Board
Black Butte School is recruiting anyone living in the district for at least one year to consider being a part of the School Board. If you are interested, please click this link with information about what it would mean to be on the Black Butte School District Board of Directors.
The Black Butte School District is governed by a five member Board of Directors. The Board typically meets the second Tuesday of every month at 3:45 P.M. Meetings are open to the public. If you have any questions or would like to have an Agenda emailed to you ahead of the meeting, please contact the Business Manager, at slevear@blackbutte.k12.or.us.
The Oregon School Board Association (OSBA) supports current and prospective board members in a variety of ways, such as a website full of resources, conferences, and trainings. Click here to learn more about what OSBA defines as a good board member.
Black Butte School District Policies
Link to Division 22 Assurances Reporting
Current Board Members:
Marie Sheahan "Bear" Brown ~ Board Chair | Susan Carlson ~ Board Vice Chair | Siobhan Gray ~ Director | Karen Lajoy ~ Director | Open Position ~ Director
Marie Sheahan "Bear" Brown ~ Board Chair
Camp Sherman native Marie Sheahan “Bear” Brown joined the Black Butte School Board in 2013. She has loved BBS ever since she and her identical twin attended the early grades here. Their mom was principal and upper-grades teacher. The family moved when her parents bought a weekly newspaper in Central Washington, where Bear worked in various capacities. Writing and editing are in her genes, although she didn’t pursue a journalism career. She now serves as editor of ALERT Camp Sherman, started by five local women during the January 2017 blizzard. She earned a BA in French at the University of Washington and an accounting certificate at Heald Business College in Sacramento. She carries a little toolbox of handy gifts and skills, applied as needed. While working in Catholic hospitals, she felt drawn to religious life. She embarked upon an intense many-years formation process, including courses at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and an 18-month novitiate in Laredo, Texas. In July 2010, she professed religious vows as a Sister of the Metolius at the Camp Sherman Community Hall. Bear loves to serve in her beloved home community. A member of the Chinook Indian Nation, she also serves her ancestral community.
Susan Carlson ~ Board Vice Chair
At an early age, Sue Carlson fell in love with school and libraries. Once she learned to read in 1st grade, she sensed the power of books and learning and blasted off from Portland, Oregon. In 1971, she started as an English major at OSU, but, within a year, made a hard left by deciding to major in Russian instead because she figured she already knew English, earning her bachelor’s degree in Russian from the University of Oregon. Out of college she immediately dived into school yet again by taking a job as a teacher’s aide in an elementary school with a Russian/English bi-lingual program in Woodburn, Oregon. The next 32 years found her becoming a teacher for real and experiencing teaching almost every elementary and middle school grade. She and her husband Jack re-settled in Portland and raised two sons. She came full circle towards the end of her career by devoting herself to teaching reading and writing as a middle school English teacher in the Reynolds School District. Once retired, she realized being out of school was unacceptable. She volunteered in her sons’ schools as a tutor and site council member as well as a lunch-time library assistant at her former middle school. In 2017, Sue and Jack moved permanently to Camp Sherman, a dream they didn’t know they had until the opportunity magically appeared. It didn’t take long for her to discover that Black Butte School needed volunteers, first for a library project, then on the school board. Travel now also calls to her and her husband as the ultimate living learning lab. She can’t help but “self-publish” her trip writings and photos via Facebook and Instagram. School will never end for her, and that’s the way she wants it.
Siobhan Gray ~ Director
Siobhan Gray moved to Camp Sherman in 2018 and has found home after many years of searching. Together with her husband Gary Gray they are raising their girls in this amazing forest by the river. She is dedicated to the school and building a strong interconnected community. Her passion is raising her three girls who attend Black Butte School to be the best version of themselves. In her free time she enjoys spending daily time in nature mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, hiking or just being. She enjoys literature and is an avid reader and aspiring writer. She has a guitar that she will sometime learn to play and a blank canvas on her easel that she will someday paint. Her day job is an Emergency Physician.
Karen Lajoy ~ Director
School Board member, Karen Lajoy, is a native Oregonian. She was born in Portland, raised in Salem and received her BS degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology from the University of Oregon in Eugene. Karen moved to Seattle, Washington after college to pursue a Master’s degree in Speech Pathology at the University of Washington. She worked two years after finishing her Master’s degree in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the UW. She continued working part time at UW while pursing and completing her PhD in Rehabilitation Medicine from the UW. Karen helped develop three rehabilitation programs in the Seattle area for traumatically brain injured individuals during her 20 years there. She returned to Portland to be closer to family in 1996 and worked remotely for a company that managed patient care for catastrophically injured individuals. Shortly after returning to Portland, Karen started dating a family friend from her childhood, Tim Bickler, whom she married in 1998. Karen had loved the outdoors since her college years. Her love for the Camp Sherman area developed from her relationship with Tim. Together they spent time camping, hiking and enjoying the area; an area Tim had spent his entire life enjoying. They decided to make Camp Sherman their retirement destination. They have owned a home here since 2013 and became full time residents in 2019 after Karen’s retirement. It is an honor to be part of the Black Butte school which I have admired since starting to come to the area in the late 1990s.