After turbulent few years, new Siletz Valley School superintendent aims to settle staff and students, raise performance

By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/ Lincoln Chronicle

SILETZ – After a bout of rocky leadership and upheaval, Siletz Valley School have a superintendent and principal who may bring some much sought after stability.

In May, Siletz’s class of 2025 spent their last weeks trying to figure out what had happened to their school. Facing a budget deficit, staff layoffs and mounting complaints, superintendent/principal Ginger Redlinger stepped down. Then in June, four board members resigned and a nearly fresh slate of officers took their place.

The lack of stable leadership prompted the Lincoln County School District to issue a letter of non-compliance with its agreement to lease the school just off the main highway in downtown Siletz. The school has since shown it had reached compliance or was working towards the 10 areas of concern and hired a superintendent and principal.

The school’s new superintendent is Lenora Hall, who has an ambitious list of improvements from raising the school’s abysmal test scores to fostering better communication. But for a school with such a tumultuous three years, there is a lot of work to be done and trust to be won.

New in charge

At the entrance of Siletz Valley Schools, a large whiteboard is scrawled with the words “Xaa- wan’-t’i”, the Dee-ni’ Nation language for welcome.

During a recent school day, students in high school science made posters and elementary school students listened attentively as their teacher projected directions on a screen. Hall beamed proudly at the students in the culinary arts class as they pickled vegetables for Vietnamese sandwiches and prepared bags of icing to decorate cookies in the school’s commercial style kitchen.

Hall was living in Brookings and didn’t think about applying for the superintendent position when she first saw the job posted online. It was the second time the position was listed that she thought to apply. When she saw that nearly all the school board members had resigned, rather than run in the other direction, Hall said she felt a call to action.

“I felt like the things I was good at were what the school needed,” she said. “It felt like a perfect fit.”

Hall previously served as principal in Brookings and Hoopa, Calif. and as a superintendent in the Taholah School District in northwest Washington.

Hall is a member of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and has had experience leading tribal schools, she said. While Siletz Valley Schools is not considered a tribal school, many of the 195 enrolled students are Indigenous and the school receives some financial support from the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. Hall also speaks the Dee-ni’ language, which is also shared by many members of the Siletz tribe.

Hall has only been in her role for about a month, but she has already implemented some changes and created a road map of what she hopes to accomplish.

Changes being made

When this year’s testing scores for all of Oregon’s 1,200 schools were released, Siletz came in dead last.

“The school that did the worst on state testing, we’re standing in it,” Hall said.

Yet, she believes it’s not a bad place to stand. There’s only one way to go and it’s up – and Hall has a plan to improve.

Inside her office, the list on a dry erase board looms across from her desk containing words like “test scores” and “attendance”. The two are related, she said. If students aren’t coming to class, they aren’t learning the material. And because most subjects build upon previous knowledge, the gaps are wide, she said.

Last June, schoolwide attendance was at 39.9 percent.

Hall believes if she can strengthen attendance, test scores will rise too. Among her strategies is to go after unexcused absences. Hall knows that staff felt communication was sparse with previous leadership, so all the staff are briefed every day through an email Hall sends recounting the number of excused and unexcused absences in addition to the number of enrolled students.

In October, attendance hovered around 70 percent.

To improve communication, Hall intends to send a newsletter to the Siletz community to give updates on the different programs and events at the school. She hopes to have more opportunities to have parents and community members involved in school events and is planning a winter program Dec. 17 for students to perform.

Siletz doesn’t have a big testing culture, and that will take some time to build. Since charter schools have different curriculums than public schools, there aren’t a lot of practice tests available for teachers to use. Hall hopes to add that back into the classroom to better prepare students.

Now that Hall is in charge, there are more assemblies rewarding students for their academic achievements and attendance.

“If you make testing and attendance important, it becomes important,” she said.

Having a stronger budget is also on the new superintendent’s list – in fact it sits at No. 1 on her dry erase board.  Last school year, a misstep in applying for a tribal grant caused a rift between school leadership and the tribal community. Previous board members chose to balance a deficit caused by declining enrollment and a lack of federal grants by axing a prospective program geared towards students at risk of not graduating and laying off a handful of staff.

Hall has a strong financial background and used to own a tax preparation business, so she feels equipped to oversee the budget and go after grants.

Oregon charter schools also took a massive blow to their budgets this year but the Confederated Tribe of Siletz Indians helped fill the gap. Usually, the school gets about $359,000 of state funding; this year it was cut in half to about $155,000.

“We are so lucky and so grateful that the tribe stepped in,” Hall said.

Moving forward

This school year has already been tough on staff and students, Principal Debra Barnes told Lincoln Chronicle. A teacher who taught several classes at Siletz Valley School was shot and killed by her husband in Toledo.

“That was the hardest thing out of all my years teaching,” Barnes said.

Barnes became the school’s interim superintendent last year and was an applicant for the superintendent’s position this summer. Barnes said she pulled out when she accepted feedback from her staff who said they wanted someone with more experience in that role. Now, she serves as the principal, a position previously combined with the superintendent’s job.

While Barnes is optimistic about Hall’s leadership, she also knows that the staff have seen such turnover that it will take time to earn trust.

“Change is hard, but I think that’s true of any change,” she said.

Being from outside the community adds another challenge when you are in a small, closeknit community like Siletz, Barnes said. But Hall’s ability to speak the Dee-ni’ language, for example, can help foster understanding with tribal members, Barnes said.

The school was issued a letter of non-compliance with its charter agreement in 10 areas including attendance and accurately reporting budget changes. At the Lincoln County School District board’s Nov. 11 meeting, Hall gave an annual charter report and explained her plans for improvement.

Superintendent Majalise Tolan told Hall that “This is an important year for Siletz Valley School to regain charter compliance,” but that the district is looking forward to working with Hall and her staff.

Hall told the Chronicle that she often looks at her list and feels a sense of urgency. She reminds herself that she has only held her position for a little more than a month. What she hopes to accomplish will take time.

“The community just loves this school, and they want to see it succeed,” she said.

• Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]