marginalized groups.
“This is a concept, a founding, a belief that you have to fit a very specific set of conditions to be considered a valid human being,” she said. To counter that, “people must be celebrated for coming in every single way that they are.”
The board also voted to nominate Director Ashley Carson Cottingham as a candidate for the Oregon School Boards Association’s legislative policy committee. Carson Cottingham, Hinojos Pressey, and board Vice Chairs Lisa Harnisch and Karina Guzmán Ortiz voted to nominate her, while Hudson and Chandragiri voted to nominate Chandragiri.
Original story below:
The Salem-Keizer School Board on Tuesday will vote on adopting a legislative agenda calling for Oregon lawmakers to boost school funding and stop creating unfunded mandates.
The board will also consider adopting a resolution committing the board and district to equity and antiracism. A version of the resolution has been adopted annually in the fall since 2021. This year’s proposed version has been rephrased with suggestions from the district’s equity committee.
View the agenda here.
To participate
The Salem-Keizer School Board meets Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 6 p.m. in the boardroom at the former Student Services Support Center, 2575 Commercial St. S.E.
Members of the public may sign up in advance to provide written, in-person or virtual public comment. People can sign up using this form.
Public comment sign-ups close at 3 p.m. Monday. The meeting will be streamed on CC:Media, channel 21 or on YouTube in English and Spanish and interpreted live in ASL.
Legislative agenda
Board members will vote on adopting a list of legislative priorities for the 2025 session, which begins in January and will include lawmakers setting a state budget for the next two years.
Gov. Tina Kotek earlier this year unveiled a proposal to change how the state calculates the amount it will cost school districts to keep the employees and services they already have. Errors in the state’s calculation formula last year significantly underestimated the effects of inflation on school employee wages, health insurance costs and supplies, contributing to deep budget cuts in Salem-Keizer and across the state.
Kotek’s changes, which require approval from legislators, would boost the amount Salem-Keizer receives each year from the state school fund by about $18 million, Castañeda has said.
In addition to supporting Kotek’s proposal, the agenda calls on legislators to:
- Stop creating new grant programs that restrict how money can be spent and require districts to create detailed reports. Those programs require more district administrative overhead to track and report, and come at the expense of giving schools money to fund basic operations, the agenda says.
- Increase a state limit on how much extra money school districts can receive for having students in special education programs. Districts receive extra money for students enrolled in special education because it costs more to educate them. But the state allows districts to get that extra money for a maximum of 11% of its students. About 18% of Salem-Keizer students receive special education services, meaning a large share of the district’s special education services don’t get help from the state.
- Spend more on screening kids for disabilities before they enter kindergarten. Those screenings are conducted by regional education service districts. Students often wait months for such assessments because of a lack of funding for screenings, delaying them in receiving the help they need to begin school.
- Fund prior unfunded mandates. State regulations like the phase-out of compact fluorescent bulbs, which legislators passed in 2023 impact school districts, but those costs are rarely calculated out and almost never have money set aside, said Robert Silva, the district’s chief operations officer. He said the lightbulb changes would cost the district about $40 million, for example.
The agenda was the focus of a work session in late August where Superintendent Andrea Castañeda and other district executives discussed with the board at length what they hope to see from lawmakers.
The agenda would be shared with organizations that lobby legislators on behalf of school districts and boards, like the Oregon School Boards Association and Coalition of Oregon School Administrators. It will also guide board directors’ individual conversations with legislators.
Equity resolution
The board will vote on a revised equity resolution after a lengthy discussion about the wording during its August meeting.
The resolution has been adopted annually since 2021 on a split vote and will likely be approved by a divided board again Tuesday night. A majority of the board indicated they’d support a revised policy based on suggestions from the district’s equity committee, while Board Director Satya Chandragiri proposed an alternate resolution he wrote.
The resolution the board will vote on Tuesday acknowledges the “the historical impacts of racism to students’ and employees’ physical and psychological wellbeing; that continues to oppress Black and African American, Latino/a/x, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American and Indigenous racial/ethnic intersectionalities.”
It calls on the board to “directly address the overrepresentation of students of color in special education and the underrepresentation of students of color in talented and gifted, advanced academics, and college and career prep programs” and says the higher rates of suspension and expulsion for students of color impacts those students’ ability to graduate successfully.”
“Salem-Keizer Public Schools Board of Directors commits to support the district’s efforts to build a restorative model for discipline, to monitor discipline data and our key performance indicators disaggregated by race and ethnicity, and to develop a system for monitoring the diversification of our workforce,” the resolution concludes.
Chandragiri on Tuesday will again put forward an alternate resolution. He said the language should recognize the dignity of all people and deemphasize white supremacy because it can provoke defensiveness and divisiveness.
Director Krissy Hudson said in August she would also not support the resolution as worded.
Other items
- The board will consider nominating school board directors to serve on the Oregon School Boards Association’s legislative policy committee. Once nominees are received from other board in the region, school boards will vote on the candidates in November.
- The board will adopt a suicide prevention resolution in recognition of National Suicide Prevention Month in September.
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 city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
