Luhui’s Values

Student privacy is critical to help protect them from some of the current efforts geared towards deporting families and preventing external interference with the programs we offer students. As board chair, I communicate on behalf of the board to community members who reach out to us. I have already sent messages that affirm our commitment to all students as well as our district's commitment to not disclosing student information to ICE. In addition to our local conversations, I drafted a statement on behalf of the OSBA Caucus of Color related to immigration and documentation. I also reached out to Val Hoyle as board chair along with the co-chairs to express our disappointment with not only her initial vote of yes on the Lakin Riley Act and the immediate statement on her webpage of why she voted yes, but also our disappointment around the silence of her switch to a no vote. We pointed out how she did not take into consideration the commitments our school district has made, the Lincoln County “brown roundup part one” letter, the existing federal rulings on supporting all students regardless of their documentation, and  Oregon’s sanctuary laws. She has yet to reply.

Click here for caucus statement.

Including ecoliteracy to our board goals was an important step in helping students learn more about full impacts of sustainability and climate justice efforts. Understanding the impacts of all forms of extraction, water use, and disposal are all things I am passionate about educating people about, even when it asks us to think deeper about well-intended efforts. I also support students and community in deepening their understanding of their relationships with the natural world. I have spent much of my life involved with resistance efforts to all forms of extraction as well as educating people about Indigenous based understandings of our responsibility to other forms of life in our shared planet.

I helped organize the first joint school board education session with a community based organization in 2021. We worked with the NAACP to hold the session for community to learn more about what we do and how to engage with us. In 2023, I advocated for more community engagement with our board goals. Despite having several sessions planned, we were missing a session specifically for the BIPOC community. I advocated to have an additional session planned in partnership with the NAACP and Casa Latinos Unidos. This resulted in more engagement with BIPOC community members, especially Spanish speaking community members. Ultimately, some of the community members from that session became more engaged throughout the year. This helped shape our board goals to reflect the needs of the community rather than just what we thought the needs were from our lenses as school board members. We spent a little over a year on our process to have the board goals we have now. These goals shape the direction of the board and the policies we update/create.

You can see our board goals we adopted in 2024 here.

While our graduation rate is above the state average at 88% and above average for five year graduation rates at 94%, we do have some work to do for our most vulnerable populations. Students experiencing homelessness and those navigating poverty are among the groups that have lower graduation rates. Our student population with disabilities are also experiencing lower graduation rates. These are amplified when you add in intersecting identities. My ideas include continuing to advocate at the local level on matters related to housing costs as well as city ordinances that target the homeless population. I am also interested in advocating for earlier support of students with learning disabilities that are often slipping through the cracks. Continuing to ask questions about the numbers behind the scenes of the larger graduation rate are important to help determine the gap areas that need to be addressed. I also advocate at the state level for better support of students with disabilities.

There are misconceptions around why our enrollment has been on a steady decrease. Enrollment is not declining at a rapid rate due to students being transferred to charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. All of these have existed even when our local enrollment was at its peak. Numbers at private schools and charter schools show an increase to their existing building capacities and also include students from the surrounding area. In addition to Corvallis, students from Philomath, Albany, Alsea, Monroe, Harrisburg, and other surrounding local cities attend charter and private schools. The number of students from Corvallis School District has remained relatively low and has not increased significantly. The majority of our enrollment decline is due to lower birth rates, which is a national trend. The secondary reason is due to families no longer living in the district boundaries, which is heavily related to housing and child care affordability reasons.

Our district has a strong commitment to DEI work. Even still there are opportunity gaps reflected in our available data. One of the biggest issues is data erasure. It is difficult to address issues we cannot see. I already advocate for better data representation and request disaggregation of the multi-racial category. Otherwise we will never be able to tackle the root issues that exist. A tangible step in addition to this advocacy is to work with district leadership to work more on our internal reports to better assess these gaps and strategize working with community partners to better meet the needs of students of color and those with other marginalized identities. Internal reports help protect privacy students who are highly underrepresented (AI/AN and NH/PI) from the public view of them in our board packets which are public facing. Our bias reporting system reflects the climate in some of our schools need to be addressed as well in order for students of color (especially Black students) to feel safe in school and better concentrate on their academics. I know we are not doing as well as we should be to support Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students as well and this is something I suggested recently that we look into with ODE’s Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Student Success Plan. I hope that this will lead to better support in addressing students who slip through the cracks due to data reporting erasure. I also suggested to one of our DLI schools to work with the Mam speaking community to have learning materials in English, Spanish, and Mam side by side so they feel like they have more of a connection to the school since there is a large part of the Mam speaking community that attends that school. I am excited to see how this ends up being operationalized. I am also fortunate to work with our DEDI, DELTA, and Indian Education groups and see an immense amount of positive impact they all make in our district. We are fortunate to have such strong support of DEI in our district to address the issues I mentioned.

Students having access to sports without having to worry about fees creates better access to athletic opportunities for all students. Sports offer experiences with teamwork, increased physical activity, and positive outlets for students. I am thankful our district has opportunities for students to challenge themselves through through a variety of sports.