After more than 25 years of advocating for students in the Capitol and across the state, Jim Green stepped down Monday as executive director of the Oregon School Boards Association.
Green appointed Emielle Nischik as acting executive director. She had taken the role of the organization’s deputy executive director in June after leading College Possible Oregon, a non-profit that creates higher education opportunities for underserved youths.
At Green’s request, the executive committee of OSBA’s Board of Directors placed him on paid administrative leave while they negotiate a severance agreement.
Sonja McKenzie, OSBA president and a member of the Parkrose School Board, joined with other OSBA officers in expressing deep appreciation for Green’s decades of advocacy for public education.
“Jim has a passion for public education that has resulted in greater opportunities for thousands and thousands of students,” she said. “We cannot thank him enough.”
On Sunday, during a brief and emotional OSBA Board meeting, Board members clashed over a recent confidential complaint and the process for resolving it. The discussion was heated, and Green, McKenzie and others joined Monday in asking OSBA Board members to come together to resolve conflicts and support the organization’s work in creating opportunities for students.
“We need to model the behaviors our students expect, and we will,” McKenzie said. “This work is too important. Our students’ needs are too great.”
Over the years, Green has spoken often of how his own journey through public schools and later at Oregon State University changed his life, and how his work at OSBA allowed him to share that gift with others. In addition to his work, he served two terms as a volunteer member of the Salem-Keizer School Board.
The highlight of Green’s career came in 2019 with the passage of the Student Success Act, a landmark state education bill that now targets more than $1 billion annually in new funding for career programs, class-size reductions, providing student mental health supports and lifting achievement for historically underserved students.
His career at OSBA spanned three decades (with a short break in private lobbying in-between), first as an education lobbyist, then later as deputy executive director. He took over the Salem non-profit’s top job in 2016.
Other members of the organization’s executive committee joined in praising Green on Monday. The officers include McKenzie, President-elect Sami Al-Abdrabbuh, Past President Scott Rogers, Vice President Chris Cronin and Secretary-Treasurer Emily Smith. As one put it, Green’s influence at the state government level and extensive contacts around the state are such that the man and the institution seem inseparable.
Green, 59, dismissed that notion in a tearful statement to the Board’s officers.
“It’s bigger than one person,” he said. “It’s bigger than anyone can imagine.”
He also voiced an appreciation for staff members and his confidence in Nischik to carry on OSBA’s work.
“I only wish this association the best,” he said.
OSBA supports more than 1,400 school board members statewide, and over the weekend welcomed hundreds of school board members and administrators to downtown Portland for its 77th Annual Convention.
– Alex Pulaski, OSBA
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Statement from Jim Green, former Oregon School Boards Association executive director
