During a packed weekend, the OSBA Board focused on the future and recommitted to the student-centered work ahead.
Board President Sami Al-Abdrabbuh compared board work to bricklaying, building “castles of hope” for students.
“How are we going to shape those countless hours of work in front of us … to build something beautiful and lasting?” Al-Abdrabbuh challenged the Board.
The Board held its in-person September meeting at the Salishan Coastal Lodge. The Board members did some significant foundational work, but more importantly after a tumultuous year, they engaged in thoughtful and measured conversations about sometimes sensitive issues.
On Friday, the Board chose its officers for 2025, an exercise in continuity and forward thinking.
The Board chose Emily Smith (Helix SD) to be president-elect, the person in line to lead in 2026. Dawn Watson (Phoenix-Talent SD) was named vice president, and Chrissy Reitz (Hood River County) will join the executive officers as secretary-treasurer. On Jan. 1, President-elect Chris Cronin (Grant County Education Service District) will automatically become president and Al-Abdrabbuh (Corvallis SD) will become past president.
On Saturday, the Board approved putting three resolutions to a vote of member boards. The resolutions propose:
- Increasing members’ dues for the first time since 1998.
- Creating the Oregon School Board Members PRIDE Caucus for people who identify as LGBTQIA2S+.
- Updating OSBA’s bylaws.
The three resolutions provoked complicated discussions, raising questions ranging from fiscal responsibility to addressing core goals of serving students and school boards. Although the discussions extended the Board’s planned meeting times, all three resolutions ultimately passed with near unanimous support, showing the Board’s commitment to speak with one voice.
School board members will learn more about the resolutions in coming weeks, particularly during the OSBA Legislative Roadshow and the Annual Convention. Voting will begin in November.
The dues resolution strikes at a concern familiar to school districts: financial stability.
OSBA provides a vast array of individual and statewide services that members depend on and appreciate, according to a 2023 survey. OSBA has been deficit spending for years to provide those benefits, though.
Cronin said services such as legal advice, reliable policy updates and safety and security support are especially important to smaller schools that don’t have the staff to bring so much expertise.
OSBA has added services over the years as running a district has become more complicated, but dues have remained stalled at 1998 prices.
In recent years OSBA has had to dip into its endowment’s principal to maintain staff and services, cutting into the future earnings that sustain the association. This year’s deficit is projected at about $2.4 million.
OSBA dues are based on enrollment, ranging from about $250 for the smallest districts to almost $19,000. Dues account for about 6.4% of OSBA’s budget.
The resolution would increase dues 15% a year for five years for most districts. It would establish a dues floor and ceiling and set up automatic adjustments based on inflation.
Board members expressed concern about raising costs at a time that districts are facing tight budgets, but the increases would amount to fractions of a penny for every dollar in district budgets. A district with a roughly $15 million budget now would see its annual fee increase a total of $1,500 at the end of five years.
“It won’t get any better if we wait,” said OSBA Board member Kris Howatt at the meeting.
Howatt, a Gresham-Barlow School Board member since 1999, has been an OSBA Board member for two decades. She said OSBA not only offers more information and services than it used to, but it has also become more responsive, delivering crucial information rapidly as the education world shifts in the digital age.
“Any time we have something that is not a usual procedure, we can turn to OSBA,” Howatt said after the meeting.
OSBA is working on initiatives to increase revenue and spend more efficiently without sacrificing services. The dues increase would not close OSBA’s funding gap, but it would put it on a more sustainable path.
“This is a decision of care and stewardship,” said Al-Abdrabbuh.
At the same time, the OSBA Board is evolving to better represent its members and their communities. In 2018, the membership approved the creation of the Oregon School Board Members of Color Caucus that came with a voting Board seat. Similarly, the Oregon Rural School Board Members Caucus was launched this year.
An advisory committee has been exploring for the past year the need for a PRIDE caucus to advocate for a quality education for all students but especially for some of Oregon’s most vulnerable and underserved children.
OSBA Board member Katrina Doughty of the Multnomah ESD told the Board they had found a deep well of desire for representative voices from the LGBTQIA2S+ community and its allies, particularly among rural schools around the state with little representative resources.
The Board discussion alternated between purely technical questions about caucuses and deeply emotional considerations of the student and staff benefits.
The past year has prompted OSBA staff to look closely at the association’s bylaws. A resolution to update the bylaws addresses issues such as caucus operations and Board officer eligibility.
Haley Percell, OSBA chief legal counsel and interim deputy executive director, said the revisions were made with an eye “so you don’t have to be a lawyer to understand every single thing in this document.”
The Board closed out the weekend Sunday with a mediated planning session around its vision, mission, values and goals. The Board discussed needing to expand its work beyond a focus on adequate funding to encompass more of the professional leadership demanded of modern school boards. The Board also talked about the supports it and all member boards need from OSBA to better serve students’ needs.
The penetrating discussion ended with a sharing of thoughts and feelings about the work. Hopefulness, teamwork and forward momentum were the predominant themes.
“‘The best is yet to come’ is not only a word of optimism, it is a mandate for us,” said Al-Abdrabbuh.
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
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