School Board candidates John Barnett, Adrian Pollut, Maureen Miltenberger and Tom Posegate answered questions and answered question at the April 30 forum in Greentrees Village.
A candidates forum at Greentrees Village that introduced four of six candidates running for Siuslaw School Board turned to a discussion regarding two topics, the yet-to-open charter school and the recent board decision to remove a book from the high school library.
Candidates Maureen Miltenberger, John Barnett, Adrian Pollut and Tom Posegate appeared before about 50 people in the Greentrees Village conference room. Candidates Dennis King and Maygan Hiatt did not attend, but Hyatt had a short statement read on her behalf, saying she had a business obligation.
Value of education
Candidates were asked for their views on the board’s responsibility to raise the value of education and what it can do to help the students value education as a tool for their successful future.
Barnett said the board plays a crucial role in setting the District’s vision and explained that the board hires the superintendent, and handles policy and budget.
“In policy, we have the greatest leeway. We can set academic standards for curriculum, higher and evaluate the superintendent and administrative staff, manage budgets and resource allocation, promote community engagement and education,” he said. “So, that's really the administrator and superintendent’s primary goals, to make sure they are advocating for a proper budget for our schools. Ultimately, his job is to ensure a high-quality, equitable education to prepare students for their greatest and fullest potential. There is no perfect system, coming out of Covid, we have had our challenges … In regard to graduation rates, that is something that’s been a huge concern and is always a concern, and it is something we are making some very large gains in.”
Pollut said anyone who speaks to a lot of students and school staff will find the morale to be quite low.
“One of the jobs of a school board is to help make a policy that increases morale throughout the school district,” he said. “I think, in particular, banning books has been proven to lower teacher and student morale. It's been studied for years and has been shown to do this and is a really negative way to go about that. I think, in general, that is our biggest challenge. Beyond that, to raise our success rate, especially talking about graduation rates, I think what are facing and we are going to be facing a lot of in the future is just dealing with students and family poverty and the fact that no student is ready to come and graduate from high school if they don't have a meal, if they don't have a place to live.”
Pollut said he grew up impoverished, which greatly affected his schooling.
“I grew up in the time period where we were living through the largest economic expansion in our country and I was in poverty then, and I can only imagine with kids who are living in this city right now, who are experiencing homelessness and food-lessness are going through at this time and how much worse that's going to get in the next few years. That's where my heart is with that question.”
Miltenberger said the definition of the value of education is a really hard thing to look at.
“I’m on the policy committee… We get a lot of policies thrown out us from the state and what we do, as a board, is look at those policies and make sure they apply to our students,” she said.
Miltenberger said the value of education has to do with respect and it has to do with the superintendent hired by the board.
“The superintendent is responsible for hiring wonderful administrators who then hire wonderful staff who show, all the time … a great respect for our kids,” she said. “I think one of the most important things about value of education is our mission statement. It says, ‘monitoring and preparing all students to reach their greatest potential’ and how do you go about doing that is by showing each kid that they have value, by showing each kid that they can be respected.”
She said adapting to individual student needs shows each of them they are valued.
“We have also talked about adding things like … another credit that we've added with some more. We are teaching kids more how to do a personal finances, how to to get ready for life on the outside, so I think that is the thing that hopefully gives kids value and helps kids stay in school.”
Posegate said if the community wants kids to value education, it needs to be a community that values education.
“We need to show our kids that this town supports our schools and we care about them,” he said. “Unfortunately, at the budget meeting last week, they are making some pretty tough cuts. As far as graduation rates, we are going to be losing our credit recovery coordinator, we're also going to be losing our talented and gifted program coordinator, our auto shop is getting cut, and our district librarian. In addition to that, we are losing five of our classified aids and four of those are going to be at the elementary school. I know money is tight with a lot of people but money isn't the only answer. You can volunteer at our school like I can. Just talk to administration, talk to teachers if you know them. We have hands, we can cut worksheets, we can read books to kids. I think that we need to be examples of why education is so important.”
Graduation rates
Candidates were asked, what is the school board’s responsibility in trying to raise this low percentage for graduation?
“I think I touched a lot about that on my last answer, we desperately need to be using our voices as community members… to really speak to our community about helping kids get ready for school, whatever that might take,” Pollut said.
Miltenberger said she and staff, have been talking about the correlation between graduation rates and absenteeism.
“We have had a thing in the last few years where a lot of kids just aren't coming to school, so we have done some real hard work, the administrators particularly, I've done some real hard work with kids, [asking] ‘why aren't you coming, what are we not giving you? What's happening at your house? What's happening in your home life? Are you having to babysit people? What is it that's going on that he's making it so you can't come and you are not being able to learn at the same rate as your friends?” she said. “I think that's been pretty successful, we've had some real gain in getting some people to school.”
She said the district has hired mental health professional, which has resulted in some kids feeling more valued and respected.
“I’m going to say this, probably in every single question I asked now, especially with what's going on nationally, we just need to make sure that our kids feel safe,” she said. “For whatever reasons they're going on, whatever is going on in our nation and our state, we need to make sure, as a school board and as a superintendent, we need to make sure, as staff, and our kids feel safe, valued and respected.”
Posegate recalled a statement from the superintendent, “We don't have to have everything for everyone, but we have to have some thing for everyone. He was talking about our CTE (Career Technical Education) programs. When I was in school, everything was about college, college, college. I took calculus and I've never used it since, but we have really cool programs that teach people how to be successful adults. We're losing one of them, auto shop, but we have to give some thing to people that's going to be a hook to get them to want to stay. We all had that one thing, maybe that one teacher and we said’ I'm going to go to school and I'm not going to like it, but at least I get to go to history- I’m a history nerd and I always loved my history class. That's something our school has done really well and I think we need to keep supporting those kind of programs.”
Barnett responded with some fact-checking.
“Our are graduation rate… it's actually not 69%. Pre-Covid, our graduation rate was about 87% to 88%. Post Covid, it did drop to 72.9%, so you're not far off, [I’m] not saying that's great. Our four year completer rate, including GED is 80%, and our five year graduation rate is 74.2% with an 83.5 five-year completion rate. Our current ninth grade class, finally pulling out of the Covid issues we've had… and finally reaching these kids and the bad habits that we came up with, having to learn at home, on a computer, and the mental health issues we have been dealing with and continue to deal with for a while, hence the reason that having a mental health advocate on staff is so important. Our 9th grade is on track for a 91.9% graduation rate, which is above what we we were pre-Covid. That's what happens when you have a hard-working administration and teachers that are working hard to try and make things better.
Barnett explained that while several Oregon school districts are struggling with PERS issues, Siuslaw School District is in better shape than most.
“We are having to make some adjustments, but keep in mind that we have plans in place to bring back some of those programs, but we have to stay ahead of taking care of keeping our public retirement.” He said later that the PERS program was not well-thought-out and has become a financial burden for many districts.
Barnett said vaping has become a “horrible problem” in the district because it's difficult to monitor and is poisoning students.
“When officers can't prosecute parents and prosecute adults that are giving this poison to our kids and you have cherry flavored vapes that are not aimed at a 50 year old, middle-aged man, you have another problem,” he said.
Banned book
Following some back-and-forth discussion about the auto program and other cuts that will come before the board soon, the topic of a recently removed book made its way back to the forefront when a commenter demanded that the board stop banning books that kids are going to read anyway.
Miltenberger explained that a student found the book in the library containing language with which he was uncomfortable. The book was brought to the principal and superintendent and then to a committee which read and discussed the book. She said the committee decided to keep the book on the shelf, but when the student was informed of the decision, it was then taken to the board. Miltenberger said she voted to keep the book.
“I felt very strongly, number one, when you start a cascade of book banning, when and how does it stop? That was my main concern. The other thing was that you have professional people, librarians, people of knowledge saying this is why it needs to be kept on the shelves. That book had some really interesting language in it, and very interesting pictures, but it is a suicide prevention book… for a certain part of the population.”
Miltenberger said that by taking the book away, the district would be removing the opportunity for certain students to be able to benefit from it. She said that while the language may be offensive to some, it’s typical of the way kids speak to each other.
Posegate suggested that people with strong opinions about the issue should view the recorded, 4.5-hour long board meeting. He said that reviewing the book wasn't necessarily the job of the school board, since other school professionals are already in place to do so.
“The book has been reviewed, and it was re-reviewed by our district librarian, by the high school principal, and by the independent committee. Our city librarian came and spoke out against the ban, and nobody came to support the ban, no community members at the entire meeting supported the ban.” He said that while books are regularly reviewed and moved from one school to another based on where they would be most appropriate, it was determined that the book in question was appropriate for high school aged kids.
“I didn't love reading it, at the beginning- it's pretty harsh. It's about bullying, and it had some scenes, like one with a bottle, where they are depicting what it feels like to be in this room where everyone is doing the wrong thing and want you to do it and you don't want to do it. That's uncomfortable,” he said. “what's interesting about this book is that it doesn't show any body parts, it doesn't show anything inappropriate. There are definitely some inappropriate words, but he leaves, and doesn't participate. At the end of the book, he's been bullied this whole time and has a pocket knife to his wrist and is thinking about ending it all…”He said that he spoke with the librarian about possible alternatives that would provide the same message without the inappropriate language, but could not find any Young adult books about bullying where the character does not go through with self harm.
“I think that message is really important to our kids, and I think it's a shame that we're taking that away from them,” he said. “Our librarian said we want to have this book as a tool for when we have a kid that is thinking about these things, we can give them this book and they can find courage, just like the character in this book.”
“The removal of the book, Flamer, from the school library followed a formal complaint process, a chain of command if you will, initiated by a student. After review, it was found that the book was found to include extensive offensive language and sexual content deemed inappropriate for a high school level. It was removed from the school library, not banned. Nobody banned anything. They can go to the [public] library, they can have the book on campus. They can read the book. We are just not going to use tax dollars to perpetuate pornography and language…” he said to a murmur in the room. “if you take a look at the chrome books that are issued to every student, and you try to look at this book up, because of the extensive profanity in it, it will not pull up. So if our own firewalls won't allow students to look at this book for research, why should we have it in our library?” Barnett said that as of 2022, the book has been removed in 92 other schools.
“We are not the first to remove this book and we won't be the last,” he said.
Barnett said that as the parent of a gay son, the offensive parts of the book were not the content, but how it was presented.
“This book was less about suicide prevention. That was brought in at the very end of this book,” he said. “It was more about a young man coming out and his internal struggles and I think the premise behind the book is absolutely fantastic.”
As Barnett explained that he didn’t want his kids reading the offensive language, some in attendance began to interrupt that kids hear it anyway.
“I respect that, and as a taxpayer, I have standards. When we were all in school, if everyone of you would look in the mirror and be honest, your administrator would not allow a book with his language in it. So why are we doing it today?” he said over some interruptions from the crowd. “so what you're saying, is that our moral fortitude has slid so far, that you are saying this is now OK?”
“That is a judgment, moral fortitude,” someone in the audience replied. “this is a moral land that we are living in, it's a moral time…”
“Absolutely, so we made a moral decision not to allow this vulgarity in our schools..” Barnett said.
“The wrong moral decision,” the audience member retorted, before the moderator went on.
Pollut said the American Library Association has stated that book banning is simply removing a book from the library, so no one should pretend the book wasn't banned.
“Aside from that, the question was, how do you feel about book banning? I will just say that I find book banning to be reprehensible. I find that when it is targeted toward a single group of people to be even more distasteful, and when that group of people have been historically marginalized, I find that to be extra distasteful.”
He said that has a music instructor and through talking to kids at the school, he has learned that some kids felt targeted by the ban.
“It doesn't matter what language you couch it in, it doesn't matter if you say it was because of X or Y or Z. If a kid feels like they were targeted by your decision as a policy maker, they were targeted by your decision has a policy maker.”
One commenter, who identified himself by saying he was a teacher whose job is about to be cut, said the student who brought the book to the principal in the first place was not respected, adding that an email went out to staff asserting that the student was bigoted and racist in doing so. Miltenberger immediately countered, saying the claim was untrue. The commenter said he was among staff who received the email and that he was intimidated to speak in favor of the ban at the board meeting.
As the moderator tried to move on to the next topic, the forum became more of a back-and-forth discussion, rather than a timed question and answer forum. The final topic regarded the Siuslaw Valley Charter School but became more of an explanation of the school’s history and current status.
The election is May 20 and more information about candidates will appear online and in the May 14 edition.
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