The election for OMEA’s Elementary Music Chair and Jazz Chair will open on March 15 and close at midnight on the evening of Saturday April 15. An electronic ballot will be emailed to all current OMEA members. The term of service for both chairs is July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2027. All votes will be crosschecked to ensure voting integrity.
Please take a moment to read about our highly qualified candidates…
Jazz Chair
Cory Francis is the Associate Director of Bands at West Salem High School in Salem, Oregon. He has his B.M.E. from the University of Oregon. Cory is the current OMEA District 4 Co-Band Chair. He oversees the District 4 Band Festival and Solo and Ensemble, and teaches sectionals for Salem-Keizer All-City Concert and Jazz Bands.
Born and raised in Oregon, Cory taught two years of band, choir, and percussion at Banks Middle and High School before moving to Lincoln City to teach jazz band, concert band, and choir at Taft 7-12. In Lincoln City. Cory served as a board member for the Oregon Coast Youth Symphony Festival and Music Is Instrumental which brought new instruments, clinicians, and performance opportunities to students on the Oregon Coast.
Cory is currently teaching at West Salem High School where he instructs the concert bands, jazz bands, marching band, and music in special education.
Cory has been involved with organizing the OMEA Conference for the last three years–serving as Co-Manager for the All-State Jazz Band since 2023. He is eager to serve the state as OMEA’s Jazz Chair.
If elected, he plans to focus his vision on resources for new teachers and advocacy for small school music programs– elevating the voices of all music
educators across Oregon.
Jessika Smith is an award-winning jazz composer,
saxophonist, and music educator. She teaches at Parkrose Middle School and High School in Portland, and she directs her own professional big band comprised of professionals and educators from Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. Jessika has been working with youth jazz ensembles since 2008, and is a graduate of Eastern Washington University (BA Music Education) and the University of Oregon (Master of Music in Jazz Studies). She plays frequently with jazz groups throughout Oregon
and Washington currently including Torrey Newhart’s Obsidian Animals, the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble and the Frank Irwin Quintet.
Jessika presents regularly at music education conferences, and frequently adjudicates jazz festivals and competitions including the Reno Jazz Festival, Fresno City College Jazz Festival, Mt. Hood Community College Jazz Festival, Pacific Lutheran University Jazz Festival, EWU Jazz Festival, Pleasant Hill Jazz Festival, and the Oregon Jazz Festival. Jessika’s debut album, Tricks of Light, features “Cyan Thread”, which won the 2015 National Band Association Young Composer’s Competition and “Lights” which won the 2013 Seattle Women’s Jazz Orchestra’s Jazz Composition Contest.
