Prineville, Ore. – Two newly appointed Crook County School District Board members were sworn into office during a special meeting late last week after being appointed to the vacant positions by the existing board. The appointments, which cover Zone 1 and Zone 3, follow the resignations in recent months by Jessica Brumble and Cheyanne Edgerly.
The appointments included Kelsey Swick and Eric Osborne. The board decision for Osborne was made after its appointed advisory committee itself was split on providing a recommendation between the candidates.
Swick and Osborne surprisingly refused to answer any general questions about their appointment, but also refused requests for any general statements to constituents in their respective zones. That included an offer to explain if they had any goals or objectives in the short term.
When we asked if Swick would even give a statement about her feelings on being appointed, she declined again, ended her refusal stating “no comment”.
“I don’t have anything for you, sorry”, Osborne chuckled in response to our request immediately after Swick’s response. That followed with this reporter further asking, “Not even just about your appointment or generally speaking?”
“No, nope,” Osborne said before turning away.
At that moment Interim Superintendent Joel Hoff jumped into the conversation, saying, “You can say we’re excited for our new board members to get started.”
The refusals add to a recent trend among Crook County officials amid the investigative reporting from the Prineville Review which has been revealing ongoing systemic issues within local government on public meetings compliance. While the majority of public bodies appear to be making progress, others have continued to put up resistance to complying with even basic notice requirements. That includes officials going as far as stating publicly they supported effectively blacklisting reporters that report on public meetings violations, as was the recent case by Crook County NRAC Chair Steve McGuire.
McGuire himself was appointed by school board member Steve Holiday to serve on the board member recommendation committee that interviewed Swick and Osborne before making its recommendations earlier this month.
On Feb. 7th, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission provided an in-person public meetings training for officials across Crook County, including for County government, City of Prineville, and special districts.
Swick and Osborne will be required to complete the OGEC’s new training before the end of June to comply with a new law that mandates the training for members of governing bodies at least once per term as part of a public body that handles more than one million in annual revenues, including taxes. Staff who assist those on governing bodies are not required to complete the training, as well as those governing body members whose public body does not handle more than one million in annual revenue, but the OGEC says the training is still highly encouraged.
Hoff himself attended the Feb. 7th OGEC training and said it was a very helpful and informative training.
“The training was excellent, and I can’t thank the OGEC and its trainer enough for the opportunity,” said Hoff, who had also previously explained that they are making efforts to improve their consistency in communicating with the public and the media about public meetings, including efforts from our recent reporting that have led to the district consistently noticing its meetings through social media to better inform the public.
“We want the public and parents to be included, that helps us and the board be better at serving our students,” Hoff said.
Public policy questions
The positions held by Swick and Osborne, as well as current board member Scott Cooper’s current seat, will be on May’s district election ballots. Swick and Osborne will both serve until June 30th unless they run and are elected to the positions. If elected they will continue to serve the remainder of the terms held by Brumble and Edgerly. Coopers seat will be for a full term of four years.
Edgerly had resigned amid calls for her resignation, which she said was due to the actions of a “woke mob”, and threats being made against her and her family.
Cooper spoke with us immediately following the special meeting on Friday, addressing both the appointments of new board members and the wave of policy adoptions and changes that were set to get underway.
“I think one of the immediate and urgent needs we have is addressing this backlog of policies which we need to be adopted, so we need to work with a full board to be able to fully vet those and get that cleared before our new board starts in July so we can continue the work of the district,” Cooper explained.
This evening, the entire CCSD Board will continue to review a wave of policy changes, including changes to a controversial public comment policy some proponents have repeatedly argued has been used to stifle free speech and violated the First Amendment and was not truly “content neutral”.
The Prineville Review had discovered numerous inconsistencies in the board’s statements on its public meetings agenda’s related to public comment over the last year, specifically referencing a prohibition about complaints against district officials, while making little or no mention of compliments about staff.
While the policy indicated it was an “action” item, Cooper told the Prineville Review on Friday that the board would not be immediately adopting any changes and was still looking to have public input and multiple readings of the amended policy. We asked Cooper for further clarification, which he provided.
“Well the board’s process is that it allows for two — sometimes three — readings of every policy, so the Monday night policies are a first read only,” Cooper stated.
That meeting is set for 5:30pm tonight at the district’s office at 471 NE Ochoco Plaza Dr in Prineville.
Despite Cooper confirming it was only a first reading for these policies, no opportunity for public comment appeared on tonight’s work session agenda. It was not clear if and when the board intended to allow the public to comment on the wide range of proposed policy changes, including the public comment policy. It was also not yet clear what exactly those proposed changes actually included.
It was additionally alleged by proponents that Knight, as board chair, has inconsistently allowed public comments that were inconsistent with the public comment policy in the past, also varying based upon actually naming the obvious target to such comments. They also pointed to a clear focus by the policy against criticism of officials, both in the policy’s heading as well as text that overly focused on criticisms and an indirect limitation on compliments.
Knight, who has repeatedly refused to provide any comment to the Prineville Review in recent months, had claimed just prior to the controversial meeting following a student protest regarding AD Rob Booner, that the policy as written was not unconstitutional and was supported by legal opinions from two different organizations. Knight and the district have refused to provide any records or responses as to which two organizations had provided that advice.
The organizations were suspected to have been the district’s own legal counsel provided by the High Desert Education Service District, as well as an attorney from the Oregon School Board Association (OSBA) who’s advice during a public meeting late last year, according to proponents on both sides of the controversy.
Brumble and Edgerly both expressed their concerns regarding recommendations on the public comment policy from OSBA, which led into discussions about the potential of bucking membership with the OSBA. Currently only one other Oregon district has broken away from the OSBA, according to Edgerly.
The District recently decided to release an unredacted copy of its minutes from the illegal Dec. 9th executive session after the Prineville Review challenged the district’s claimed exemptions, avoiding an impeding legal fight that would have began with a public records appeal petition with the Crook County District Attorney.
The board ultimately admitted it violated Oregon’s executive session law in its response to a formal public meetings grievance.
The redacted portion of the minutes revealed that the school board was indeed acting on misguided legal advice from a High Desert ESD attorney, according to the unredacted minutes.
In response to our previous public records request seeking the actual video of the meeting with OSBA’s attorney, the district claimed it had a technical issue that prevented that portion of the public meeting to not be recorded.
Officials later blamed a mistake by one of its IT employees, saying they simply forgot to start the recording in Zoom. The Prineville Review was present for that meeting, but had not been recording believing the meeting was being recorded by the district.
OSBA’s attorney did state that there was no case law that specifically addressed the prohibition, although the Congressional Research Service has cited court rulings on the topic to members of congress.
Update after original publication:
We learned that the district did provide a online comment submission related to the policies. Nobody with the CCSD had explained this upon any of our recent inquiries. Cooper had also claimed the policies were all a “first read”, but it was discovered that only a few of the many policies were actually first read. The CCSD Board ultimately took action on the polices, including amendments to the controversial public comment policy.
