QuickTake:

The board unanimously elected a parent who has attended board meetings since first speaking out against Springfield’s midyear teacher cuts. Matthew Brandt is father to three students in Springfield Public Schools and works in software engineering.

The Springfield school board unanimously chose Matthew Brandt to fill the vacant seat left when Nicole De Graff resigned in June, bringing the board’s membership back to five.

A father of three children in the district, Brandt was one of five candidates interviewed Monday, July 27, by the Springfield Public Schools Board of Education. Others included budget committee member Hollea Puzio, Ky Fireside, Christina Scott and Tracy Lilley.

Since January’s midyear teacher layoffs, Brandt has been an outspoken attendee of school board meetings with a problem-solving approach. He built a website outlining how the district could avoid laying off teachers before the board decided midyear to do so. Brandt then turned it into a site explaining how a local option levy would help the district following the layoffs.

“For a long time I just wasn’t involved in this segment because it felt like things were running smooth or I just kind of assumed they were, rather,” Brandt said in an interview after the meeting. “When I realized it wasn’t and realized that maybe I could actually have some sort of valuable input, I felt an obligation to do that.”

Brandt’s term will run through June 2027, and he said he plans to run in the May election. His goals for this year are increasing budget transparency, improving the district’s process of gathering feedback, and building momentum to put a levy on the ballot to boost district revenue.

Specifically, Brandt wants options and more detail when it comes to budget information presented by district leaders. He criticized the district for not getting sufficiently granular with the board or the public about where budget cuts would be made this year and the resulting public fallout when people learned the Spanish dual immersion program was among the cuts at the secondary level. He thinks the board has a right to know more detail about how the district is allocating money.

“I’ve heard a lot of this discussion about overreach and dysfunction and things that read to me more like uncomfortable accountability,” he said, commenting on district officials’ clashes with board members over the past year.

Several candidates for the board position pulled out or did not show up for an interview, including former Springfield elementary teacher Neil Baird, who was the subject of public scrutiny in January. The district reported in mid-January that it was looking into complaints about Baird regarding his violent, anti-gay, misogynistic and racist Facebook posts.

Brian Richardson, the district’s communications director, said Baird is no longer an employee of Springfield schools and that Baird withdrew his board application Monday morning.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated how Baird’s application was withdrawn.

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Lilly is a graduate of Indiana University and has worked as a journalist at the Indianapolis Star and in Burlington, Vermont, as well as working as a foreign language teacher in France. She covers education and children's issues for Lookout Eugene-Springfield.