Message From A BSDB Parent 4/24/26
Hello!
My name is Zoë and I’m one of the concerned moms with BSDB. I was born and raised here and have two daughters who have attended Bandon schools ever since kindergarten and first grade. Usually we co-author our email dispatches, but there are some highly consequential issues in the district right now that I wanted to share a few thoughts about - so I asked my fellow BSDB'ers if I could borrow the "mic" for a minute. Hopefully you've read the updates we sent out in an email earlier today. Lots going on at BSD these days!
As you all know, the results of the community survey were published last week. Big thanks to everyone who participated – it’s been moving to read through the comments, see the stats and realize how widely-shared these concerns are. So many people chimed in about losing qualified teachers, BSD being a hostile and retaliatory workplace, the failure of the board to respond to community concerns, and the misuse of public funds. These are distinct issues, but they all connect back to one person.
At a personal level, the past few weeks have been some of the hardest for my kids. Their public education is unraveling due to lack of qualified teachers in the classroom. At the April board meeting, the superintendent acknowledged that the district has never had so many teachers absent or been so short on subs. True, there are teachers out for multiple reasons right now (on a related note, we hope you saw the news earlier today that three separate agencies have determined that allegations against BHS teacher, Calan Taylor, were unsubstantiated and he should be allowed to return to the classroom). But what the superintendent didn’t acknowledge is the connection between the current staffing crisis in the schools and the leadership decisions that have driven out so many middle and high school teachers in the past year.
All this destructive turnover - and the loss of some truly exceptional teachers - has harmed students.
It’s also costing a lot of money.
Right now, with a budget shortfall looming, the district is paying out extraordinary legal fees for an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) lawsuit pertaining to last year’s involuntary transfers. Those legal fees could have been avoided entirely. The easiest way would have been to simply reverse the transfers last summer, in response to the pleas from teachers, students and parents. In January the teachers’ union made a settlement offer to the board: if you put the superintendent on administrative leave and do a third-party investigation into the formal complaints filed against her, the union will drop the ULP altogether.
In a now-familiar pattern of board complicity, they ignored the offer, even though the settlement would have saved the district tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars. (We don’t know the full damage yet, but it will be high. We do know that the district is already at least $22,000 over budget on legal fees, the bills are still coming in, and a public records request revealed that the district’s ULP lawyers are charging an unprecedented $545/hour.*)
Recently the union made the same settlement offer to the board again ahead of upcoming grievance arbitration in May: put the superintendent on administrative leave + investigate the complaints = no lawyers.
This offer is a fundamental test: will the board act in the best interest of our schools and avoid thousands of dollars of unnecessary legal fees that we can’t afford, or will they continue to shield and enable one individual alone, the superintendent?
It’s been a hard year and we’re all craving resolution and repair, not more division and discord in our small community. But that isn’t possible if there’s no accountability. The things that have come to light this past year – the patterns of harmful leadership, poor decision-making, and unethical conduct - amount to a massive failure of leadership that must be addressed for BSD to heal.
It’s time to respectfully ask board members to do the right thing: If you cannot fulfill your elected duty in good faith - to provide ethical oversight of the superintendent and respond meaningfully to community concerns – then it’s time to step aside and make room for someone who will.
Otherwise, our community will have to consider next steps to restore accountability to this district.
Serving on the school board is a huge act of public service – unpaid and underappreciated. But you should not sit on that board if you aren’t committed first and foremost to good governance, unbiased supervision of your sole employee, fiscal responsibility, and genuine regard for the concerns of the community you represent.
Before I sign off, I want to acknowledge that people’s fear of retaliation for speaking up is a real and valid thing. It’s the reason why only a limited handful of us are crazy enough to do it. Those of us on the front lines – it’s not that we don’t fear for our kids, ourselves, our businesses, our jobs – we do. But even more we fear what will happen to BSD and our kids’ public education if we don’t speak up right now. So thank you for standing with us however you can, in person or in spirit. We’re ever grateful for that support, and ever committed to making BSD better.
Sincerely,
Zoë
*District Legal Fees and Where the Money is Going: some individuals have attempted to blame BSDB for the district’s excessive legal expenses this year. BSDB has not brought any legal action against the district whatsoever. A parent made a public records request for documentation of legal fees incurred by the district. It took six weeks before the district finally produced those records, violating public records request laws. What the invoices revealed was that the preponderance of legal expenses this past year have stemmed from 1) the workforce housing project, 2) an ODE complaint against the district; 3) bargaining and mediation, and 4) the union grievance and the ULP.