The Void

Ashland School Board · April 9, 2026 · 1h 39m · five directors present · no public comment.

The superintendent presented the ASD Transformation roadmap — the process that will decide which Ashland schools stay open — and it is a serious piece of work. Nine phases. January 2026 to June 2028. Three stated principles: data-driven decisions, engagement before decisions, transparency at every step. No final decision before January 2027, which he said twice, loud and clear, and which is the single most useful fact any Ashland parent could have been given this spring.

He described the pace as a jog. “Not a sprint, where decisions are rushed, and not a standstill, where we avoid necessary change.”

Then a director asked whether the phase-one data — the enrollment projections, staffing models and facility utilization analysis already completed — would go on the website.

Not yet. And the reason is the thing worth writing down.

Why The Data Is Not Published

The superintendent’s answer, in full, because paraphrase would soften it:

“One of the reasons we don’t want to put out all of the data yet is it’ll influence the survey results… If that data point specifically is available, when I ask people to dream, what they’re gonna say is, here’s what you do. And I don’t want to hear what we do. I wanna hear what we want to be.”

The director pressed, and the exchange is the whole argument of the evening:

“Part of the void is that there is a lot of information going out there that people don’t know if it’s true or not. And so, up to staff, my recommendation is err on the side of more information than less.”

The answer was that the full picture comes with the scenarios, and “sooner if we can.”

This desk can see the reasoning. If you show a community which buildings are half empty and then ask it to imagine the future, you will get back a list of buildings to close, and the exercise is over before it starts. That is a real methodological concern and it is not made up.

It is also, stated plainly, a public body declining to release completed analysis of publicly owned buildings during the consultation that will decide what happens to them, because the facts would shape the answers. The word for information that shapes answers is relevant.

And the void does not stay empty. The same superintendent said, a moment earlier, that the roadmap was already doing useful work because the absence of one “has been filled with a lot of rumor and speculation.” Both things were said in the same presentation: rumor rushes into a vacuum, and the vacuum is being maintained on purpose until the scenarios arrive.

The scenarios go to the board in a work session, no decisions, at a date not yet fixed — possibly the August retreat, possibly a special meeting.

Two other things from that discussion deserve keeping. A director asked for face-to-face engagement rather than more surveys, on the grounds that “there’s really high survey fatigue right now” and that a community’s ability to absorb this kind of change is built on human connection: “no matter what process we take, it is an incredibly difficult process with a lot of grief involved when change occurs.” She offered to help run it.

And another director, on phase eight, delivered the practical wisdom of the night: “There’s always somebody who says, we anticipate a smooth transition — and that is the kiss of death.”

What A Foundation Pays For

Erica Thompson presented the annual report of the Ashland Schools Foundation, and the numbers belong next to the levy numbers from March.

This year the foundation awarded 115 grants totalling $124,780, its second-highest year on record, across all seven sites. Its April fund drive aims to raise $115,000, largely through five nights of volunteer phone calls, April 20 to 24.

What that money bought, per the report: classroom libraries — both full class sets and choice-reading collections. School newspapers at the middle and high schools. A greenhouse at the middle school and a wetland restoration project. A garden at the high school. Bicycle safety instruction district-wide. A shed at Helman to store PE equipment. The fourth-grade recorder partnership with SOU. Affinity groups across the district.

Also this, which is the best single thing in the report: the foundation negotiated a flat $30 ticket with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for every Ashland School District student field trip, and committed to paying for all of them. OSF says 410 district students attended this year, a record. It also spares teachers the tiered pricing table they previously had to work out.

Note what is on that list. Books for classrooms. A shed for the PE equipment. A school newspaper. These are not enrichments at the margin; they are the ordinary furniture of a school, and in Ashland they are bought by a charity that raises the money by having volunteers ring strangers for five nights in April.

Set against it: the levy on the May ballot, worth about $5 million and roughly 10 percent of the operating budget, which a director described this evening as covering “90 percent of our athletics and arts… as well as our world language program.”

The Finance Report

Ending fund balance projects at about $3.4 million, just under 8 percent. The IDEA overage will require roughly $150,000 in expenditures to be moved back to the general fund. Appropriation compliance is clean.

The interim business manager was frank about the state’s numbers. Multiple ODE estimates of the May catch-up payment have arrived with errors in them — “every one that came out, it’s like, okay, there’s mistakes on that one” — and after the third the reconciliation still does not look right. This is the second month in which Ashland’s finances have moved because of somebody else’s data.

The item to file, though, is the levy contingency. Asked how the budget handles a result that will not be known until days after May 19, she said the 2026–27 budget will be built including the levy money, with a separate schedule held off-budget showing where the reductions would fall if it fails. That schedule would go to the second budget committee meeting.

So the plan-B list exists, or will. It is not a public document and nobody asked for it to be one. A voter deciding on May 19 might reasonably want to see it.

Curriculum, Adopted

The science and health recommendations passed: Amplify for K–8 science, continuing rather than switching, with an upgrade to a revised edition in 2028 and the possibility that Trails and some individual teachers pilot it in 2027. New AP biology and anatomy-and-physiology texts for the high school. AP environmental science deferred to January 2027, when a new edition lands. Health: the Great Body Shop for K–8, Live Well for 9–12. All within budget.

One exchange from that item should be preserved exactly, because a parent will want it.

A director had gone to the district office and read the high school health textbook. She reported that she searched it, including the glossary, and could not find the words condoms, birth control, or protected sex — though “unprotected sex” was there. She raised it carefully, twice saying it was not criticism, and said she would vote to adopt.

The answer from staff: Oregon’s health standards are more demanding than most states’, publishers print one national textbook, and “the supplemental Oregon-specific content standards regarding much of what you are referencing is an online component that comes with the purchase of that textbook.”

That is a satisfactory answer and the director accepted it. It is also worth knowing, as a plain matter of fact, that the sexual health content Oregon requires is not in the book Ashland just adopted. It is in a web portal attached to it. Whether that distinction matters is a question for the first time anybody asks to see the curriculum.

The School Presentation: Helman

Helman has 261 students in K–5, including a site-based classroom of ten. Its belonging score on the Youth Truth survey is 88 percent, against a goal of 98 by spring 2027, and its pro-social benchmark has climbed from 80 percent in fall 2024 to 89 now. Relationships scored around 50, which the principal flagged as the thing to go look at rather than the thing to explain away.

The school’s outdoor programme has a history worth recording. Around 2009 or 2010, two kindergarten teachers noticed that Ashland Pond was dry because the water had been diverted into Bear Creek, and talked the city into diverting it back. It is now signed as the Ashland Pond Restoration. Otters returned. Herons returned. Children have been planting there ever since, and planted more trees this year.

Two kindergarten teachers and a dragon then sang to the board, at some length, and the transcript does not do it justice.

The junior coach programme — fifth and fourth graders who run recess games — this year offered 26 different games, covered 60 playground shifts, organised three tournaments, and involves 36 students. Three of them came to the podium. The words were entirely theirs; their advisor said so before they started.

Brooklyn, whose birthday it was, explained the job:

“Something I learned was that some things come easy to some kids and some do not. And whoever it is, you have to be patient and make sure they’re having a good time. And that can mean letting them join your team or letting them get a retry.”

This desk has read a great many pages of policy about equity this year. That is the best definition of it on the record.

Odds

From the teachers’ union report, one sentence: “Walker staff were saddened to learn they will lose a teacher again next year, due to decreasing enrollment.” Walker has 219 students.

The AEA and its state affiliate donated $1,000 to the levy campaign. Board members put out yard signs, one of them by bicycle. The superintendent’s evaluation is complete and results are expected at the next meeting. Candidates for director of student services were interviewed. Teacher Appreciation Week, May 4–8, was proclaimed.

The Docket

Work session Thursday, April 23, 6:30, district office. Next regular meeting Thursday, May 14, 6:30, City Council chambers.

Due this month: the transformation steering committee applications, out through every school, open about a week — and the first staff survey. Due in May: the budget committee, and on May 19, the levy.

Still not due, and not scheduled: the phase-one data.

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Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the April 9, 2026 Ashland School Board regular session. Quotations appear as transcribed, lightly conformed to natural speech, with bracketed interpolations where the repair is interpretive; names are attached only where the chair’s own words or a speaker’s self-identification confirm them, and elementary students are named as their advisor introduced them at the podium. Grant totals, enrollment and financial figures are as stated in open session.