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QuickTake:
School board members, who are being investigated by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for how they hired their acting and interim superintendents, want the long-term superintendent hiring process to be thorough.
The Springfield Board of Education is yet again entering the fray of a superintendent search, proceeding with caution due to criticism of their past hiring processes.
Board members directed administrators in their Sept. 28 meeting to create a request for proposals for a search firm, with the hopes of approving the document at their Oct. 12 meeting and selecting a firm at their Oct. 26 work session. The district will pay the firm to lead the public input process and search for its next long-term leader.
The action comes as Springfield school board members are under investigation by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission on allegations they did not follow Oregon public meetings law during the whirlwind process of hiring Acting Superintendent Jodi O’Mara and in their selection of Interim Superintendent Shawn Stover.
Stover is serving as superintendent this school year and has expressed interest in the permanent job.
Why the investigation?
Springfield’s 2025-26 school year was rife with internal conflict, which came to a head when the district’s superintendent and assistant superintendent resigned in February 2026 after threatening to sue the district and board members for retaliation, among other allegations. But the departure of the two leaders did not bring an end to district divisions.
During the first half of the year, now-former Superintendent Todd Hamilton, former Assistant Superintendent David Collins, Human Resources Director Dustin Reese and Chief Operating Officer Brett Yancey all filed complaints against board members for retaliation against administrators and overstepping their roles.
Reese and Yancey, who also have filed a notice stating their intention to sue the district, have continued to file complaints against board members. Other complaints have been filed by former board member Nicole De Graff. Some of these complaints have risen to the state level.
According to public records obtained from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, De Graff filed a complaint in March about the acting superintendent hiring process. It alleges that board Chair Jonathan Light and other board members communicated outside of board meetings about the hiring of the acting superintendent. Oregon law on public meetings prohibits a governing body from using so-called “serial communications” — conversations, notes, emails or texts — among a quorum for the purpose of deliberating on or deciding any matter.
Reese filed a nearly identical complaint with the ethics commission against Light in February, backed up by Yancey and De Graff in the complaint filings. That complaint was ultimately not investigated for procedural reasons — Reese failed to file the complaint with the board first, as the commission requires.
The ethics commission is now investigating another complaint, this one about the Springfield board’s hiring of its interim superintendent. The complaint, read aloud during a publicly posted meeting of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission Sept. 11, is nearly identical to a complaint Reese filed with the Springfield board in May. It accuses board members of not publicly adopting hiring procedures and “standards, criteria, and policy directives” for the interim superintendent position.
In his board complaint, Reese included a list of other transparency concerns about the search, which was performed by a contracted firm, Iowa-based Grundmeyer Leader Services.
He noted that leaders saying during meetings that the hired interim superintendent may be moved to a permanent role made the labeling of the job posting as “interim” unfair to prospective applicants looking for a long-term role — as they couldn’t have known that the board would consider that the person hired to the interim job could end up filling the role long-term.
Yancey said in the Sept. 28 meeting the contract signed with Grundmeyer “expressly articulated” that the firm follows the law of the “state of Ohio” and not Oregon. He said he had not seen the contract before a former administrator signed it, and called it a “big, critical error.”
When Lookout Eugene-Springfield asked the search firm’s CEO, Trent Grundmeyer, about the contract, he said in an email the contract was governed under Iowa law. He added that the firm followed applicable Oregon law. Rob Hess, one of the three Oregon superintendents contracted by Grundmeyer, also known as GLS, as consultants on Springfield’s interim superintendent search, said the firm uses local consultants to ensure local laws are followed.
“Throughout the search, GLS has worked in good faith to follow the agreement and the legal guidance provided to us regarding the process,” Grundmeyer said. “We remain confident in the integrity of the search process and in the work completed in partnership with the board.”
The ethics commission, a public body tasked by the Legislature with enforcing Oregon’s public meetings law, voted June 12 to begin investigating De Graff’s complaint and voted Sept. 11 to begin investigating the interim superintendent search complaint. The commission has up to 180 days to complete investigations.
If the investigation finds that board members were in violation of the law, the commission will propose a “stipulated final order” with terms to follow. Defendants can also proceed to a contested case hearing where an administrative law judge would hear testimony from both sides. Defendants can also choose to move an ethics commission case to Marion County Circuit Court.
The process ahead
Board members have discussed in recent meetings how to strike a balance between creating a longer search process that would allow more time for the district and community to weigh in on what they want from a superintendent and retaining the option of promoting Stover for the permanent superintendent position. Board members believe the process to hire the acting and interim superintendents did not allow enough time for public input.
The board hired Stover in June, signing a yearlong contract with the administrator from North Carolina. Stover has expressed interest in staying long-term and left the room during board conversations about the hiring process on both Sept. 14 and Monday.
Board member Matthew Brandt expressed concern during Monday’s meeting that launching a large-scale search would make Stover less likely to apply to the permanent position. Light cautioned that choosing not to do a large-scale search would break promises to the community.
“The commitment to the public was that the permanent search will allow more input,” Light said in the Monday meeting. “For myself, I’d want to have pretty explicit direction from our constituents, that if we weren’t going to follow what we committed to, there’s reasons behind that.”
Light noted that Stover’s superintendent evaluation, a yearly board responsibility, will happen in parallel with the superintendent search process. Board member Bob Brew said he will encourage Stover to apply if the board goes ahead with a full-scale search.
“I think he’s done well enough that I think he would compete well,” Brew said. “Even if, as he’s warned us, it means we would get less of a pool, if they knew he was in the mix.”
