OSAA Mediation Fails, Dispute will go to Hearing on Monday

State Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo Photo By: Tim King

SALEM - State Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo has released the following statement re: the Oregon School Activities Association classification and redistricting dispute:

Last month, I told the OSAA and the Eugene, Salem-Keizer and Medford schools that before I made the final decision in the redistricting dispute, I wanted to give the parties an opportunity to settle the dispute themselves.

Working with OSAA and the school districts, I selected former Oregon Supreme Court Justice Edwin Peterson and former executive of the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators Ozzie Rose to act as mediators.

The mediators met with the parties all day on April 18th and 26th and ultimately were not able to reach a solution. No further mediation sessions are scheduled.

Of course, I am disappointed that OSAA and the schools were not able to resolve the dispute through mediation. This is a very important issue for students, their families and our schools. As a result, it will now have to be settled in a hearing -- and possibly in state court. A hearing on the case is scheduled for May 8th in Salem.

However, I am encouraged that the parties came close to agreement, and I want to thank the mediators and the parties for their time, expertise and hard work.

Ozzie Rose said, "We all worked for two full days to come up with a way to resolve the issues. At several points during the process I thought that we were very close to a solution, but at the end of the day we weren`t able to come to agreement that was satisfactory to all the affected schools.

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