Late last week, a Newberg resident reported that, according to a FOIA request, the Newberg Schools district office revealed that “between Jan. 2022 to early March 2023, 197 teachers and staff left Newberg schools.” This exodus represents a significant percent of Newberg Schools employees, a stunning number that reflects enormous loss for our community: All that institutional memory, gone. All that talent, scattered to nearby districts.

The current school board and superintendent have persistently said that Newberg’s losses are part of a nation-wide personnel problem, and that similar depletions of work forces happened in nearby districts, too. In claiming that educators are leaving the profession altogether, the board hopes to deflect responsibility, unwilling to consider that their own failed policies, their ethical lapses, and their politically-motivated actions have created a toxic work environment in Newberg, compelling employees (nearly 200 of them!) to flee.

But don’t take our word for it: listen to the educators’ stories, including the one we’ve reprinted below. The teacher works in the district, but because they fear recrimination and harassment, they’ve asked that their story be published anonymously. “Before the board and its advocates critique me for ‘living in fear,’” they write, “perhaps consider who created, cultivated, and capitalized on that very fear.”

Here’s their perspective. In particular, the teacher is talking about Brown’s statement made at a school board meeting and available here.

In the past year and a half, Chair Dave Brown has repeated sentiments we can trace back to at least August 10, 2021. At a board meeting that night, Brown made several statements that danced around the issue of why our district faced public backlash, taking the Zoom-call stage and to talk about division, politics, the value of hard work, and the content of our hearts. While he has vocalized these ideas, I have yet to see Brown live any of them out as the School Board Chair. He’s claimed to focus on maintaining high standards and pushing for “hard work and no excuses” from our staff and students.

Any educator, regardless of title, would likely agree that our students need to be challenged to work hard, to an extent. Our students deserve to be held to a high standard of academic achievement because we know they are capable of it. In fact, a trauma-sensitive educator will tell you students need healthy cognitive challenges to push them to work hard in order to develop resilience, self-efficacy, and academic success. We know people rise to the challenge when it’s presented to them, and we know our students need scaffolds – or intentionally planned supports – to fulfill the challenge.

Most educators will not, however, tell you that Brown’s approach has been effective.

What he calls excuses, we call barriers. While he writes off the trauma and difficult circumstances of our students as excuses, our educators are working with students to reach a point of physiological safety so they can learn. If you walk into any entry-level education course, you’ll learn right away about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and other similar models. These models show the importance of physical and psychological safety before we’re able to process new information and learn. If a student does not feel safe and cared for, their ability to develop skills and take on cognitive challenges will be severely inhibited. Our educators are working non-stop to create the conditions where students can feel safe in order to learn.

All the while, this Board, under Brown’s leadership, has created an environment where many students can’t work hard. Rather, this Board has been detrimental to students by placing the weight of problems on the shoulders of children and adolescents. As Brown said in August 2021, “As a country, I feel like we’re trying to bring a lot of adult and grown up battles into the classroom.” Last year, as the school board was pushing for their flag ban, facing multiple lawsuits, firing a trusted superintendent, I watched as my students’ shoulders sagged under the weight. I maintained my standards; I knew my students were capable of deep, complex thought. 

But I never had board-directed support about the high expectations in my classroom. Instead, I saw more and more students requesting to take a break. To go to the counseling office. To take a lap. As the chaos spiraled, so did the behaviors of the very students who were struggling to bear the weight of what Brown calls “grown-up battles.”

Students of color shared fear of racism and bigoted remarks as they walked through the halls. LGBTQIA+ students, the ones who shared their identities with others, expressed fear of bullying and harassment. And we can only guess how many closeted students, especially students of color, feared being outed or even uttering their identity. 

These bans and policy moves, in Newberg and across the country, are not about “protecting children.” They’re about protecting power and control out of fear of something people don’t understand. If it was about protecting children, we’d look at what they need to grow and thrive in developmentally appropriate ways. Instead, we’re breaking down the safety of our schools for our students – regardless of background and identity – in order to create a political arena. We strip our buildings of safety, making hard work impossible and risking the developmental progress of our students.

All of the work to create a productive learning environment for my students in my classroom was, and is, limited to the resources I have available between my team and my own means. All of the work to create space for students to have “hard work and no excuses” was my own, and was undermined every time the Board met. As a teacher, I work with students on a daily basis to promote “hard work and no excuses.” My students know they will be compassionately held accountable, given space to make mistakes while also being responsible for those mistakes. Excuses are not allowed, but explanations are. Hard work and high standards only work when we have compassion.

But from Dave Brown? I have yet to see him live out what he said at the start of the chaos he helped stir up and led the charge on. Standards? Hard work? Compassion? Nope. But excuses? Again, and again, and again. It’s always someone else. The old superintendent, the teachers’ union, the “liberal” board members who stepped down, the media. Probably me, if he ever reads this. And yet, I have yet to see him take responsibility for the ways his reckless leadership has harmed this district financially, academically, professionally, and – for our remaining staff and students – mentally and emotionally. Dave Brown and I, on the surface, agree about the importance of high standards and hard work. We clearly disagree, however, on what these look like.

For him, it means removing psychological safety from schools and lowering the standards of our district. (Or maybe we hired B&B so their poor grammar and inability to credit staff members with their own names would make our elementary-school students seem more impressive?) It means ignoring research and best practices designed to support student well-being and success in and out of the classroom.

It means vilifying the professional and revered educators and leaders in his own district in order to push his own agenda. It means instilling fear in educators so they’re afraid of speaking out, trying new strategies, or teaching their board-approved curriculum for fear of retaliation and public harassment.

It means taking away student identity and autonomy in the name of “colorblindness” and “removing politics” from schools. It means criticizing the expertise of staff members, pushing many out of his district because he refused to follow his own suggestion of listening to people and preventing division.

It means blaming our educators for the mass exodus of students and extraordinary financial losses this district has faced at his hands. It means smearing the blood he has coated his hands in on the educators and leaders who have worked to triage an entire school district.

With his own criteria at the forefront, Dave Brown has failed on all accounts. Our educators are all hard working. Brown is all excuses.

Do you work in the Newberg school district or did the Newberg school board compel you to leave this district? We would love to hear your story, and can publish it anonymously on our site. Your voices, and your words, matter to us, and to the transformation of our school board. Feel free to email us at
betternsdschoolboard@gmail.com.

Newberg deserves better. Your vote on May 16 matters.

If you’re registered to vote in Yamhill County, your ballot should arrive on April 26; if you’re not registered to vote, you have until April 25 to do so (here’s the link to online registration!). This election year, every vote is crucial to electing a non-partisan, competent, and accountable school board that will right the floundering ship that is currently the Newberg School District. 

While the voters’ pamphlet that accompanies your ballots should reliably provide guidance in helping you vote, make sure you read the very fine print tucked away on page two of the document:

“The candidate statements and measure arguments contained in this pamphlet are printed as submitted and have not been verified for accuracy by the county.”

This tidbit of information is crucial, because goodness: the candidate statements from Newberg school board incumbents are in dire need of some fact-checking. While we acknowledge that candidate position statements will always be aspirational, this spring’s claims by school board incumbents suggest they are living in an alternate reality, one in which Newberg schools are finally thriving, educators are finally supported, and students are finally experiencing academic success. 

Judging by the candidate statements, Chair Dave Brown deserves a major award for unifying the community, saving Newberg from the dark ages and rescuing children everywhere from the educational “indoctrination centers” that were once Newberg schools. Brown’s statement asserts that “we can once again be proud of our schools,” even though our school board’s actions have helped put Newberg in the national news several times in the last two years–and not for good reasons.  

Brown claims that “our district has experienced a remarkable turnaround.” The turn in our schools has been remarkable, but not in the way Brown wants us to believe. Here’s some of the ways Newberg schools have “turned around” since Brown became board chair in 2021:

The district has lost 139 educators, who left the toxic work environment in Newberg. 

The current board will say this reflects “national trends,” but no other nearby district lost educators at this rate, and many former employees did not quit education altogether (which is a national trend). Instead, educators moved to positions elsewhere, taking their institutional memory and skills with them.

The district has moved from a stable financial position to one of financial uncertainty.

Between legal fees (which increased 1000 percent from over the course of one year, according to Oregon CARES PAC), the no cause firing of Dr. Joe Morelock, and lost revenue in the district, Newberg schools will face big cuts in programming next year. You can read more about this here.

The district is hemorrhaging students.

Chair Brown’s statement suggests Newberg has “increased student enrollment,” but the numbers don’t lie. In one academic year, the Newberg School District lost 130 students, more than any other nearby district. McMinnville gained 78 students, and Sheridan gained 58; other schools who lost students include Sherwood (who lost 2) and Yamhill-Carlton (who lost 9). The NSD loss reflects about $1.2 million in funding. 

The school board has violated ethical standards set by the state of Oregon.

You can read more about the ethics violations in this post. In addition to violating public meeting laws, the board is also embroiled in several lawsuits that might cost the district–and thus the students–millions of taxpayer dollars. This betrayal of ethical principles does not reflect the idea of “accountability” upon which the incumbents seem to be running.

For a school board who claims to have created “overall staff, parent and student satisfaction,” according to another incumbent’s voter pamphlet statement, there certainly is evidence that plenty of people in Newberg are not satisfied, including the Newberg Educational Association, which has not endorsed any of the incumbents running for reelection, nor a significant number of parents, organizing to make sure their children get competent, safe, accountable representation on next year’s board.

The ballot box is our best opportunity to truly turn around a failing district. If you’re not registered to vote yet, please take the time to do so. And then, on May 16, let’s deliver the “turnaround” this community really deserves, rather than the one dreamed up out of whole cloth.

On Friday afternoon, the Newberg Public Schools Facebook page posted a picture of a dozen Newberg-area business and government leaders enjoying lunch together at arguably the best restaurant in town, Rosmarino’s. The photo included Superintendent Stephen Phillips, Newberg Mayor Bill Rosacker, Newberg Councilperson Elise Yarnell, and Yamhill County Commissioner Lindsey Berschauer, as well as other folks representing Newberg’s business district, brought together with the premise of finding common ground and creating partnerships within Newberg.

Of course, Newberg is desperately in need of finding common ground and collaboration. This Rosmarino’s meeting was ostensibly intended to bridge a chasm between groups, and certainly that should be lauded. One potential outcome, as Councilperson Yarnell noted in the post comments, is a partnership with Commissioner Berschauer, bringing fentanyl addiction curriculum to local schools. This is an important initiative, and could make a difference in our community. 

And yet, the picture itself is tone-deaf at best. At worst, it serves as a reminder of who remains marginalized in our community and by our school board, providing a stark representation of who gets to sit at the table where decisions are made (and good Italian food consumed); and who is on the outside, impacted by decisions about which they have no say (like deciding how to spend the taxpayer money that presumably paid for a Rosmarino’s feast).

It’s not clear who initiated this dinner, or who received invites. As one Facebook commenter noted, tongue firmly planted in cheek, “I see so much minority representation and inclusivity in this photo. I forgot to mention that there are also many parents of Newberg students.”  In response, someone who attended the meal, Kristin Stoller, said she might have been the only person there with children in the Newberg school district. Every person in the picture was white.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, this one might have narrated an entire epic about the last few years in Newberg, when a powerful few make decisions in the name of “what our community needs,” marginalizing large swaths of the community in the process.

Fundamentally, though, if the leaders seated at that table wanted to provide healing for a divided community, there are easily-achievable steps they could take right now to begin building bridges:

• They could talk directly to constituents who have asked to meet with them. School Board Chair Dave Brown, smiling at the table, has refused meetings with parents his board serves. According to one response to the picture, a constituent–and a community leader in his own right–has asked three times in the last month to meet with Brown, who says there’s no reason to meet because this person “is not a supporter.”

• They could take accountability for some of the mistakes they’ve made. That includes the school board’s back-room planning to fire former Superintendent Joe Morelock, recently ruled unethical by the Oregon Ethical Commission. They could apologize for ways their own actions have hurt students, rather than consistently blaming previous boards for the mistakes this current board has made. They could admit that their decisions compelled over 100 educators to leave the district, rather than blaming the astounding exodus on national trends.

• Chairman Brown could apologize for his grievance-heavy public comments. This includes the six-minute discourse he gave at a school board meeting less than three days before the Rosmarino’s luncheon, during which he railed against people in his district, while also obfuscating about when he filed his re-election paperwork.

• Chairman Brown and other community leaders could publicly disavow the work of the Yamhill Advocate. That publication’s smear campaigns resulted in death threats against Councilperson Yarnell; it has continually asserted that progressives in Newberg are part of a mafia, intent on grooming children. As one Facebook commenter noted, “If Dave REALLY means that wants Newberg to heal, then he will distance himself & mention PUBLICLY that Carey Martell’s ‘shenanigans’ aren’t welcomed & are a detriment to moving forward in the upcoming May school board elections.” 

Without taking these steps, claims about building bridges seem like empty promises, a dinner at Rosmarino’s more of a campaign photo opportunity than a good-faith attempt to build bridges Newberg leaders themselves have burned. 

The school district’s Facebook page promises that there will be more dinners, and more conversations. Perhaps this is indeed the step forward the district needs to take. Will the next conversation have far more representation than the all-white, CIS-gendered diners at the last luncheon?

Because while who is at the table matters, it’s who is absent from the table that might matter more. 

​​Tuesday night’s Newberg School Board meeting was bookended by comments: in the meeting’s opening minutes, members of the public were given a chance to speak; in the meeting’s final minutes, the board itself was provided an opportunity to talk about the work they’ve done to make education better in the Newberg schools. 

Instead of talking about students, or highlighting the good work teachers have done, or even presenting information on the “improved academic outcomes” the board continues to vaunt, the school board’s comments were characterized by division and anger. The board also made clear that they themselves have been wronged, and not the students who have suffered through several years of a decimated school system.

The comments—those at the beginning, and those at the end—provide a good micro-narrative of the conflict continuing to unfold in our community, and of a board’s chair intent on gaslighting a community into believing he is a victim of a Newberg bullying campaign.

A public comment from Elaine Koskela, identified as a Newberg resident for most of forty years, addressed the divisions roiling our community, noting that school board meetings now strike a tone of fear and resentment, circling wagons around board supporters who are part of the in crowd, and alienating those who don’t proclaim appropriate fealty to the board. Koskela noted that students on the margins are often on the outside, their needs unmet by board decisions.

Later comments by Board Chair Dave Brown essentially proved Koskela’s point, as he argued that some ambiguous they has been on a campaign to destroy him and his fellow board members: that they are criticizing any decision he makes; that they want the school district to fail; and that they accuse him of hating some students, even though the board supports “every single student they come across, every single time.”

Brown’s language in and of itself creates a distinction between the board and their supporters, who are presumably doing everything possible for the students, and everyone else, who apparently cares little for students, and who want the school district to fail so that Brown and his fellow board members will also fail.

Other board members gave a compelling lead-up to Brown’s grievances, talking more about their work than the teachers and students they serve. One director reported that the board is finally “rowing in the same direction,” despite countless metrics that suggest that not everyone in the district is even on the same boat, let alone rowing in concord with the board.

Another director called out the Newberg Education Association, saying that the NEA’s endorsement of five school board candidates for May’s election—none currently on the board—is wrong, a reflection not of teachers’ dissatisfaction with board decisions, but of a union trying to manipulate teachers into voting a certain way.

Startlingly lacking in all the board’s comments is any kind of commendation of teachers, and the hard work they are doing. Or of students, and their achievements. Or of the school’s programs that have succeeded because of hard-working teachers, of dedicated parent volunteers, and of enthusiastic students. (Indeed, a director asserted that the planned creation of a Parent Bills of Rights is not a “negative,” as if those who are questioning the need of a new bill are somehow hoping to circumvent parent involvement completely.)

If the school board really is about student success and academic outcomes, they spend very little time during their comments talking about that, and a whole lot of energy addressing the ways a cabal in Newberg is doing them wrong.

In other words, they seem to be circling the wagons.

Director Brown, during his remarks, said “The people of Newberg deserve better. They deserve an open communication, and the parents deserve a school that’s transparent.” On this, at least, we can agree.

When people show you who they are, believe them.

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, and so it seems appropriate that the Newberg School Board Policy Committee met to consider, among other things, the district’s policy about teen dating violence. If you weren’t paying attention, you might not know about the directors’ discussion regarding this policy, and about one director’s admission that some emotional abuse might just “go with the territory of dating, I’m afraid.”

During the policy meeting, which you can watch here, Director Brian Shannon uses his own teen dating experience to argue that the already-established policy is creating “landmines” for students to walk through, and that students are simply going to decide not to date, rather than worry that they might be accused of committing emotional abuse. The data shows that teenagers aren’t dating as much, Shannon says, and “our species is going to suffer as a result of this.” 

It is true, young people are not dating at rates similar to previous generations. There is no data about Newberg teens and their dating habits, though, and statistics about Gen Z and dating show a more complicated picture than Director Shannon would suggest in his comments about emotional abuse. 

Choosing not to date at all rather than risk emotional abuse seems like a good boundary to take, actually, and it’s doubtful that our species will meet its end because high schoolers decide not to date. At any rate, here is what the Newberg School District policy currently says about teen violence: 

“Teen dating violence” means: 

1. A pattern of behavior in which a person uses or threatens to use physical, mental, or emotional abuse to control another person who is in a dating relationship with the person, where one or both persons are 13 to 19 years of age; or 

2. Behavior by which a person uses or threatens to use sexual violence against another person who is in a dating relationship with the person, where one or both persons are 13 to 19 years of age.

At the meeting on February 22, 2023, Director Shannon objected to the policy’s first definition of teen dating violence, saying that emotional abuse comes with the territory of dating, and that he himself had “some pretty manipulative girlfriends in high school.” He goes on to say “I didn’t realize I was being subject to teen dating violence that whole time because they certainly emotionally abused me.”

Because the definition is so broad, Director Shannon says, it could just come down to a girl deciding that a guy has been mean to her, and she can report the guy for violence, causing issues for the guy. His suppositions about whether emotional abuse should be part of the description or not get no pushback from the other directors there, and only mild pushback from Human Resource Director Scott Linenberger, who says that the policy is about more than teens being mean to each other; he says that teen dating violence, even emotional abuse, should show a “sustained pattern of behavior.” (Though a moment later, Linenberger admits that Director Shannon’s point is taken, and that not including emotional abuse as part of the policy might be feasible.)

Never mind that Director Shannon chose to use an example of a girl emotionally abusing a boy, rather than recognizing (as data shows) that emotional abuse is used equally by boys and girls in relationships. Never mind as well that the same data shows that emotional abuse is the most prevalent form of dating violence for teens. 

The entire meeting is worth a watch. At a time when the Newberg School Board is arguing that parents deserve rights to protect their children from sex- and gender identity-related indoctrination, they are hoping to rewrite a policy on teen dating violence. Doing so would remove significant protections for those who face psychological abuse in their relationships, simply because such violence “comes with the territory” of dating. 

When people show you who they are, believe them.

Today’s post is about a difficult subject: the physical safety of our public school students. It is written by James Wolfer, who is running against current board chair Dave Brown in school zone 6.

A little bit about James: He is a father, School Resource Officer, and Coast Guard Reservist. He is a Newberg native, graduating from both NHS and George Fox University.

To follow James:

Website | Email: teamjames@jameswolfer.com

2,067 miles separate Newberg and Uvalde, TX. Last year’s school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde was incredibly upsetting to me not only as a parent, but also as a school resource officer. There were multiple abject failures leading to the tragic deaths of 19 students and 2 educators. The state of Texas passed school safety legislation in 2018 that collectively we saw was ineffective. Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District last updated their policies about threatening conduct and weapons in October 2021. The policy for threats to a school in Newberg hasn’t been updated by our school board since 2000. Since 2000, the Washington Post reports there have been 366 school shootings and 338,000 students impacted by gun violence at school.

Extremely dangerous drugs are flooding our communities and getting into our schools, increasing the risk of overdose deaths for students and staff. We need robust education on addiction, a policy basis for how to treat youth addiction in our schools, and naloxone (Narcan) in every school building.

Student mental health issues have become epidemic, with suicides and suicidal ideation touching every school district – Newberg in particular in recent years. Our schools have to invest in improvements to the mental health supports in Newberg schools to provide top-of-the-line interventions. Our schools must become expert on cultural competencies, provide trauma-informed care, and recognize additional supports that kids from historically-marginalized groups may need.

Safety is a complex issue. When we’re responsive to what our kids are going through, we can build policy to prevent the worst-case scenarios and create conditions where Newberg students not only survive, but thrive to become treasured adults in our community.