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The Oregon Department of Education’s investigation into the curriculum complaint took nearly two years. The district has a plan to bring elementary science and social studies curriculum into compliance, and recently adopted a district-created science curriculum that meets state standards.
After a nearly two-year investigation into a Springfield teacher’s complaint, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) ruled in a May 14 report that Springfield’s elementary science and social studies curricula are out of compliance with state standards.
The judgment, written by Emily Nazarov, ODE’s government and legal affairs manager, comes after Springfield elementary teacher Mikell Harshbarger’s persistent complaints about not having the materials or the time to teach science or social studies.
“I was right, I was right, I was right,” Harshbarger said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield after receiving the report.
Harshbarger also complained the district was out of compliance in its human sexuality and child abuse prevention instruction as well as its physical education requirements. The state’s report detailed steps the district took after Harshbarger’s complaints to adopt an additional secondary school curriculum and add P.E. minutes. It found the district is now in compliance for these subjects.
The state’s report is at odds with a district-funded investigation that concluded the district was in compliance for all subjects. The two investigations disagreed on whether being in the process of developing standards-aligned curriculum meant that the district was meeting the requirements.
The district submitted a corrective plan in 2024 outlining how it intended to comply with standards for elementary science and social studies curricula. The state approved the plan in September 2024, but state officials will determine the district is in compliance only when the plan is fully in effect.
The district recently adopted an independently created science curriculum that combines its English language arts curriculum with a hands-on science curriculum and additional teacher-created materials. The adoption, guided by a state rubric, will likely put the district into compliance for elementary grades starting in the fall of 2026. The district will present its elementary social studies curriculum for adoption next spring, one year behind schedule.
“Our intent is to always be compliant with state standards, which is evident by our team seeking technical assistance from ODE and submitting an Instructional Materials Action Plan,” wrote Brian Richardson, the district’s communications director, in an email response to Lookout asking if the recently adopted science curriculum would put the district in compliance.
Repeatedly dismissed complaints
While Springfield’s elementary science and social studies curriculum adoptions have come into the spotlight over the past two years due to state-mandated deadlines for all districts, Harshbarger has been sounding the alarm about Springfield’s lack of an elementary science and social studies curriculum for four years.
A district administrator investigated Harshbarger’s first official complaint in fall 2023 and ultimately dismissed it in a June 3, 2024, message to Harshbarger.
Harshbarger appealed the complaint to the state later that month.
The month before administrators dismissed Harshbarger’s complaint, district leaders reached out to the state for “technical assistance” regarding the district’s upcoming elementary science and social studies adoptions.
“The District was using an integrated instructional approach alongside supplemental materials and teacher-developed resources,” Richardson said in his email to Lookout. “After the initial complaint, the District reached out to ODE which provided technical assistance and recommended the Instructional Materials Action Plan. This process reflects how the accountability systems are intended to work.”
The district did not respond to a Lookout question about why Harshbarger’s complaints were repeatedly dismissed by school officials.
Harshbarger sent similar complaints about elementary curriculum to the school board in August 2025 with the signatures of 74 other teachers. The district hired an investigator to look into the complaint. The investigator reported in February the district was fully in compliance with the elementary curriculum because of its plan, then in progress, to develop materials. The investigator’s report also included testimonies from teachers who said they did not have adequate materials to teach science and social studies.
The district paid $17,295.59 for an attorney from the Garrett Hemann Robertson law firm to complete the investigation, Richardson said.
‘Only half the battle’
Harshbarger, who resigned from Springfield schools in May, was satisfied by the state’s findings, but said the work to improve science and social studies instruction at the elementary level is not over.
Harshbarger’s complaint was not only about the lack of standards-aligned instructional materials but also about the amount of time his school allowed for teaching science and social studies.
The state does not have a required amount of instructional minutes for science or social studies. Elementary school director Joyce Smith-Johnson said in a recent school board meeting that teachers have an hour a day to cover science, social science, health, and remaining P.E. requirements, social-emotional learning and art. They also have 45 minutes of flexible time available throughout the day.
In practice, however, time allocations vary. At Maple Elementary, for example, teachers have 35 minutes a day for science, health, social studies, library and social-emotional learning. However, students can also read about these subjects during literacy instruction, Smith-Johnson said. Students have two hours of literacy instruction a day and one hour of math. Administrators have repeatedly said teachers have enough time to teach science and social studies with the current schedule.
“If the district, tomorrow, were to buy state-of-the-art curriculum, teachers are still only going to have a half-hour a week to teach it,” Harshbarger said.
Harshbarger, who has been a teacher for about 30 years, said he first noticed Springfield’s lack of elementary science and social studies instruction when he started working in the district in 2005 as a middle school teacher. He previously was a teacher in Cupertino, California, where parents paid close attention to the quality of instruction.
He realized two things when he started in Springfield: Parents didn’t seem to be as involved and students weren’t coming to middle school prepared for science and social studies. When he moved to teaching at the elementary school level in 2017, he realized that was because teachers didn’t have adequate materials to teach the subjects.
Asked what Springfield schools were doing to help elementary students get up to speed on elementary science and social studies, Richardson, the district’s communications director, said it “has continuously provided instruction in science and social science.”
He added in the email to Lookout that the state’s findings about compliance with standards “centered on instructional materials alignment and the District’s ability to demonstrate full coverage of all required standards and skills.”
