Jim Hoag said he missed graduation once as a Scappoose School Board member. In 41 years on a school board, it’s bound to happen.
On Saturday, June 3, he was proudly on the new football field, again ushering students into the next phase of their lives. Over the years he has stood in howling winds, pouring rain, freezing cold and blazing heat. Saturday, though, was a near perfect day for his last one, with clear skies and a cooling breeze to temper the sun’s sting.
More than 150 students and a stadium full of family and friends cheered, laughed and cried.
“It’s the cherry on top of the banana split,” Hoag said. “It makes the meetings and challenges worth it.”
It’s graduation season in Oregon. For students, it’s a tradition-draped ending before a new beginning. For school board members whose terms are concluding, it’s one of their last official duties before new board members take over in July.
Hoag is one of Oregon’s longest serving current board members, but others are stepping off school boards with impressive runs, including Frieda Christopher of the David Douglas School Board and Ed Johnson of the Knappa School Board. To honor long-serving board members, OSBA created the Milestone Awards this year.
Hoag grew up in the Scappoose district area northwest of Portland and has been on the board since 1982. He wanted to give back to his community and be involved with his children’s education. His work, though, called for too much travel for him to coach or be in a classroom, so he ran for school board.
“That’s a meeting a month,” he said. “That’s the fallacy that school board members fall for.”
It was never that little, and the demand has increased in recent years to about 20 official meetings and workshops a year. The budget has grown and the issues become more complicated. On top of that, he felt it was his duty to attend school events to “read the pulse of the place.”
He said the most rewarding part of long service is seeing projects the board championed, such as a high school performing arts area, become community focal points.
Hoag handed current board member Phil Lager his diploma in 1993. Lager graduated the same year as Hoag’s oldest daughter. Handing a diploma to a child is one of the great rewards of school board service. Lager handed a diploma to his son this year, the fifth of six children. His youngest child graduates in two years, which will likely be his final year on the board.
Lager likes to tease Hoag about how much older he is, but he says he deeply values Hoag’s wisdom and perspective.
He has also seen the commitment and family support it takes.
“Thank you to his wife for lending Jim to us all those nights,” Lager said. Hoag’s wife, Pat, was a teacher in the district for more than 30 years.
Christopher said she started volunteering with the David Douglas School District in east Portland in 1975 and has been on the board since 1991. She is the treasurer and one of the founders of the David Douglas Education Foundation and does math tutoring at Lincoln Park Elementary.
She had only planned to be on the board for eight years. She has stayed because she enjoys it, but she says it is time for new blood with children in the district. She said the board’s recent stability makes it a good time to step aside.
“Stability on the board is the most important thing,” Christopher said. “A lot of volatility on your board is going to cause volatility in your district.”
She said the best lesson she learned was that school boards don’t work in isolation and members need to be connected to local government and community groups.
Last year was the first time she missed a graduation ceremony, but she is adamant she won’t miss her last one on Thursday, June 8.
“It’s very rewarding to see them graduate, especially if they struggled and you worked with them,” she said.
Oregon’s longest serving school board members are often engaged with more than just the board. Johnson, who was first on a school board in 1983, reads to kindergarteners every week. It makes the graduation ceremony even sweeter.
“It’s great to be at the beginning and at the end,” he said. “I thoroughly enjoy it. I’ll miss it.”
Johnson has been with the Knappa School District east of Astoria since it voted to separate from the Clatskanie School District in 1998, and he helped set up the Knappa Schools Foundation. He is leaving the Knappa School Board, which he thinks is in a good place, because he has joined the Clatsop Community College board.
Knappa Superintendent William Fritz said he is sorry to lose Johnson’s institutional knowledge and his community service attitude.
Scappoose Superintendent Tim Porter also rues the historical perspective loss with Hoag’s retirement. He is also losing two school board members with 16 years of service each.
“You don’t make up for that kind of long-term knowledge,” he said.
Hoag is stepping away because his family has some health issues and he wants to spend more time with his granddaughters, who live in Eugene.
On Saturday, Hoag hugged the first student to receive a diploma.
“Since board members don’t get paid, we need to have some other form of wealth,” Hoag said. “That’s our form of wealth.”
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
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