Three candidates are running for the Corvallis School Board Position 1 seat in this year’s election; incumbent Sami Al-Abdrabbuh and challengers Christopher Blacker and Charlotte Willer. For the other three Board seats on the ballot, the incumbents are running unopposed.
These are at-large positions, with all voters districtwide voting for all the positions. The terms run for four years.
On April 22, we at The Advocate co-hosted a debate featuring the three candidates – the video is below. City Club of Corvallis co-hosted the debate with us. Even further down, we offer you a condensed version of the voter’s pamphlet statements for each of the candidates – but it hardly seems fair to evaluate them by those statements, given how revealing each of the candidates was in their hour and half of fielding questions from our readers and us.
We believe this is a race to watch. The district will likely be facing hard decisions over this next term, and these are three serious candidates with largely different viewpoints. A casual listen while doing a few household chores may surprise you.
The candidates
Al-Abdrubbuh first joined the School Board in 2017, he is also president of the Oregon School Boards Association. His Voters’ Pamphlet statement focuses on themes of protections for students of all racial and gender identities, partnering with the County to build a community health center, banning guns in schools and rental aid for students in need. He also speaks to cutting down the district’s carbon footprint.
Blacker is an information technology consultant. He has worked as a high school math teacher, and as a technology director for a school, as well. He says his goals will center on reducing class size, restoring full access to library and arts programs, ensuring Title I, ESSA, and SSA laws are being implemented equitably, and expanding access to academic enrichment in reading, math, and science. He says he’ll “Focus funding on student learning, not administration.”
Willer has worked in grass-fed beef farming, real estate, and aquatic restoration construction. Her candidate’s statement centers on local public school enrollments decreasing while private school enrollments are increasing. She believes there has been a loss of parent confidence in the district, partly because individual learning and extra-curriculars opportunities have been removed. She wrote “I believe in educational equity, which means each child receives what they need to develop to their FULL academic, creative and social potential.”
Correction: The present ratio of Corvallis School District third graders reading at grade level is 51%. We cited the ratio as 38% in the Corvallis School Board Position #1 debate, and we apologize for the error.
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