May Special Election yields 2 newcomers, 1 incumbent in largest overall contest in recent history
By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news
After one of the most contested Ashland School Board races in recent history, voters in the May 20 special election had their say, selecting two newcomers to the board and voting to keep an incumbent.
Nine individuals ran for three openings – positions No. 1, 3 and 4 – on the school board and as of 8 p.m. on Tuesday, the City of Ashland’s deputy city manager Jordan Rooklyn won the contest to fill position No. 1 with 2,441 votes (64.36%), besting Ann Gaffney’s 1,344 votes (35.43%).
Deltra Ferguson tallied the most votes for position No. 3 with 2,078 votes (55.86%). Noelle Christensen obtained 925 votes (24.87%) while Susanne McGraw received 713 votes (19.17%). After serving on the board since 2009, Eva Skuratowicz opted not to run for re-election.
Incumbent Rebecca Dyson was the top-vote getter for position No. 4. She garnered 2,218 votes (59.17%) to retain her seat for a second term.
Grant Joliffe tallied the second highest number of votes at 1,134 (30.25%) for position No. 4, followed by Elisa Hawksley with 293 votes (7.82%) and Alex Sol with 100 votes (2.67%).
Rooklyn, 36, stepped out of an Ashland City Council meeting to chat with Ashland.news via phone following the posted results.
“I was doing my day job,” she said light-heartedly.
“Now the hard work begins, moving ahead,” she added. “I’m just grateful for all the community support as well as grateful to all the candidates that ran, cause it really shows that Ashland is a community that cares.”
Rooklyn said she is honored to join the board and is looking forward to working with those newly elected to the board and those currently serving. She outlined plans to quickly get up to speed with conversations and decisions already in process.
The school district’s financial woes prompted her to enter the race for the open position.
“My concern was really around the finances of the school district, how we got in the situation we’re in and our plan to get out of it,” she said.
Rooklyn would like to see the school district update its financial reporting to increase transparency, in an effort to make it easier to understand where the district is financially. She also said the district needs to create a plan to alleviate debt the district is taking on this year.
“I think we need to update our financial systems in terms of making sure we have very strong policies and plans for how to get them back to a healthy level,” she said.
Rooklyn also addressed how her role at the city would remain separate from participation on the school board.
“My role at the city is, I enact the policies that city council decides,” Rooklyn said. “The city council, who is elected by the voters … really sets the policy’s direction.”
“Whereas, (on) school board, I am part of the body that makes the policy direction for the school district. If there ever was a topic that came up that would impact my work with the school district or the city, I would recuse myself.”
Deltra Ferguson
Deltra Ferguson expressed surprise at receiving the most votes to fill position No. 3, in part because of the competition, whom she called “two terrific women.”
“I just did not fully understand that my campaign would have that many folks behind me,” Ferguson said, “But in fact it did. I’m really heartened by that of course … I feel honored to be able to do this work.”
The 64-year-old retiree shared that she has an after-the-campaign list that she compiled if she did win.
“It’s got multiple items on it that have to do a lot with meeting different people… visiting the schools, all kinds of stuff,” Ferguson said. “I have a huge amount to learn so I’m just going to dive into that.”
Ferguson plans to prioritize listening as she joins the board.
“I want to talk to teachers … everybody who’s involved in the schools,” she said.
“I want to talk to the head of maintenance, I want to talk to some of the kids before they go bouncing off into the summertime … I want to try to immerse myself as much as I can.
She is looking forward to getting to work with the board this summer, as they begin the process of creating a new strategic plan.
“I want to help solve some of the problems, face some of the challenges, and make our way into the future so that our schools are powerful – not just good, but powerful,” Ferguson said.
“We’ve got to find a way to stabilize our funding,” she added. “We’ve got some debt that we need to slowly retire, and we need to retire it … we can’t just kick the can down the road.”
She felt compelled to run for school board as a way to pay forward the education her children received as graduates of Ashland schools and soon-to-be graduates of their respective colleges.
“I feel that our schools are going to face some big challenges, it’s really clear,” she said. “I don’t think there’s good support from our federal government right now and that concerns me a lot.”
Ferguson noted that while she has been in the community more than 25 years, with experience running the Women’s Resource Center at Southern Oregon University in addition to work in conflict resolution, she has not served on a school board and “has a lot to learn.”
“I will be stepping onto a very steep learning curve and happy to be stepping on that learning curve,” she said. “I don’t like to make decisions unless I really understand what’s going on for people, and so I will be basically hitting the ground (running).”
Rebecca Dyson
This is Dyson’s second term, and she thanked those who helped her retain her seat on the board.
“I know this was a very complicated election with so many people running and a lot of different issues that were being discussed before the ballot,” Dyson told Ashland.news via phone on Tuesday evening. “I’m so grateful to have this position again and to be able to continue working with Dr. Hattrick and to really keep getting this district back on track.”
Dyson, 57, told Ashland.news she decided to seek re-election to help improve the district’s finances.
“We have made so much progress in the past year from where we were a year ago,” Dyson said, “And that is really the main reason I decided to run again … I really wanted to continue to see that progress and get us back into a state where we can really sustain a solid financial base.”
She also commented on the high volume of candidates as “the most there’s ever been” in recent history.
“This has been the biggest field (of candidates), but I think it’s great,” she said. “I think it’s really put a lot of attention (on the school board races).”
Email Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].
