What Do The People of Newberg Deserve?

​​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.

Millions in Funding at Stake: Will You Weigh In?

The Newberg School Board will hold its next meeting tomorrow, and according to the board agenda, there will be a discussion about “SIA.” The good news? The agenda suggests the discussion is “open for comments,” presumably from the public.

The bad news? The school board has yet to inform the public about what SIA is, how it impacts the school district, whether the board has even created a SIA plan, and what that plan looks like. 

Which raises the question: How will people be able to make comments, if they have been given no information about the initiative and the district’s plans for up to $5 million (or more) of funding SIA might provide?  

A bit of history: The Student Investment Account (SIA) funds are non-competitive grants available to all Oregon school districts. K-12 education funding in Oregon comes from state income taxes, lottery funds, property taxes, and federal funds. SIA funds fall under the Student Success Act (2019), which added $1 billion in funding per year for Oregon schools and students. According to the Oregon Education Association website, “This money could be used for  additional instructional time, providing mental and behavioral health supports, reducing class size, implementing a more well-rounded education, fully funding High School Success (Measure 98), improving school safety and more.”

In past applications, Newberg has allotted its SIA funds for reading specialists, behavioral counselors, drug/alcohol counselors, and other learning support efforts. (You can read past applications here.) Given this board’s lack of transparency and its inability to follow well-established OSBA policies, it’s not clear whether Newberg schools will receive this money. Given how strapped the district is financially, and the rumored cuts to important programs, it seems like leaving millions on the table would not be the best idea. 

The application itself requires significant community engagement, but the Newberg School District has offered no forums for engagement, beyond empathy interviews and youth surveys which were not rigorous nor equitable, and assuredly did not include representative populations that will be most served by SIA money: Spanish-speaking, special education, economically disadvantaged, and migrant families. For a board intent on providing “parents’ rights,” parents representing these groups have not been contacted, their needs not inventoried, in any systematic ways.  The law which created the SIA funds requires school districts to use public input to create their plans, and school boards to provide a place and time for public comment on the district’s SIA plan. But there is no plan available on which the public can comment. By now, the board should have at least posted their application online and have a paper copy available at the district office for people to review. There should have been at least one, if not two, presentations to the board about the SIA application, and an opportunity for parents to provide input before a final draft is due to the state by March 31. 

Now, the school board is asking for comments on an application no one has seen. There will be no opportunities to consider revisions to an application, if the community makes comments. With the application due at the end of March, and no more meetings scheduled this month, the community will have no idea what the final application looks like.

By way of comparison, Sherwood schools presented the first read of their SIA application in January, with the report and budget posted, and opened for public comments. Their budget is $5 million, and their planned apportion of the money is available on their website. 

It’s not clear why the Newberg school board has not followed a similar process, why they have not been transparent about the process they have followed, and why they are risking millions of dollars that might help those needing educational support in our district. Is this another example of incompetence? Are they refusing the money because of a politically-motivated attempt to cut ties with federal funding? 

As with many of the school board’s actions, this unwillingness to follow policy is baffling, especially with so much instructional  money on the line. 

So we want to know: will you weigh in? 

At the meeting tomorrow night, of course, but also at the May election. Because with millions of dollars potentially lost, our kids lose, too. 

Ethics Are Another Matter . . .

ACCOUNTABILITY

TRANSPARENCY

COMPETENCE

For the last two years, those who have opposed the Newberg School Board have argued for accountability, transparency, and competence in its operation. The firing of Dr. Joe Morelock at a November 9, 2021, meeting is emblematic of the board’s lack of accountability. Its lack of transparency. And its lack of competence, which led to multiple ethics violations. 

Finally, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission is taking notice.

The Newberg Graphic reported this week that the ethics commission has issued reports about the November 2021 meeting, affirming that the Newberg School Board violated state rules governing administrative boards when it chose to fire Dr. Morelock.

At the time, the board’s majority–Chair Dave Brown, Vice-Chair Brian Shannon, Trevor DeHart, and Renee Powell–failed to follow policies governing executive sessions, including notifying Morelock and other board members about the nature of the executive session. The three other board members, Rebecca Piros, Brandy Penner, and Ines Pina, were supposed to be notified alongside Morelock at least 24 hours in advance of the executive session, and were supposed to receive supporting material (including complaints made against Morelock) before the meeting.

Instead, the board majority violated Oregon administrative ethics by

  • Adding the executive meeting agenda at the last minute, notifying the board only 1.5 hours before the meeting and without supporting documents. (The rules dictate that notice needs to be given 24 hours in advance.)
  • Not telling three board members or Morelock what the nature of the executive meeting might be.
  • Failing to accommodate Piros’ visual impairment with material about the meeting that would help her participate (an ADA non-compliance violation).
  • Providing the board members with a packet containing the complaints regarding Morelock’s tenure as superintendent, and which presumably justified his firing.
  • Transgressing OAR 199-040-0030, which states that Morelock should have been given information about his termination and the complaints at least 24 hours, or one business day, prior to the executive session. 

The complaints themselves suggest the baselessness of Morelock’s firing, and were focused primarily on  vaccine mandates and why Morelock might refuse to apply the board’s flag ban. It was unclear how the complaints were gathered, or how Morelock himself was responsible to rectify them. You can read all the complaints in the complaint, including “Why have you let go of good substitute teachers that aren’t vaccinated but other school districts aren’t requiring vaccines?” and “Why don’t you have more control over your staff? They are out of control, and are not following policies/procedures.”

You can access the case information on the Oregon Government Ethics Commission here. The Newberg Graphic also covered the story here, although the heroic efforts of three board members–Piros, Penner, and Pina–is buried by the story’s lead. Each woman self-reported her attendance at the executive session at which Morelock was fired, making them complicit in the ethics violations. 

And still, they were left with an untenable choice that night. They could leave the meeting right away, well aware of the ethics violations. Or, they could stay at the executive session, knowing that they represented their constituents and that the wrongful termination of Morelock might jeopardize some students and educators they had been elected to represent. 

They chose to stay, even though that meant they would also face investigation by the ethics commission. 

In the end, Morelock was fired without cause, costing the district $175,000 in his salary for the year, plus another salary for the newly-hired superintendent. 

The four board members were not transparent about their actions on that night in November 2021 and now, over a year later, we finally know just how troubling Morelock’s firing was. Led by their chair and vice chair, the board acted in a way that was not transparent nor ethical. It could be that Brown and Shannon were merely incompetent when they failed to follow well-established policies, but either through incompetence or unethical behavior, they violated rules set in place for a reason. 

Does Newberg really want school board members who can’t model the kind of moral, competent, transparent leadership our children deserve? The election on May 16 should answer this question. 

A Super Update that isn’t Super

The issue of people without housing in Newberg has become another point of division in our community, turning neighbors against each other and stoking fear, with some citizens asserting that those who are homeless will make Newberg into “another Portland,” and that people without housing pose a particular threat to school children. 

Now, the head of Newberg schools seems to be jumping into the fray, reinforcing the notion that people without housing are drug addicts. For some people, the latest superintendent update brings to mind the efforts made last summer to ban homeless camps near schools–an effort spearheaded by (now) Mayor William Rusacker and City Councilwoman Robin Wheatley. Under the guise of protecting children, the initiative proposed by Rusaker et al. characterized those experiencing homelessness as dangerous predators, drug addicts and sexual offenders.  

In the Newberg school district’s latest video update, Superintendent Steven Phillips visits the Newberg Emergency Shelter and talks with one of its employees, Matt Bunn, who advocates well for the shelter’s work. In the interview, it is clear Matt understands the complex nature of homelessness, and he resists any attempt to flatten or demonize the lives of the people he serves.

And yet, despite what might be a positive intent, the video continues to dehumanize those who are houseless, tying those experiencing homelessness directly to fentanyl use, contributing to the fear-mongering rhetoric. This language is used to rally people to support a proposed ballot measure limiting the spaces where those who are homeless can exist in Newberg.

The video opens with statistics about fentanyl use, including the claim that “In Oregon, drug use is the primary cause of homelessness.” Even a quick search of Google shows this claim is not necessarily true: one survey says mental illness is the highest cause of homelessness in Oregon; the Portland Rescue Mission asserts that homelessness is too complex to indicate only one cause. Many studies show that over 50 percent of women and children needing shelter are escaping domestic violence, and one important 2021 study points out that “Homelessness is a Housing Problem.” This and other studies have concluded that a community’s cost of housing and inadequate housing supply is the number one indicator of whether someone experiences homelessness. 

By directly tying fentanyl use to homelessness in Newberg, the superintendent’s update fails to address the complexities of homelessness, and instead becomes one more way the school administration–in the name of “taking politics out of schools”–is making a political stand, one that will harm students in Newberg facing housing instability and the stigma of houselessness.

It’s also puzzling why the superintendent update would need to wade into this clearly political debate at all. Parents in the school district have yet to be informed about: 

  • Graduation rates
  • Enrollment numbers
  • The district’s financial picture
  • New curriculum adoptions
  • Educators’ professional development
  • Strategic planning
  • Plans for academic outcomes

One response on the school district’s Facebook page captures the frustration with the superintendent updates. A constituyente writes, ”Con todos los problemas que hay en las escuelas y el superintendente prefiere hacer videos. Ya pasó hoy por la High School o Mountain View? Ya fue a ver si hay alguna necesidad en alguna de las oficinas del distrito escolar?”  (“With all the problems going on in the schools and the superintendent prefers to make videos. Have you been to the High School or Mountain View today? Have you already gone to see if there is a need in any of the school district offices?”)

A fully transparent and fully functioning school board and its district administrators would do well to inform the community about what is happening in its schools and programs. It might consider the impact of houselessness on its students, and it might address potential solutions the school district can provide to help students find stability in the classroom, especially when life outside of school hours is unstable. 

A school board and administration that stigmatizes those who are houseless by insisting the “primary cause” of homelessness is drug addiction (specifically fentanyl use), and who ostensibly support an anti-homeless agenda in Newberg, is being political, no matter what they say about wanting to save schools.

A Parents’ Rights Committee? Not So Fast

At the Newberg School Board meeting Tuesday night (2/28), an excellent case was made to halt plans for the district-wide “parents’ rights committee,” a plan that had been announced less than a week ago, ostensibly by the school board itself.  (We had some questions about that announcement, which we published here.) 

The people making the case against the committee’s construction? The Newberg School Board.

The most compelling argument was made by Director Raquel Peregrino de Brito, who asked that the board consider a parents’ rights policy written in 2007 and revised by the school board in 2017. You can read about the KAB policy Peregrino de Brito references here. According to the director, having a new committee to consider parents’ rights will continue to “swirl conflict” in the district, and that it might be better to work with an existing policy, rather than create something new out of whole cloth. 

We couldn’t agree more. But Director Peregrino de Brito’s comment was also puzzling, as she had, in a fall board meeting, used her public comment time to read a statement proclaiming November as parents’ rights in education month. It could be that the director herself realized a fundamental problem with a parents’ rights committee open to any parent who wants to join: namely, that some parents will advocate for the rights of children who the board has assiduously tried to marginalize the last two years. 

Earlier in the same meeting, the Newberg School Board made an even more powerful case for the redundancy of a parents’ rights committee, when Elise Yarnell and Dr. Jeri Turgesen presented on the Newberg schools’ wellness center. The presentation reflected the powerful and transformative work the center is doing to combat our community’s teen mental health crisis, and significantly, the center’s representatives showed how integral parent input is to the center’s ongoing work. 

At one point, Director Brian Shannon asked whether the health center notified parents about their children’s visit to the center, after wondering about the center offering gender transition services (the answer is no, they do not). Dr. Turgesen not only reaffirmed the law (that children under 14 seeking care need parental approval), but also that in every case, save for when a child might be endangered, the parents are part of a student’s wrap-around care. 

“My absolute goal, and the goal of the clinic, is to involve family members at every encounter,” she said. “If they have imminent risk or safety concerns for why families can’t be involved, we will work with that. But our goal is to absolutely have family involvement.”

The presentation clearly undermines any argument about parents’ lack of rights in schools, showing that in students’ most vulnerable moments—when they are having a mental health crisis, for example—parents are intimately involved in care. They are invited into students’ progress toward healing, just as they are invited to partner with teachers to help students’ educational progress.

As the meeting drew to a close, Superintendent Steven Philips reiterated that parents’ rights are an important part of the educational process. This is true—and he’s already heading a district where parents have ample rights. Convening a new committee to craft a parents’ right policy seems superfluous and divisive. By the meeting’s end, even he seemed less sure about the need for the committee, his own board making a compelling case that such a committee was unnecessary. 

A Parents’ Rights Committee? We Have Questions

On Friday, the Newberg School Board announced on their social media platforms that they are forming a “parents’ rights advisory committee.” An email was also sent out to parents from Brett Royer on Friday with the same announcement. In both the social media posts and the email, parents were asked to email this address and answer several questions about why they would want to be on a parents’ rights advisory committee. 

In a later post, we will be doing a deeper dive into what’s potentially wrong with “parents’ rights” statements, and how parents’ rights have become another salvo in the cultural wars fought on the battlefield of schools nationwide. For a school board ostensibly intent on taking politics out of schools, discussions about parents’ rights are politically charged, suggesting that those hoping to save our schools from politics really had something else in mind. 

But another post, another time.

For now, given the confusing messaging around this parents’ rights advisory committee, its ambiguous intent, and the lack of clarity about who will be invited to this meeting, we have more questions than answers. Some of these questions were raised in comments on the school district’s social media page, which is a step in the direction of transparency; rather than turning comments off, someone was answering the questions raised. 

However, a number of questions about this committee remain, including 

  • Who was answering the questions on the social media pages, and does the person answering the questions have the authority to clarify confusing parts of the invitation to join the committee?
  • That person said all parents are welcome to be on the committee. Is it true that all parents are welcome? If so, why do parents have to send vetting questions to a specific email?
  • Speaking of email, why is Brett Royer, the director of transportation for the district, sending a non-transportation related email out to parents? Is Brett Royer working for the communications department? Is he convening the committee?
  • And if not Royer, who has convened this committee? The superintendent? The school board? Teachers? 
  • Who will provide oversight in the creation of a parents’ rights policy? Why is such a policy needed, when parents already have significant rights granted them by existing policies, and by the Oregon Department of Education? 
  • If the school board is about helping facilitate learning for children, why is the committee’s focus seemingly on being “positive voices for parents in the district” rather than a positive voice for children? (What does it mean to be a “positive voice” for parents?)
  • Will this advisory committee push for the rights of all parents in the district? Wouldn’t creating a “positive voice” for parents mean assuring that the children of all parents have a safe environment in which to learn? Would that include those parents whose children have lacked IEP support this year? Those parents whose children are LGBTQIA, and are seeking a safe place for their kids to learn? Those parents who would like their children’s curriculum to include a robust understanding of history, one that acknowledges systemic racism? Those parents who would like to send their sons and daughters to high school knowing that the board’s recent policy discussions about hazing and teen dating violence have been renounced by the district’s leadership? 

If this invitation really is for all parents, then we hope the school board–or, really, whoever is putting this committee together–has space for a very big table, because there are many parents who have already been working tirelessly to make sure their children’s rights are protected.

Is Emotional Abuse Just Part of Teen Dating?

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.

GUIDING THE DISTRICT: Empathy Interviews v. Listening Sessions/Strategic Plan

In our last post, we explained the rigorous process undertaken by the Newberg School Board and Dr. Joe Morelock, ahead of the 2018-2021 strategic plan. Following a tiered process described by the Oregon Department of Education, the school board held multiple listening sessions that were well publicized and open to the public.

Those listening sessions also removed barriers that might have prevented stakeholders from attending, providing childcare, translators, and accessible documents to assure the participation of almost anyone. The resulting strategic plan was publicized, and has helped direct decisions about how to improve student outcomes, and how to use the district’s resources.

At the February 14, 2023, Newberg School District meeting, Dr. Stephen Phillips said he plans to expand empathy in the next few months. According to an article from the district, Phillips said “The first step for us will be to establish industry-standard, two-way communication systems for schools.” 

Phillips met with “over 30” parents, students, staff, and faculty for these interviews, and felt like the “data we received was more valuable than any mean tweet in helping guide our strategy for the future.” Qualitative data like that gathered by empathy interviews is important; it’s good that the school board is not letting social media drive its decision making. 

And still, empathy interviews offer great anecdotal evidence, but they are not meant to be used as data for creating a strategic plan. More robust and more inclusive data-gathering, using qualitative and quantitative methodology, is necessary for a strategic plan to appropriately guide decisions in the district.

This resource from Learning Forward helps explain the benefits and the challenges of empathy interviews. Such interviews should 

  • be completed with full awareness of power differentials between the interviewer and subject; 
  • should be inclusive, drawing in people who might normally be “marginalized and excluded from traditional data research methods”; and
  • should include an awareness of the interviews’ biases, and how those biases might influence what is shared.

It could well be that Dr. Phillips is aware of the complexities associated with doing empathy interviews. However, there is a lack of transparency about who was invited to participate, how they were selected, and what specifically was asked.

Significantly, too, there is scant information about how this qualitative data will be used, and what additional measures will be taken to produce data that can shape the district and inform its goals.

GUIDING THE DISTRICT: Where Is The Strategic Plan?

The school year is over halfway completed and, in a few months, school will be out for the summer. Kids and their teachers will get a much-needed break, schools will be closed for cleaning and updating, and–at this rate–the Newberg school board will still not have a strategic plan in place to guide its decisions for the 2022-23 school year..

That’s right, Newberg schools have no publicly stated goals for the 2022-23 year. The superintendent has no publicly stated goals. The district has yet to agree on any publicly stated goals. The 2023-24 budget is about to be set without any goals or community feedback, nor without a strategic plan to guide decision-making.

This is not how a functioning board should act.

The Oregon Department of Education provides tools for districts to implement a Continuous Improvement Process. According to their website, school districts need to strategically plan to “improve outcomes for students.”  They suggest that such a plan will help 

  • Determine what is working and what needs to change;
  • Establish a process to engage stakeholders to effect change;
  • Leverage effective practices to implement a plan;
  • Use data to monitor and make timely adjustments to improve outcomes.

This improvement process was used by boards in the years immediately before the 2021 election. With Dr. Joe Morelock at the helm, according to easily-accessible minutes, the Newberg Board of Directors “invited input from staff, students, parents, and community members to develop a new strategic plan. A strategic plan helps to guide the direction and focus the priorities of the district. The Board approved the new strategic plan on January 14, 2019.”

You can see how involved the strategic planning sessions were by looking at the district’s own webpage. Because the district wanted to hear from as many people as possible, there was childcare, interpreters (including Spanish and American Sign Language translators), and accessible documents for those with disabilities.

Four listening sessions were opened to the public, during which people shared their vision for the district; sorted and refined those goals, strategies, and ideas; created action steps; and helped to build the 2018-2021 Strategic Plan.

The plan, created with genuine input from a wide cross-section of the community, helped inform the school board’s decision-making, budgeting, and policies for subsequent years, providing a purpose and direction that was transparent, and which considered all stakeholders in the public school district: students, parents, teachers, community members, and taxpayers. 

Not only has the current school board failed to create a strategic plan to guide their activities, they have not been transparent in the plans they have made, and they have not shown interest in hearing from a wide range of stakeholders. 

Dr. Steven Phillips announced at the February 14, 2023, board meeting that he is organizing empathy interviews, but it’s not clear who he is interviewing, nor how this will help develop a strategic plan for the school district’s future. In an upcoming post, we will talk about why empathy interviews, while a positive gesture of goodwill, are  insufficient for guiding a district this large, and this diverse. 

Our concern is not about the lack of progressives on the board.

It’s the lack of transparency. 

It’s the lack of accountability. 

It’s the lack of a strategic plan.

Safety Sunday

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.

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