Finances, enrollment and the Sunstone housing project are among issues discussed

Eight candidates for the Ashland school board shared more common ground than differences at a forum held Sunday at Ashland High School.

About 100 were in the audience at the school auditorium for the forum sponsored by the American Association of University Women of Oregon and Ashland.news.

“What a thoughtful group of candidates,” Catherine Lutes, president of the AAUW of Oregon, said at the end of the two-hour forum.

Voters will decide in the May 20 election which of the three candidates they prefer for the three open positions on the school board.

For Position 1, the two candidates are Ann Gaffney, a mathematics curriculum developer, and Jordan Rooklyn, deputy city manager for Ashland.

For Position 3, the three candidates are Deltra Ferguson, retired from a career in dispute resolution; Noelle Christensen, a business owner; and Susanne McGraw, with a career in education.

For Position 4, the two candidates are Alex Sol, with a career in acting and theater; Grant Joliffe, a family nurse practitioner; and Rebecca Dyson, a physician. Candidate Elisa Hawksley, whose name appears on the ballot, has announced she is no longer running for Position 4 on the school board.

All the candidates except Sol have provided information in the Voters’ Pamphlet.

The candidates agreed that solving the school budget issues are a priority. They approved of the efforts of the new school superintendent Joseph Hattrick to deal with a budget shortfall.

The candidates offered full-throated support for the district’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which have been under attack under the Trump administration. Candidates also expressed concern about the declining enrollment in the district, which results in less money to deal with budget issues.

Position 1

Gaffney said she sold her East Coast home and moved her family 3,000 miles because she wanted to make Ashland her home.

“We have a fantastic community that supports our schools,” she said.

Gaffney said this district’s budget crisis will require more than the efforts of Hattrick. She said the district had been on a path of overspending for years, which brought Ashland schools to the budget crisis it’s now facing.

“We also overspent for multiple years before that,” she said. “We need to talk about a broader picture than just last year.”

Gaffney said she supports efforts to boost enrollment and ways to gain extra resources.

Rooklyn said her daughter will graduate from the school district in 2042, so she is interested in the future of local education.

“I am a product of Ashland schools,” she said. “We need to stabilize our finances. We need to support our educational system.”

Rooklyn said the district has overspent over the past few years, which has led to the district’s budget shortfall. She applauded Hattrick’s budget proposal as an important but difficult decision.

“These decisions are happening faster than anybody wanted,” she said.

Position 3

Christensen said she has seen Ashland’s school population grow and shrink over the years.

“I am very concerned about declining enrollment,” she said.

Christensen said the district needs to consider developing more trade school preparation and a bridge to the local business community. She applauded the budget shortfall proposal.

“The cuts that need to be made feel massive,” she said. “But I feel like Dr. Hattrick and the budget committee in its entirety did their best to spread the pain a bit.”

Ferguson said she and her wife have children who graduated from Ashland schools and are now going on to graduate from university.

“The reason they are successful now is because they came through our school district,” she said.

Ferguson endorsed Hattrick’s proposal to set the district on a sound budget path going forward, a plan that includes stopping money from leaching out of the budget and right-sizing programs that match enrollment.

“The big thing is to bring that debt down,” she said.

McGraw, who has two children in the district, offered a three-pronged approach to continued educational excellence.

She said the first thing is to stabilize the budget, including supporting what she characterized as “the sound, hard decisions’ recently announced by Superintendent Hattrick.

McGraw said the district needs to look at school rankings and work to improve them because of the positive impact they would have on enrollment.

Finally, she said, “I want to work with the community and the incredible skill set that our community offers.”

When a shortfall became apparent last year, McGraw said, “The panic was palpable when the budget crisis was announced.”

She said the solutions being offered are creative and are site specific.

“It wasn’t slash and burn,” she said.

Position 4

Dyson said she has put her four children through the school district.

“We moved here because of the excellence of the school district, she said.

Dyson, the only incumbent running for school board, said the district has been doing “impressively well” in its rankings, citing a U.S. News and World Report that rates Ashland High 36th in the state.

As to the budget, Dyson said, “We need to be smart about it. We need to make cuts that will not affect our core base of students.”

All the budget decisions, including the reduction of 27 full-time equivalent positions, are not taken lightly, Dyson said. She pointed out that other districts are facing similar budgetary pressures.

“This is not just an Ashland situation,” Dyson said. “This is an Oregon situation — a nationwide situation.”

Joliffe, an Ashland graduate, said the excellence of the school district was one of the reasons it brought his family back to Ashland.

“We have a lot assets in the community that we can draw from — also, celebrating the many things we are doing right,” he said

The budget proposal places a strong focus on the sustainability of the district, he said, while noting that the loss of 27 positions would hurt many families. “In order to preserve the Ashland School District, it’s a necessary cut that I think was a good business decision,” he said.

He said there is an effort to right-size the classroom, but he urged a reassessment in the future to make sure that the changes are in the best interest of the students. He said budget decisions need to be dynamic, being particularly careful about reducing the number of classrooms.

Sol said the district is not operating at an optimal level.

“We cannot continue to have excellence if we are not in the top tier of schools in Oregon.”

He said the district provides too much homework to students that takes away from family life and has a shorter number of school days. Sol said his daughter, part of the LGBTQ community, endures incessant bullying at school, which Sol said hasn’t been adequately addressed. Sol added the district needs to get its financial house in order. He criticized the district for using federal Title 1 dollars to help plug a shortfall and also wondered why bond money wasn’t allocated.

Different outlooks

While the candidates generally agreed on the main issues, there were differences.

Candidates had varied opinions on the proposed Sunstone housing project on Lincoln Field across the street from the high school.

Gaffney, McGraw, Joliffe, Rooklyn and Sol opposed the idea, saying it takes the focus off the students. Gaffney said her former school district also had its ups and downs with regard to enrollment, and she thought it was shortsighted to sell a school property for the Sunstone project.

McGraw said she couldn’t support the school board focusing on housing, or the loss of a sports field.

“People are leaving this district for sports in other school districts,” she said.

Joliffe said he doesn’t think the district should be getting rid of its assets. He said housing is a city planning issue, not a school issue.

“Sunstone has become so divisive that it has become a distraction.” Rooklyn said.

Sol said, “No, I do not support this project.”

Dyson and Christensen both offered support for the Sunstone project, however.

In regards to rumors that it would require the loss of a soccer field, Dyson said, “There will not be a net loss of soccer fields.”

She added plans are in the works to develop three more soccer fields at the middle school. Christensen said she was involved in the Sunstone project for about a year and added the district has excess land, and that the city needs attainable housing.

Ferguson took a different approach, saying Sunstone was an innovative idea, but added, “We need to have trust to move forward with a project like this.”

Sol was the only candidate who raised the issue of school safety. He joined other local parents in filing a lawsuit against the district in 2024 because they believe there aren’t enough safeguards to deal with an active shooter situation on campuses. Sol voiced continued concern that the schools weren’t doing enough to protect children.

Reach writer Damian Mann at dmannnews@gmail.com.