# Nine Hundred Eighty-One Answers *Civic Beat · July 13, 2026 · by Alan Decault* > Ashland spent 30 to 45 minutes a head writing 981 narrative answers about the future of its schools. The superintendent read them, had the committee sort them into themes — and then ran the lot through an AI to see whether it could produce one sentence. He read the sentence into the record. --- **Ashland School Board · July 9, 2026 · 1h 16m · five directors present · no public comment.** New year, new officers. Rebecca Dyson handed over the gavel — "with absolute joy," she said, which after a year of audits, insurance and consolidation is either a joke or it is not — and Russell Hatch was elected chair. Dyson becomes vice chair. ## Nine Hundred Eighty-One Answers The transformation community survey closed at midnight on June 28. The results, as reported: **556 responses**, which the superintendent put at about 20 percent of district families. The survey was, by his own admission, "a little bit more robust than anticipated" — respondents were spending **30 to 45 minutes** on it. Three of the questions were open-ended, and they produced **981 narrative responses**. The questions were good questions. What creative solutions should the district explore to be financially sustainable while staying true to Ashland's values. Imagine the district in ten years — what would make you proud. What bold changes should it consider. The steering committee broke into groups on June 29 and pulled themes out of them by hand, identified questions the responses raised, and flagged ideas to explore further. The superintendent said he is working through the resulting stack. And then: "I also utilized AI to summarize all of the survey responses, quantitative and qualitative, and to see if I could [get] one succinct theme." He read the machine's sentence into the record. It is this: the community "appears ready to support meaningful structural change provided it results in a financially sustainable district that delivers outstanding academics while preserving the arts excellence, community partnerships, and the distinctive educational character that makes Ashland unique." He added that it was "really true to the responses that we were receiving." Take the sequence seriously, because it is not a gotcha and this desk is not offering it as one. The committee did the human reading first. The AI ran after, as a check. The summary is almost certainly accurate — it is what 981 Ashlanders would say, and it is also what you would have guessed they would say before anyone was asked, which is the problem with it rather than with him. What it cannot do is tell you which of the 981 said *close a school and protect the orchestra* and which said the reverse. The value in a narrative response is the disagreement inside it, and a single succinct theme is precisely the operation that removes disagreement. A district that spent four months insisting it wanted to hear the community dream now holds one sentence that could have been written in March. The raw responses have not been published. The demographic split — families versus community at large — exists but had not been pulled when the board asked for it. Five committee meetings run through the summer; the next was scheduled for the following Friday, with the superintendent blocking out four eight-hour days beforehand to work out what to do with what he has. An email address for public comment on the process will be added to the website. It was not there at the time of the meeting. ## The City Comes Asking Community development director Brandon Goldman and housing program specialist Linda Reed came from the city with a request the school board has real power over, which does not happen often. Oregon allows local jurisdictions to exempt low-income rental housing owned by nonprofits from property tax. Adopting it requires taxing districts representing 51 percent of the affected rate to opt in; the city and the school district together clear that bar, and neither can do it alone. At least nine Oregon communities already have it, Medford among them. The numbers are small and were given plainly. Today **42 units** in Ashland would qualify. They generate just under **$26,000** in total tax revenue, of which the school district's share is just under **$9,000**, plus a little over $3,000 in special assessments. Projected forward on the last 25 years of development, the district would forgo about **$13,000 a year**. Two things sharpen that. First, most of Ashland's affordable housing has been built by the Housing Authority of Jackson County and by ACCESS, which are already exempt under other statutes — so the pool this affects is genuinely small. Second, the district's own chair explained where most of the loss goes: the state school fund offsets local property tax, so a reduction in local collection is largely **backfilled** by the state. What is *not* backfilled is the levy portion. A director made the argument for it in one sentence: "affordable housing generates more students for us than other types of housing, and one student added is more revenue for the district than that property tax hit." Per-student funding runs around $10,000. One detail from the history is worth keeping. Ashland had been receiving this exemption informally for years through the county assessor without ever formally opting in, and only discovered the gap when a nonprofit developer's 29-unit building behind Rogue Credit Union stopped getting it. The city has been operating a benefit it never adopted. A director recused herself from discussion and vote because the request comes from her employer, and said so unprompted. The board gave conceptual support and asked to see the final ordinance before anything binds, with the business manager confirming the figures in between. The city goes to council in September, back to the school board in October or November, and to council for adoption early in the new year. ## The Teachers' Contract A three-year agreement, 2026–29, approved. Compensation: **3 percent cost of living each year**, plus a **3.25 percent step** for employees on steps one through eighteen — which the superintendent totalled at **18.75 percent over three years** for those staff, and described as making Ashland's salaries competitive with or better than surrounding districts. The rest of it is the sort of thing that only shows up in a transcript: - Ideal class sizes written down: 20 at kindergarten, 21 in first, 22 in second and third, 24 in fourth and fifth, with maximum contact adjustments in six through twelve. - Caseload targets for resource, site-based, speech-language and ELD staff on an "every effort not to exceed" basis. Asked how those compare to reality, the superintendent said they tried to write down current caseloads, "and that's why they are *every effort not to exceed*." - **Substitute shortage language.** Members may elect to cover a class during their prep and be paid their hourly rate. If a class is split among other teachers, those teachers split the substitute rate. The district must exhaust other options first. Asked whether shortages have been a problem this year, the answer was yes — flatly, and attributed in the question to increased use of Paid Leave Oregon. - The 403(b) is no longer mandatory enrolment, and the match rises $5 a month. - The insurance opt-out incentive is $400 a month, matching the classified agreement. The Health Promotions Committee is sunsetted — a small casualty of leaving the self-funded plan. A director named the reason the length matters: "especially as we enter transformation... it's important that this be dialed for three years." Both contracts now run past the decision point. Whether that is stability or the quiet removal of the only table where staff could have bargained about the outcome is the same question this file raised in June, and the answer is probably both. ## The Money, and the Threshold Ending fund balance for 2025–26 came in at **$3.5 million, just over 8 percent** — the board's own mandated floor, which a director noted the district has not cleared "in quite some time." The 2026–27 budget had assumed a $3.5 million opening balance. Spot on. Operations brought five contracts. The first is tied to a **$2.5 million seismic grant** for Helman's cafeteria — the district's project manager retained as owner's representative for up to $105,000, on the argument that they wrote the grant and that seismic money is punishing to report on. The other four are the tail of the 2018 bond, paid out of what is left unallocated: carpets at the high school, asphalt at four bus loops, a boiler at the high school gym that has been limping along for years, concrete, cameras and access control, and — the one that matters — tying the middle school's two alarm systems together, because the new construction and the seventh-and-eighth grade building currently have alarms that "don't talk to each other," which operations called a safety issue and which was cost-prohibitive at the time. **About $3.6 million of bond money remains.** In January the figure was $4 million. This summer's work is under $1 million and there will be a report at the end of it. Then a small exchange that deserves the last word in this section. A director asked what dollar threshold requires board approval, observed that costs are rising, and offered to raise it to make the operations director's life easier. Policy says $75,000; the resolution the board had passed twenty minutes earlier says $100,000; two Oregon districts, the superintendent noted, have gone to $250,000. The operations director declined: "I personally think it's a good reporting mechanism to the community and, while it does feel laborious sometimes... I've had to go back in time and look at these videos and present them to somebody who's challenged me. And so I almost would rather we do this so that it's there and it's transparent... Don't change it on my behalf, because I actually appreciate putting it before you." A staff member arguing to keep more of his own work in public is rare enough that it goes in the file whole. ## Odds **Grizzly Online**, the high school's virtual programme of roughly twenty students, is not working — low passage rates driven by engagement rather than ability. The superintendent will authorise a pilot of a second platform alongside Edgenuity under the policy that permits it when adopted curriculum misses learning targets, with data and a recommendation coming to the board in August. There is a structural reason as well as an educational one: Oregon caps virtual transfers out of a district at 3 percent, Ashland has hit the cap, and to refuse a request the district must be able to offer two virtual options of its own. The new director of student services started June 29. Board liaison appointments were confirmed: policy work group, the Schools Foundation, the legislative desk, and two observers to the transformation committee. And one figure offered voluntarily, which this desk has been waiting all year for somebody to produce. A director tallied her first year of school board service from her own calendar: **330 hours**, an average of 27.5 a month, ranging from 18 in the quietest month to 47 in the busiest. Not counting meeting preparation, travel, or parades. She published it, she said, in the hope of attracting more people to stand. ## The Docket **No work session in July.** Next regular meeting **Thursday, August 13**, 6:30, City Council chambers. Due then: the Grizzly Online data and the proposed pilot. Due in the autumn: the city's affordable housing ordinance, back to this board in October or November. Due at the end of summer: the facilities report and the bond balance. Due whenever the committee gets there: scenarios. --- *Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the July 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. Survey counts, tax figures, contract terms and bond balances are as stated by presenters in open session.* Source: https://ashlandfreepress.com/civic-beat/2026-07-13-nine-hundred-eighty-one-answers