TROY — In a case of government pressure affecting a small school, a state requirement on financial disclosure led to three of the five members of the Troy School Board resigning in April and no one has filed to replace them in the May 16 election.

“The specific issue in Troy is a change in the requirements by the state,” said Landon Braden, superintendent of the Wallowa County Education Service District on Friday, May 5. “All board members are required to fill out a statement of economic interest where they have to disclose where their income comes from and if they own property outside their primary home. There was a lot of people who felt like it wasn’t any business of the state and several school boards across the state had the same issue.”

The ESD oversees the Troy School District and appointed board replacements in April.

Braden said the requirement for financial disclosure in the past has just applied to leading officials; this year it was expanded to include school board members.

Braden said the intentions behind the state rule are valid but it just hasn’t worked well for small districts, and the impacts have been felt across the state. For example, he said, there may be one person who owns a backhoe in Troy who can do work for the school. But if that person is a school board member or the only one who puts in a bid for the job, the district could be accused of unfairness in its awarding the bid.

“That might be an issue in bigger areas where you have hundreds of options,” Braden said. But, he said the rule has played out in ways that have “proven to be very inequitable for small schools.”

He emphasized that both for such contractors and for those willing and available to serve on the school board, the pool is limited. Troy is estimated to have about 25 full-time residents.

Of the three vacancies on the school board, there are three candidates running write-in campaigns for the positions. Mike Crawford, Travis Beach and Nicole Beach all are running as write-in candidates. They were unable to file by the deadline to get on the May 16 ballot, Braden said. Those elected will assume office July 1.

The Troy School teaches students in grades kindergarten through the eighth grade. Teacher Fred Byers and his wife, music teacher Pam Byers, have four students this year. For junior high and high school, they are bused to Enterprise.

“Where else can you get a ratio of one teacher to four kids?” Braden said.

He said surveys of the community indicate the importance of the school.

“The school is the heart, the hub of that community,” he said. “The most common term is ‘family’ for that school.”

It is conceivable that the school could be closed if board members are not found. But Braden said that’s unlikely.

“We would exhaust every other option before we’d let that happen,” he said.

But how will the new board members deal with the state wanting to know their private financial business? Braden said he believes it could upset members.

“The bottom line is their private financial business is not the business of the state,” he said.