High superintendent turnover means many Oregon districts led by newcomers

Nearly one third of Oregon’s 197 school districts have superintendents in their first or second year on the job, including two of the largest, Salem-Keizer and Hillsboro, according to the Coalition of Oregon School administrators.

Some turnover is natural, as with Mike Scott’s retirement after 14 years at the helm in Hillsboro.

But Oregon districts hit three successive record highs in the number of newly hired superintendents after the pandemic hit: 31 in fall 2020, 34 in fall 2021 and an astounding 41 in fall 2022, according to the school administrators group.

The job has become more contentious in the past few years, as school leaders grapple with the continuing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and face tensions with their school boards, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Wednesday.

“We’ve seen an incredible amount of turnover,” said Krista Parent, the coalition’s deputy executive director.

Sixty Oregon districts have superintendents in the first or second year of the job, she said. Twenty-five districts will have new superintendents this year.

And three tiny school districts — Nyssa, Jordan Valley and Oakridge — plus medium-sized Crook County were still seeking a superintendent as of this week.

Parent, who is a former National Superintendent of the Year, said Oregon and the entire country are in “crisis mode” for school district leadership.

According to her data, Oregon has had 154 new superintendents in the last five years. Some districts, including Corbett and Woodburn, have had three or more leaders in that time.

Parent said a natural exodus of superintendents who were retiring or aging out of the system was expected, as has happened in other fields. But turnover at this level was unexpected — exacerbated by lasting impacts from the pandemic and school boards’ recent increased politicization, she said.

Having constant change in the superintendent’s office often leads to instability in a school district, she said.

In 2022, the Legislature passed a bill to protect superintendents from being fired for “no cause.”

Melissa Goff was dismissed without cause from her role as superintendent of Greater Albany Public Schools in 2021. Goff said at the time she was removed for having different values, such as ensuring equity was integrated into teaching. She supported the bill, citing the need for stronger protections for school district leaders.

“I ask for your support of this bill so that our superintendents may do the work they are legally and ethically bound to do without the threat of an unwarranted dismissal,” Goff wrote in a statement at the time.

The Coalition of Oregon School Administrators operates an academy for new superintendents that helps leaders adjust to the job, Parent said. Participants learn about communicating with school board members and how to work with the board, which essentially act as a superintendent’s boss.

But Parent said more is needed, including requiring training for school board members and superintendents about how to work together. With tensions between elected school board members and superintendents high in some places, that training could lead to better relationships, she said.

She said bringing in leaders who reflect a district’s diverse student populations also needs work. According to Parent’s data, only nine of superintendents in 216 school districts or education service districts in Oregon are people of color, and only 49 are women. Of course, the leaders of color include superintendents of the state’s three largest districts: Latino Guadalupe Guerrero at Portland Public Schools, Latina Andrea Castañeda in Salem-Keizer, hired this summer, and Beaverton Superintendent Gustavo Balderas, a Latino lured away from Woodburn in summer 2022. Balderas was the 2020 National Superintendent of the Year.

Parent said she has hope for the future, noting that the coalition’s program to help teachers and other educators obtain their administrator licenses currently has more than 400 candidates — compared with just 12 when the program started in 2012.

“You don’t just jump to the superintendency. You’re an assistant principal and a principal and a curriculum director and so on,” she said. “And so, if we’re really going to change the system, we have to start here and get that pipeline to a place of having a lot of diversity.”

— The Associated Press. Betsy Hammond of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report