After two teachers went rogue on his watch, Portland Public Schools put the principal of a North Portland school on leave and called in an outside investigator.

The findings were troubling: Many teachers rated Principal Karl Newsome as an incompetent leader, noting he feared confrontation, failed to follow up and fell asleep when conducting teacher observations. While kindhearted, he let school operations at Astor K-8 School degenerate into chaos, they said.

The scathing report didn't lead to Newsome's demotion or termination, however. Instead, Portland Public Schools put him in charge of an even larger school. Newsome is now principal of Sellwood Middle School, which serves an empowered community of families from Sellwood and Westmoreland.

Portland Principal Karl Newsome

The lack of consequences for Newsome, who continues to hold a high-profile six-figure job, is another sign that Oregon's largest school district doesn't appear to hold employees accountable, even when their bad conduct or poor performance harms students' educations or puts them at risk.

For years, auditors have said Portland Public Schools fostered a culture sorely lacking accountability. Last summer, a lead in drinking water scandal forced this long-festering problem to the forefront. Some officials within the district as well as some outside critics pinned the too-forgiving attitude on then-Superintendent Carole Smith, who stepped down more than a year ago. New district leaders promised to do better.

But the treatment of Newsome indicates a culture change is far from taking hold.

Assistant Superintendent Antonio Lopez

Assistant Superintendent Antonio Lopez oversees all principals and directly supervised Newsome's two most recent bosses. Lopez has worked in the district since 2003, when he was hired as an elementary principal, and has been in his powerful position since 2014.

District spokesman Dave Northfield said it was up to Lopez to say how the Newsome situation was handled.

Lopez would not agree to be interviewed for this story or respond to written questions.

Newsome did not respond to requests in writing and by phone for comment.

Newsome was placed on paid leave following a heated meeting with Astor parents in October 2016.

Although the meeting, attended by a reporter from The Oregonian/OregonLive, was called after police responded to a classroom incident involving a teacher, parents seemed largely unconcerned with that. Instead, Newsome fielded questions for more than an hour and half from distraught parents who wanted to know why their years of complaints about poor instruction and other problems at the school had gone unaddressed and what they should do when Astor continually failed their children.

It was so bad, Newsome's boss stood up to tell the crowd of parents how sorry she was.

"I just want to apologize for (Portland Public Schools) and what your kids have experienced," senior director Molly Chun said. "It is not right, it is not just, and we need to take care of it."

The next day, Newsome was on leave. But the district didn't task the investigator with getting to the bottom of those concerns. Instead, attorney Ryan Gibson was given the narrow scope of determining if Newsome failed to assess the safety risks posed by the two teachers.

On that question, Gibson cleared Newsome.

What happened during those two incidents is unclear, as the district redacted all details.

During his inquiry, Gibson was inundated with complaints about Newsome's poor leadership. He noted several times in his report that his assignment was narrow. Still, complaints about Newsome were so voluminous and consistent, he wrote, that he couldn't help but conclude the principal was a substandard school steward.

At the meeting, Chun told parents there were no records of any previous complaints. That baffled parents who felt they'd made their fears clear.

Records of their complaints did in fact exist. Gibson wrote that he reviewed 250 pages of emails that he described as consisting mostly of parent complaints.

The state of the school was so bad, his report said, the principal who took over for Newsome broke down crying even talking about it.

"In a nutshell, I have not found evidence of any working systems or operations at Astor that I feel are adequate," said Dana Jacobs, a longtime Portland Public Schools principal tapped to lead Astor while Newsome was on leave.

The report speculates that Newsome's faults may have been exacerbated by ineffective oversight.



Chun had only overseen Newsome for a few months when she apologized to families for how the school had been run

The report says Chun and others told the investigator they strongly suspected Newsome's prior supervisors didn't give him enough support.

Newsome became Astor's principal in 2011.

It was his first time as a principal.



Chun and Frank Scotto, an administrator tapped to help principals in need both told the investigator that Astor consumed a disproportionate amount of their time, with Scotto saying Newsome needed extra "hand-holding" compared to other principals.

When Interim Superintendent Bob McKean took charge of the district, he stressed the need to instill accountability. During his tenure, which spanned last school year, he spoke out about the need for central administrators to be more plugged in when the teachers union complained of several "chaos schools" where the working climates were untenable.

Newsome was put on leave during McKean's time at the top.

The investigator's report is dated April 25. In June, McKean announced Newsome as Sellwood's next principal.



Astor parent Darrell Grenz called the decision to put Newsome at Sellwood "mind-boggling" and said he'd love to know why the district made that choice.

"It's a bigger thing with (Portland Public Schools). I don't understand the way they make decisions," he said. "Karl is such a good, kind-hearted guy, but professionally I'm not sure what the best role for him is ... I put that blame on the district not on Karl."

He said it was frustrating for parents to be told their complaints weren't documented, as it was obvious that claim wasn't true. In the end, the turmoil prompted many families to leave the school, he said. Unrest existed mostly in Astor's sixth- through eighth-grades, he said, making the decision to place Newsome in charge of a middle school particularly confusing.

Other Portland Public Schools personnel decisions have upset parents, employees and even school board members. A manager who harangued employees was relieved of all management duties but kept on as a manager. An educator accused of sexual misconduct with students kept his job until he was criminally convicted of assaulting a coworker. The employee assigned to keep students safe from environmental hazards had no training about lead and actively resisted parent and employee requests to test water that would prove to be tainted.

At Astor, parents complained that Newsome's failure to manage substitute teachers led to months of learning opportunities lost. Grenz pulled his son out of the school last year. His daughter, who was in elementary last year, still attends Astor.

Newsome has a history at Sellwood. He served as its assistant principal from 2006 to 2010.

Portland's seven-member school board, which got an infusion of three new members over the summer, has pledged better days are ahead. A new superintendent will take over in October, though he's already become the public face of the district by showing up for key events despite still living in San Francisco.

Top of mind, board members say, is the district's complaint process. Many of them know firsthand how broken the system is from their experiences as parents.

But parents are accustomed to empty promises. Grenz says it appears par for the course for the district to avoid a real solution. Instead, the approach appears to be "just throwing something against the wall to see what sticks," he said.

"I wonder why there is such a big lack of accountability," Grenz said. "Parents shouldn't have to work so hard to advocate for their kids."

— Bethany Barnes

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com