Frieda Christopher started volunteering in the David Douglas School District in the 1970s — in the very classrooms in Southeast Portland where her kids grew up and learned.
The first time Christopher applied to fill a vacancy on the school board more than three decades ago, she was turned away, despite all of her experience. She chalked it up to board politics, and then jumped at the chance to run for a seat in 1991.
She intended to serve no more than eight years. She ended up serving eight terms.
Come June 30, she will retire as the board’s longest serving member with one of the longest tenures of anyone in the state. Jim Hoag of the Scappoose School Board has served for 41 years.
“Did I intend to be on the board this long?” Christopher said. “No. I figured I’d serve four to eight years, but each time I’d have a superintendent or administrators convince me to run again.”
In 32 years of service, the business consultant and self-proclaimed “perpetual volunteer” helped the school district navigate land acquisitions, adjust to changes in the district’s boundaries and offer all-day preschool in the district’s elementary schools.
Christopher said the board put a lot of its energy into serving David Douglas’ diverse and low-income populations, offering more resources like all-day kindergarten, and now preschool, to help working parents.
She said she felt comfortable stepping down because the board was stable, and she highlighted the importance of having younger members with kids enrolled in the district’s 14 schools.
“To me, an unstable school board makes for an unstable school,” she said. “We have three members that are really stable for the board, and really care about the kids.”
Christopher continues to serve as co-chair on the East Portland Action plan — a community lead effort to improve livability in the area — and also on the Gateway Urban Renewal Area stakeholder group.
Christopher got her master’s degree in business administration from Portland State University in 1994, just days after her youngest son graduated from high school. She then helped companies adapt to developing technology including personal computers.
She retired from Cramer Fish Sciences in 2015, where she served as the chief administrative officer.
Although she will be absent from future board’s meetings, Christopher will still be present in the classroom, she said.
She went back to volunteering at Lincoln Park Elementary School following a pandemic-prompted hiatus. Christopher plans to return in the fall.
“They asked, ‘Well now that you’re going off the board are you still going to do it?” she said. “I said, ‘I never did it for the board. I did it because I like doing it.’”
– Austin De Dios; [email protected]; 503-319-9744; @austindedios
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