Meet the candidates for Salem-Keizer School Board Zone 7

A majority of the Salem-Keizer School Board is up for election on May 20.

Salem Reporter interviewed each candidate about their background, priorities for the district and what motivated them to run.

Read all of our election coverage here.

A majority of the Salem-Keizer School Board is up for election on May 20.

Salem Reporter interviewed each candidate about their background, priorities for the district and what motivated them to run.

As has become standard in Salem, two ideologically opposed slates of school board candidates are running in the nonpartisan races.

Mel Fuller is endorsed by Community for Salem-Keizer Schools, a coalition of union and progressive groups including the Salem-Keizer teacher union and farmworker union PCUN. The group says it’s endorsing “experienced leaders who know that students thrive when they get the support they need to meet high expectations,” and who will focus on protecting public education.

Jeremiah Radka is supported by Marion + Polk First, a conservative political action committee involved in school board and city council races. The group says its candidates focus on schools performing with “academic rigor, quality, and hands-on training” as well as bringing police back into local schools.

We asked each candidate about several major issues facing local schools that have come up in the race:

•Early literacy and academics: State tests last spring showed just 24% of district third-graders are proficient in English reading and writing. Reversing that decline has been a major focus for district administrators over the past year.

•Superintendent and district leadership: A major duty of the board is to manage Superintendent Andrea Castañeda, whose contract runs through 2028. Castañeda runs day-to-day district operations, including security measures.

•Safety and security: The 2021 decision by a former superintendent to remove police officers from schools remains a major point of division among candidates. Some would prioritize returning officers, even as the district and Salem police both face budget and hiring challenges. Schools continue to struggle with student behavioral problems which sometimes become violent.

•Equity and federal policy:The school district collects data about student performance that includes demographics, including race, income and disability, and designs programs to address challenges facing particular student groups. Such efforts are drawing federal scrutiny and funding threats as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on what it describes as “illegal diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.

Mel Fuller

Fuller is a longtime volunteer in schools and president of the Parrish Parent Club, a nonprofit supporting Parrish Middle School.

Fuller formerly ran Meals on Wheels for Marion Polk Food Share. She’s in her sons’ schools three to four days a week.

As a school board member, she said she’d leverage her community connections to support teachers and students and increase involvement

“I’ve always wanted to have the biggest positive impact possible and that’s why I’ve spent so much time in the schools,” she said.

Early literacy and academics

Fuller said the district’s test scores are “concerning” and need to improve, and cites literacy as a focus of her campaign. 

“I’m looking forward to getting on the board, learning more about how the district is approaching the problem of bringing these readings towards us and seeing the results of that start to take shape,” she said.

But she said she often encounters  kids who read well and understand assignments but struggle with taking tests when she’s at her sons’ schools.

“There seems to me to be a disparity between what I see in the classroom and what the test scores and indicating. I don’t know what that means or how to solve that,” she said.

“I think that what I can do on the board to help scores up is make sure that teachers have the resources that they need, they have the time, they have the support, they have the help,” she said.

Superintendent and school leadership

Fuller said Castañeda came in during a difficult year, contending with budget cuts and contentious negotiations with teachers over circumstances that had been years in the making.

“She’s done a phenomenal job in frequent communication and social media. We’re aware of what’s going on. She’s explaining it and she’s taking a tough stance right now,” Fuller said.

She praised Castañeda’s willingness to speak out about how federal policy impacts students.

“I see her standing up for the majority of the students in our district who are facing terrible fear over what might happen while they’re at school,” she said.

Safety and security

Fuller said discussions about tightening security n schools often miss that schools need to feel like a fun, engaging place for students to spend their time.

She said she’d like to see more after school programs, clubs and other efforts to connect with students who might otherwise turn to violence or don’t have a safe place to go.

“I feel safe and secure when I walk into somewhere where I don’t feel judged, where I feel I belong, where I can identify with other people, where I feel they understand me and they want to help me,” she said.

Fuller said she isn’t a fan of schools having weapon detectors, but would want to learn more about how they work and how students and school employees feel

She said introducing police back into schools would “change the tone” and make students and employees feel unsafe. Officers also have the potential to put  students into the legal system, she said.

She questioned whether Salem police would have the resources to put officers in schools given the department’s struggle to maintain basic services amid city budget cuts.

“I also think it’s important to look at the reality and spend our time focusing on something that has not been already shut down,” she said.

Equity and federal policy

Fuller said equity should be a key focus for schools and applauded Gov. Tina Kotek and Castañeda for standing up to Trump administration orders to end such programming.

She said the district’s efforts to recruit more diverse teachers and expand its dual language program were good examples of equity-focused efforts.

“Equity is giving everybody what they need to be successful, and not what a few people say they want. Being fair isn’t giving everybody the same thing,” she said. “We’re asking students and teachers who come from all different walks of life, all different life experience to be successful.”

Jeremiah Radka

Radka is the father of three students who attend school in Hillsboro. He’s lived in Salem for four years and said concerns over his children’s education and “deteriorating educational standards” made him want to run. His children have never attended school in the Salem-Keizer School District.

“I don’t feel that my kids, even up there, are getting the best education that they can for the careers that Oregon has to offer,” he said. “Math, writing, reading – a lot of it is just bare minimum. Oregon, in and of itself, is pretty much toward the bottom of the educational food chain, and my goal will be to bring that back up, or at least put it on that course,” he said.

Early literacy and academics

Radka said he supports not advancing students to the next grade if they’re not showing the expected proficiency.

“I think the biggest failure is Oregon, just because a child has aged for a particular grade, to just keep passing them along and then see how they turn out,” he said.

Concerning early literacy, Radka said he wasn’t familiar with the district’s plan.

“Just encouraging more books to be read and encourage the writing, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my kids diagram a sentence. When I was going through school, we had to do that. That was part of the curriculum. For math, there was a lot more problem solving,” he said.

Superintendent and school leadership

When asked how Castañeda was performing as superintendent, Radka said, “I haven’t looked, I haven’t seen what her background is. I do need to sit down with Satya (Chandragiri) as well as Krissy (Hudson) who are both on the current school board, and ask those questions.”

He then asked a reporter for clarification that Castañeda was the district’s superintendent.

Radka said he generally takes a “merit-based” approach to administrators.

“If they’re not performing or helping our kids meet the standards that parents and the school board want, then I don’t see why they should get rewarded with pay increases or vacations or whatever. I would treat it just like any other job,” he said.

Safety and security

Radka said he wants to have a police officer at each school.

“I think that kids have lost respect for not only teachers, but also for some reason, they’ve lost respect for officers and the positions that they hold,” he said. “That officer could then get to know each of the students or a group of the students, and be more of a positive influence than a negative one.”

To pay for officers, Radka said he’d cut any “excess funds” that don’t “ immediately deal with educating the children.” He didn’t identify any such funds.

Equity and federal policy

Radka said he was concerned that Kotek would risk federal funding by telling the U.S. Department of Education that local schools would not cut diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“I’m not discounting any of the goals that the DEI agenda has, but I think kids have the mental capacity to figure things out on their own if we give them the tools to do so,” he said.

Asked to explain what he means by DEI, Radka said, “I really haven’t sat down to think about it too much because I want classrooms to be safe for everyone and I want all the students to have the same opportunity to learn. Do I feel that we need a special program to enforce that? I don’t think so,” he said. 

“If it takes funding away from actually putting it to the teachers or to the students for learning, then we need to evaluate whether or not it’s useful. If it’s just to push an agenda, you know,  then I think we seriously need to take a step back and evaluate it.”

He did not identify district programs or initiatives that should be reviewed or cut.

Radka said he was most concerned that programs in school and hiring decisions be focused on hiring qualified people, not hiring people based on their identity.

Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

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