As the educators, counselors, nurses, and 100s of support staff who work with your kids every day, we are intimately familiar with the “normal” demands of a school year. In a standard year, our members are already stretched thin, balancing the academic rigors of the classroom with the growing social-emotional needs of our students. But let’s be clear: this is not a normal year. In times of major transition, public institutions depend on continuity in governance to ensure that plans already underway can succeed.
Currently, the professionals represented by our certified and classified unions are navigating an extraordinary convergence of change. We are successfully managing the emotional and logistical weight of a two-school closure consolidation—a process that requires us to hold space for grieving families while simultaneously building a new, inclusive culture at multiple sites from the ground up. We are doing the heavy lifting, with the support of the innovation team, of developing entirely new, rigorous, and accessible instructional models for a redesigned K-6, a brand-new 7/8 middle school structure, and an integrated K-8 model at Mt. View.
Behind the scenes, this has required one of the largest staffing and re-staffing efforts our district has seen in a long time. Hundreds of staff hours will be poured into ensuring every child has qualified, dedicated professional staff with them and in support positions. We continue to do the necessary work of making sure students are supported through change.
The Cost of Instability
A recall election is not a victimless political maneuver; it is a direct tax on the stability of our schools. When a board is thrown into the upheaval of a recall, the ripple effects are felt immediately by the staff. Instead of focusing on the complex implementation of our new K-8 models, district leadership is forced to divert time, energy, and taxpayer resources toward managing election logistics and governance uncertainty.
Our students are currently navigating significant transitions. They need their teachers and support staff focused on their “new normal,” not on uncertainty in district leadership and direction. To inject further instability into the system right now is to prioritize political grievances over the stability in the learning environment of the children we serve and the working conditions of the staff the community cares about.
A Call for Intellectual Honesty
Critics of the board have raised serious questions, and those questions deserve to be debated. But a recall is an extraordinary remedy, one traditionally reserved for misconduct or abuse of office, not disagreement over complex policy decisions. The current recalls create a power vacuum during the most sensitive period of our district’s restructuring. We are asking the community to recognize the sheer volume of labor being performed by staff to keep this ship steady. Layering a contentious recall election onto this moment adds strain to a workforce already focused on helping students succeed through change.
We need a partner in the boardroom, not an arena for constant political conflict. We need consistency to ensure that the rigorous and accessible models we are building today don’t crumble tomorrow due to a lack of institutional memory or a sudden shift in leadership.
Focus on the Kids
Our message to the community is simple: Let us do our jobs. The staff is currently carrying the weight of a district in transformation. We are absorbing the emotional labor of consolidation and the technical labor of redesigning the K-8 experience.
We are asking you to decline to sign the recall petitions at this time and pick up the mantle of community support. Let’s allow the current transitions to take root. Let’s keep our eyes on the students who will need support finding their footing in their new schools.
The classroom is a place for learning, not a political theater. For the sake of our students, our staff, and the future of our district, we must choose stability while our schools complete an already difficult transition and return our focus to where it belongs: the kids.
By Mary Marshall, Oregon School Employees Union President and Christa Schmeder, Corvallis Education Association President. This guest commentary may or may not reflect the views of The Corvallis Advocate, or its management, staff, supporters and advertisers.
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