COOS BAY — Shifting schedules and ongoing document gathering are why an Oregon School Boards Association team’s review of Southwestern Oregon Community College is incomplete, officials said.

College employees asked the Board of Education on Monday for preliminary recommendations from the team of consultants. Instead, they learned why the report has yet to be completed.

Chairman Lonny Anderson said the process has taken longer than he expected. He said the delay was the result of having to interview employees and then gathering college documents.

Initially, there were plans to provide the documents to the OSBA team before the interviews. But at Anderson’s request, the document collection process was halted.

“It was my thought that we were convoluting both processes,” he said. “I thought it was better to complete the interviews, then get documents to support or substantiate comments taken out of interviews.”

Roger Gould, the college’s attorney, agreed with Anderson’s thinking.

“I knew it was important to have the interviews conducted as soon as possible,” he said.

He went on to say that collecting the documents would have delayed the interview process, in his opinion. Gould also noted that it was the OSBA team that requested the four-week extension.

“It’s a very reasonable process,” he said.

President Judith Hansen, who is the principal subject of the OSBA team’s report, said the requested documents are being gathered as quickly as possible.

“It’s a top priority on campus,” she said.

The documents include such things as a list of terminations from the past three years, grievance files from the past five years, samples of news releases, the employee handbook, samples of e-mails, and audited budgets from the past three years.

Once the documents are assembled, OSBA staff will take them into consideration, along with the comments from employees interviewed at several sessions in August, to reach a final verdict, Gould said.

The leaders of the classified union, faculty union and exempt staff wanted to hear more.

Tim Dailey, director of student support services, Tom Nicholls, director of enrollment, and Wayne Chandler, president of the Classified Union, asked to see the preliminary results from the team’s interviews. They also said they were surprised the process involved two steps and wanted to know why the board didn’t tell them about what happened at a meeting Wednesday.

The board held an executive session last week to discuss Hansen’s performance and reviewed an initial report from the OSBA team. Anderson explained that the information is incomplete and it would be inappropriate to release a partial report.

“We are not asking for the narrative, but we ask that copies of the recommendations be made public,” said Nicholls.

Gould explained that the initial report might not have the same conclusions as the existing report.

“This is the interview team’s recommendation to OSBA, which will prepare a final report that could be entirely different,” he said.

Gould also said, without getting into details, that the board was surprised at the turn of events with regard to the steps involved in the review process.

When the three employee group leaders asked to know how the campus would learn the results of the final report, Anderson said the next report should be public.

“I do not anticipate the recommendation to be confidential, but I didn’t anticipate the recommendation to be confidential in the first report,” he said.