Wednesday was Jeremy Hamasu’s last day as principal at South Medford High School, after two years at the post. Come Aug. 1, a new principal, Jonathan Lyons, will be on the job. The changeover hasn’t come easy.

From the time that Hamasu unexpectedly gave his notice in April that he was leaving to take an assistant principal’s job at Scenic Middle School in Central Point, there have been questions, including questions raised by 68 South Medford High School employees who wrote a letter to the school board and district superintendent asking about principal turnover and the hiring of Lyons, who lost his last job as the principal at Carmel (California) High School.

“The last five days at South Medford High School have been difficult,” teachers, counselors, office workers and others at the school wrote in the days after Lyons was announced as the incoming principal.

Employees asked why Hamasu was leaving, why Lyons was hired, why only one candidate was interviewed for the job and why an interview committee that included school personnel wasn’t asked to vote on the hire.

”Why is Mr. Hamasu leaving a principalship, for an (assistant principal) job, at a lesser known district, for a lesser role?” they asked. “Why is he going elsewhere after 11 years with the district, even though in his announcement he is clearly heartbroken at the thought of leaving South?”

The employees asked about other administrators who had come and gone, characterizing the turnover as “this pattern of departures.”

Just two of 18 principals in the Medford School District have three or more years in their current jobs, according to records provided by Natalie Hurd, district spokeswoman. Five of the principals, including Lyons, are new. Three other principal positions in the district are vacant.

Kirk Kolb, who supervises high school principals for the district, said last week that people are leaving for a variety of reasons, including personal reasons, family circumstances and job promotion.

“We do not necessarily have a pattern identified as to why people are leaving,” he said.

Turnover among school administrators is a problem nationwide, according to Kolb.

“Turnover in our industry is off the charts,” he said.

On the plus side, principals at the middle and high schools in the district have at least six years of administrative experience.

“We have people who are greatly experienced,” Kolb said.

Kolk and his boss, Jeanne Grazioli, deputy superintendent, agreed to be interviewed last week for this story. Grazioli said the district has invested in assistant principals, which should help when there’s a principal vacancy.

“It does position us well in terms of turnover,” she said

There are four assistant principals at South Medford High School.

Grazioli said five people applied for the job at South, but two had no administrative experience, a third applicant took a job elsewhere and another had previously been turned down for an assistant principal’s job, leaving Lyons.

She, Kolb and six school employees — including teachers, a counselor and office manager — were among those who served on an interview committee that interviewed Lyons in person for the job.

“In this case, we had one candidate,” Kolb said. “We left the vacancy posted almost twice as long as we usually do. I think what came out of this was a candidate with rich experiences, strong references, who had a question mark … that was fully vetted.”

Lyons had been placed on leave Dec. 16 in Carmel and then reassigned Feb. 7 from his principal’s job there. The school board there on March 31 opted to find another principal, following an investigation by a law firm hired by that district. The investigation concluded that Lyons hadn’t followed district protocol in investigating a case of possible student-on-student sexual harassment.

Asked whether anyone in the Medford district had viewed the Carmel report prior to the hiring of Lyons, Kolb said the interview committee was aware of media accounts, but had not viewed the actual report, which is publicly available on that district’s website.

“We were well aware of the details of the report,” Kolb said. “There were no surprises. Our candidate reviewed all of those details with us.”

“We fully vetted that,” he said. “It was discussed in the interview committee process.”

Asked about the question from South employees about why the interview committee took no vote on the hire of Lyons, Kolb said committee members were given an opportunity to have their say until there was no more to be said.

“Until the room was quiet,” he said. “The facilitated discussion after the interview was very thorough and in depth.”

“We discuss strengths,” Grazioli said. “We work to more of a consensus. It’s more of a recommendation.”

Pressed on whether there had been a vote, neither Kolb or Grazioli would say.

“There wasn’t any expressed concern as part of the interview process, so we felt comfortable,” Kolb said.

District administrators conducted a second interview with Lyons before Superintendent Bret Champion made the final decision. After he announced the appointment, he received the letter from employees and met with about 60 of them on June 9 to talk things out.

In an email to school families, Champion announced the hiring of Lyons:

“We did a thorough check into his background and see no cause for concern,” he wrote June 5. “The issue that led to his departure from his last district centered around a technical reporting concern surrounding a student investigation.”

The school board on June 8 voted unanimously to ratify Champion’s decision to hire Lyons. Cynthia Wright, vice chair of the board, said that she had not seen the investigative report prior to the school board agreeing to hire Lyons, but that she had done her own research.

The report, redacted in part, detailed how five employees at the Carmel district had concerns about how Lyons handled an incident involving one student making a sexual remark to another student and how he told the employees during a subsequent meeting that the behavior involved “boys acting like (redacted) boys.”

Lyons, in an email to the Rogue Valley Times, wrote, “I did not say, ‘boys will be boys,’ Instead, I said the comments issued by one of the students could be characterized as ‘sophomoric boy b.s.’”

According to the investigative report, a vice principal at the school said Lyons failed to investigate the incident and document it in the district’s data management system, while the report concluded that Lyons “did not follow established procedures to investigate the incident.”

The target of the remark had told Lyons during a hallway discussion that he wanted the behavior to stop, but Lyons, after discussing options with the student, headed off to another meeting and didn’t follow up on the matter. He told the Rogue Valley Times that he should have used a sticky note to remind himself to follow up with the student to make sure “that everything is OK and everything is moving forward.”

Lyons wrote his own message to South school families, when Champion announced his hire June 5:

“There was a question about whether I appropriately notified our superintendent about a student investigation,” he wrote. “The concerns were not about the investigation itself.”

Lyons didn’t dwell on the issue, but told the families about past accomplishments and hope for the future.

“In my previous school, I am particularly proud of the 98% graduation rate, and high academic achievement,” he wrote. “We worked to enhance after-school tutoring opportunities for students, created a wellness center, and increased opportunities for students to receive college credit. I look forward to working with my new team to continue to improve the student experience at South.

“My goal is to support and challenge students to be their best, and I take my role as steward very seriously,” Lyons wrote. “I bring with me not just experience, but energy and enthusiasm for the high school experience.

“I grew up on a high school campus, as my mom was a special education teacher for 30 years. Prior to having our kids, my wife taught elementary school. Our family values the role education plays in our childrens’ lives, and I am proud that all three of my boys feel that school can be a second home for them. I am sure it is exactly what you want, too — for South to be a home for all students.”

According to his resume, Lyons has been an assistant principal or principal at six California high schools since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s degree in educational leadership. He took the Carmel job in 2019.

On June 21, Lyons accepted a job offer for $139,292 for the 2023-24 school year in Medford. He applied for the Medford position after Hamasu’s resignation, which was announced April 26 to the Medford School Board.

The reasons behind Hamasu’s departure remain a mystery. He won’t explicitly say why he’s leaving, and Hurd said nobody in the district asked him to resign. Hamasu’s departure was even more of a surprise because he had just signed a three-year contract extension April 5.

Hamasu, a graduate of South Medford High School, was an assistant principal there for three years before his hire as principal in 2021.

In a message to school families, Hamasu said his years at South were a joy and that the decision to leave was incredibly difficult.

“I am leaving to accept a new, quieter opportunity,” he told them.