Churn among principals at Portland Public Schools is marginally lower than it was three years ago, yet 1 in 4 of them will still begin their first full year at the helm of their school when classes start this fall.
And the churn is disproportionately affecting schools both the state and district have identified as having high needs.
That’s the upshot of an Oregonian/OregonLive analysis of district hiring over the last 10 months. All told, 22 principals will begin their first full year in their respective position in September, one more than in 2020.
Some of them, like Lent Elementary’s Nichole Berg and Jefferson High’s Ricky Allen, were hired part-way through last school year as their predecessors were either promoted or, in Berg’s case, moved on to open a new middle school within the district.
“It may be a different person, but in several instances in these buildings it was a principal or assistant principal who’s moving on up,” Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Shawn Bird said.
In five schools, a vice principal was elevated to take over a departing building leader. At another nine, an administrator from another school within the district transferred in.
Two vacancies — at Rigler Elementary and West Sylvan Middle School — were filled by out-of-district applicants.
Berg was unique as the lone Portland Public Schools central office administrator to become a principal.
Meanwhile, staff, faculty and families at four district schools are still waiting to learn who will lead their building when classes begin Sept. 1. Portland Public Schools has yet to hire leaders for Buckman and Duniway elementaries and Harriet Tubman and Ockley Green middle schools.
Outgoing Harriet Tubman Middle School eighth-grader Io Manson said such uncertainties were characteristic of their experience since Natasha Butler stepped down last summer after two years leading the newly reopened school.
Portland Public Schools then hired Louis Mair from a district in Georgia and a pair of new deputies along with him. He departed after a single year as the school’s leader.
Tubman is one of the most diverse schools in the district. About 36% of its students are Black and 15% are Latino. One in three students are white.
It’s also one of four district middle schools where more than one-third of its students qualify for free and reduced lunch. And its teachers are among the least experienced in the district.
Educators at Tubman averaged about nine years of experience at the end of 2020, the most recent year data is available. Only Ockley Green had a lower average, at just under seven years.
When Butler led Tubman, Manson felt the school had a cohesive community feeling.
Natasha Butler was a strict principal at Tubman Middle School who kept a kind demeanor. "You both feared her and loved her," outgoing eighth grader Io Manson said. Butler spent one year on the job before she left and was replaced by Louis Mair. He also stepped down after leading Tubman for a single year.Oregonian file photo by Beth Nakamura, 2018
“Natasha was a strict principal. You were not going to get anything past her. But she did it in a motherly way — you both feared her and loved her,” Manson said.
Manson knew who to go to if they needed something for the environmental justice club or the school’s news service, both of which were extracurriculars of theirs.
But over the last year, Manson felt communication was choppy and even teachers didn’t know who to contact to address a club’s needs.
The Zoom-centric nature of a year spent learning virtually didn’t help. Manson said it was difficult to establish a rapport with teachers and administrators in video conferences.
“He got dealt a bad hand,” Manson said of Mair’s tenure. “But the administration felt floppy in the way we were informed about things.”
Bird said he expects the district will have a new principal for Tubman before classes start Sept. 1. Mair’s departure came as he said he sought a return to Georgia in order to be closer to family.
He’s now the planning principal for a new middle school for a district in Gainesville, Georgia, according to Mair’s LinkedIn and local media reports.
“I think we would have had a lot of longevity but some personal circumstances came up,” Bird said.
The three other schools lacking a principal should also have a leader in place by the start of the year, he said. Part of the reason Portland Public Schools is behind in hiring stems from a series of late-in-the-year promotions, he noted.
Portland Public Schools moved three principals into the central offices from April to July, including Margaret Calvert, who led Jefferson High for a decade and will now oversee all the district’s high schools.
The district also converted two contract positions in the central office that were previously staffed by retired principals into full-time positions and pulled from the ranks of building leaders to fill them.
That’s why Meischa Plotske departed Creative Science School and Dana Nerenberg left her post leading Sitton Elementary.
Plotske was named Portland Public Schools’ director of middle school innovation and redesign in late February. For years, the district has worked to turn its K-8 schools into elementary and middle schools.
The model has contributed to inequitable opportunities for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders in northeast and southeast Portland neighborhoods with a high percentage of Black, Indigenous and other students of color. Plotske will further lead the effort to make the transition, Bird said.
Nerenberg, as the district’s director of learning acceleration, will lead Portland Public Schools’ efforts to get students back into the swing of things after a year and a half of virtual classes.
“We needed to create some strategies to fill in learning gaps,” Bird said. “The people we put into those positions were leaders who are attached to our strategic plan.”
Tubman is on its third principal in a year, but the district hadn't announced a hire as of Aug. 7.Photo courtesy Portland Public Schools
In a school district, as in any other workplace, supervisors try to identify employees who work well in tough environments. Succeed at a school the Oregon Department of Education has identified as one with high needs and you might be next in line for a promotion to the central office.
“Every year we survey our principals,” Bird said. “We talk to people and see where they’re at.”
But Magali Rabasa, whose daughter starts third grade at Rigler Elementary in September, said she and other parents see that sequence and can’t help but feel like their school is being used as a training ground.
“That’s not the way the district should work,” Rabasa said.
Rigler is on its third principal in less than a year. Myrna Muñoz stepped down last October, citing a high stress work environment made even more difficult by the lack of support from the district office.
Keyla Santiago, who was an assistant principal at Scott Elementary, then stepped into the interim leadership role at Rigler but opted not to pursue the position permanently.
Padres Unidos, the school’s parent advocacy group, backed up Muñoz’s claims in a letter to Bird and other Portland Public Schools administrators. In it, they called the near-annual series of listening sessions following a principal’s departure a ritual and put forth a series of demands.
Among them, parents want the district to allow Rigler’s next principal to spend more time on campus rather than in training. They also said Rigler leaders should be paid more than principals of typical district elementary schools because it’s an “exceptionally more challenging” environment to work in.
“That’s an undervaluing of these very important roles,” Rabasa said.
For the coming year, the district hired Chris Silvas, who was previously the principal at El Rancho High School near Los Angeles.
He’ll be Rigler’s fifth principal since 2017.
Rabasa said the constant churn means parents are charged with keeping some semblance of consistency in the school community. As principals came and went, she and other Rigler parents forged a relationship with Area Senior Director Kristie Lindholm to air their concerns.
Lindholm left the district this year to lead Vancouver Public Schools’ office of teaching and learning, The Columbian reported.
“Organizing things on a student or parent level, there’s always going to be that turnover because that’s the nature of schools,” Rabasa said. “But to feel that even an administrator isn’t going to stay at a school as long as a student, it’s destabilizing.”
Bird acknowledged that it can take strong leaders three or four years to build stability at a school, but did not offer specifics on how the district might incentivize such principals to stay.
“We want to make sure there’s stability at those schools,” he said.
For students like Manson, the former Tubman eighth-grader, Portland Public Schools’ inability to maintain consistency led to them leaving the district altogether. They enrolled at St. Mary’s Academy for their freshman year, due in large part to their experience with distance learning.
A secondary consideration was the trouble they had navigating Tubman with two different principals.
“There shouldn’t be a dramatic change in how you interact with school from year to year,” Manson said.
--Eder Campuzano | 503-221-4344 | @edercampuzano | Eder on Facebook
Eder is The Oregonian’s education reporter. Do you have a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email ecampuzano@oregonian.com.
As principal turnover remains stagnant at Portland Public Schools, highest needs campuses hit the hardest - OregonLive
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