Ann's Family

Ann M. Gaffney is the proud mother of two boys, one high school graduate and the other a freshman at Ashland High School. Ann and her family chose to relocate to Ashland because of its strong schools, vibrant community, and beautiful landscape. 

Ann M. Gaffney

Ann is a leader in math education who is passionate about building educational environments in which students and teachers thrive. 

Matt Norris

Matt is a mechanical engineer who designs medical products, loves to fish, and coaches the Ashland High School Robotics Team.
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Reid & Neil

Reid and Neil actively try to avoid having their pictures taken, but can sometimes be caught unawares as they enjoy each other's company. 

A Conversation with Ann Gaffney

You're not from here originally, what brought you to Ashland? 

It is wonderful, and a bit daunting, to get to choose to live anywhere in the country you want. My husband and I were both working remotely, allowing us to move anywhere and still have jobs. We had a whole spreadsheet of criteria to help us compare communities, but the most important line on that spreadsheet, by far, was the quality of the schools. As a professional educator, as a parent, as a caring citizen, having wonderful schools was a non-negotiable. I think it is important, too, to say that we didn't just look at school data at an overall level, but we were very concerned about the disaggregated data that sheds light on inequities within the system, particularly for students with disabilities, students of color, and students experiencing poverty. Although Ashland does see differences in the data in the achievement of students in those subgroups when compared to the general population, Ashland's discrepancies were smaller than those in many other communities. This was an indicator in the data that the Ashland School District was making purposeful choices to provide an equitable education. We had pulled our youngest child from his previous public school because his needs were not being met, and we needed a school system that would be more likely to work for him. 

You say you pulled your child from his previous school. Could you tell us more about that? 

Sure! Our youngest is twice-exceptional. What that means is that he is profoundly gifted and also has a litany of learning disabilities and health impairments including dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and ADHD. What this means in practicality is that he is an incredibly deep and sophisticated thinker who struggles to express what he knows without a huge amount of effort. As a young child in preschool and kindergarten his gifts shone, but as he entered elementary school, his disabilities got more and more in the way.  Work completion was especially difficult. So although his peers and his teachers continually told him how smart he was, he saw evidence to the contrary mounting, literally, in his unfinished work folder. Day after day, approximately half of all the work assigned would end up in that unfinished work folder. As the mountain of paperwork grew, his confidence shrank. This continued through multiple years of school, with Reid's self-image suffering.

I had worked in that particular school district for 20 years. I knew all of Reid's teachers, the administrators, the support personnel, and they were trying to do everything they could to help my child, not just because they would do so for any child, but also because of our long relationship. The problem was, they didn't know enough about what to do. Twice-exceptional students are often removed from educational studies because they are so different from the norm. Training for teachers on twice-exceptional children is practically nonexistent. By third and fourth grade, Reid was calling himself stupid. As parents, we made a plan to change that. 

In January of 2020, we bought a used travel trailer and began renovating it. We planned to quit our jobs, look for remote work, sell our house, and travel the country, home-schooling for year to work on coping strategies while finding a better place to settle, a place with the right school for Reid. We all know what happened in March of 2020. Thankfully, I had not yet quit my job as the Assistant Principal of a local, PK-8 public school. Given that the world was shutting down and unemployment was at its highest since the great depression, we decided to delay for a year. In February of 2021, I told my school district I would not be returning and we began to clean out the home that we had lived in for 18 years.

By September of 2021 we were on the road. Well, first to my brother's driveway to fix the leaking pipes that we didn't know we had until we no longer had our own driveway to fix them in. (Thank you, Steven!) By October, we had visited West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, Maine, which, despite its name, is the easternmost point in the lower 48 states. We were on our way! We criss-crossed the country three times that year, visiting 37 states. ​

I had found remote work and Matt's company let him continue to work remotely. Reid did schoolwork while we worked during the day and we'd all explore in the afternoons and evenings. One of the great things about starting from the East Coast was that our jobs required an Eastern Time Zone schedule, allowing us more time to explore after hours the further west we travelled. 

Our work as homeschool parents centered around building back Reid's confidence in himself and his abilities. Reid wasn't happy with the situation at first. It's incredibly difficult to leave everything you have ever known. He especially missed his older brother who, having graduated from High School, had decided to stay "back home" in New Hampshire. But Reid adapted, we all did, and his self-confidence improved.

We had promised Reid we would only live on the road for a year. It was very important to him, and to us, that he would be able to be back in a "regular school" with same-aged peers before too long. When we started our journey I thought we would find the perfect school for him. If we were willing to move there, wherever "there" was, I was confident that we could find the perfect fit, a place where the school really understood twice-exceptional students. After lots of searching, what we discovered is that, although there are places where twice-exceptional students are understood, they are either private schools that we could not afford, or they depended on certain individuals who understood, rather than a system that did. We didn't want to buy a house in a community only to have that one person leave! What we finally decided was that we needed a school system that focused on providing an excellent education for all students and that our child needed us to be more perpetually present in his life, to advocate for him, and to help him see the beautiful light he brings to the world. That meant we had to figure out our final destination. ​

By May, we had narrowed it down to a college or university town with a "sense of place" in the Mountain or Pacific Time Zones. That's still pretty broad. That's where our spreadsheet came in. Schools, diversity, housing prices, character of the community, beauty, they all played into our decision, but the most important factor was schools. In August of 2022 we settled in Ashland. Matt grew up in Corvallis, so he had vacationed here as a child with his family and I fell in love with Ashland the first time we visited. We headed back east to pack the moving trucks, which arrived the day before Reid started 7th grade at Ashland Middle School. I am pleased to say that the Ashland School District has been a wonderful place for Reid. Perfect, no; but great, yes. It will always be hard for others to see what is going on inside Reid's head. His giftedness masks his disabilities, and his disabilities mask his giftedness. Most people never realize the intense amount of effort his success takes. But he is succeeding, and even more importantly, he is happy with himself and this community. Thank you to all of you who have helped make his experience wonderful. 

What about your older son?

As I mentioned, Neil chose to stay in New Hampshire with his Dad when we began traveling. School had never been his thing. His disabilities also got in his way, but differently than his brother. He worked for a year after High School but then stopped and had trouble getting motivated to re-enter the workforce. About a year ago, Neil joined us here in Ashland. We are so proud of the maturity and growth he has demonstrated this last year. He began working for us and volunteering, and is now employed at SOU in the dining hall. He is a responsible and dedicated employee and is learning to be an adult. I could not be more proud of him. ​

Tell us a bit about your husband, Matt. 

Matt is pretty amazing. He is a mechanical engineer who designs medical products. He is passionate about helping people; it's one of the things I love about him. With our move, Matt cut back his work hours so that he could focus on fixing up our fixer-upper. That progressed into helping Neil transition to adulthood. Now, he spends the majority of his outside-of-work time at Ashland High School where he coaches the Robotics Team, with fellow coach CJ Busenkell. Matt now lives and breathes these amazing kids that he works with every day after school. He is so lucky in that he gets to spend quality time with our child, while also getting to spend quality time with so many of our community's fantastic teenagers.

Why School Board? 

I am passionate about education. The quality of instruction and flexibility of the local school district to meet kids' needs can have a profound impact on students' and families' lives, as you have heard from our story. Today, with Ashland School District's budget situation and the upcoming revision to the Strategic Plan, it is particularly critical that we have members of the school board who have a vision for what the Ashland School District should become. There is no doubt the district must adapt to meet the current and future needs of our students and community while doing so with less money. It is the School Board's role to set the vision and the Superintendent's job to implement it. That makes this particular election so critical. We need a Board of Directors that is focused on education. We need Directors who understand what schools can be, the research behind what works and why, the vision to imagine something even better than what we have today, and the ability to build relationships so that all of us, every single resident of Ashland, can participate in and take pride in our school community. Being a member of a school board has long been something I wanted to someday do. This year, I feel that the issues are too important for me to sit back and not offer up my expertise. I simply must run.  

Gaffney for Ashland Schools
Ashland, Oregon