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Vestal K-8 in is one of four schools the Portland teacher's union has deemed in "crisis" and in need of help. Portland Public Schools administrators say they are working to get plans in place for all four schools.

(Portland Public Schools)

A handful of schools in Oregon's largest district have devolved into chaos as Portland Public Schools tries to embrace less punitive approaches toward discipline.

Vestal School, which serves nearly 400 students at its location on Northeast 82nd Avenue, is a vivid example of the district's failure to respond to those problems, teachers and some parents say.

It is a school in crisis, they say, and a lack of support and leadership from above has allowed it degrade to the point that parents are pulling children out and some teachers have fled.

In a typical Oregon elementary school, most teachers agree with the statement "Teachers are allowed to focus on educating students with minimal disruptions," a statewide survey found in 2016. At Vestal, just two of 31 teachers agreed.

Many parents' complaints center on the school's overall climate, which they say is disruptive and too often violent and feels out of control. The school's enrollment dropped by 30 students from fall 2015 to fall 2016, and at least 11 more students have been pulled out since then.

Until recently, parents' and teachers' complaints went nowhere. Last week, the senior director who oversees the school, Lisa McCall, and her boss, Assistant Superintendent Antonio Lopez professed ignorance of or downplayed the problems that have left parents, students and teachers distraught at the school's disrespectful climate and poor learning environment.

Interim Superintendent Bob McKean, however, said Wednesday that plans will be made and acted upon this week to tackle problems at Vestal and three other schools the teacher's union says can't wait any longer for help.



"If you have kids and teachers and administrators who are struggling, it's incumbent on us to find out why," McKean said. "It's not necessarily a situation where you go in with a heavy hand. You go in and see what you can do to help."

McKean told The Oregonian/OregonLive he wants the district to be able to react rapidly and from an informed perspective. To that end, he wants central administrators to become more plugged in to the schools by talking to more people inside them. The goal is to offer help, then keep an eye on what works and watch data such as results of surveys periodically sent to all Portland teachers and parents.

Red flags that Vestal needed help have been there for years. Parents pleaded publicly in 2014 for the school to get an assistant principal because, while it is small, its strains were great. In spring 2016, teachers decided en masse to quit or work elsewhere.

Amanda Reed, a parent who has been involved at Vestal for three years, said, "When we got to Vestal, we knew it had a bad reputation. Even though we had heard all of these horrible things, we felt like Vestal was getting better. We had this new principal, we had these new programs."



That was essentially the narrative the district relied on too, until this month.

District efforts over the years to improve the school appear to have done more harm than good, says McKean, who visited the school a few weeks ago after hearing about concerns. Different departments in central office overloaded the school with initiatives, putting a burden on the school that the district didn't manage well, he said.

McKean said Vestal fell victim to the district's silo culture that's been laid bare by auditors for years but came into sharper focus because of the obvious role it played in last year's lead in drinking water crisis. Well-meaning departments in central office didn't realize how much they had collectively dumped on Vestal, and the senior director didn't have this full picture either, he said.

Compounding the problem, the school year opened with a new assistant principal who had to miss several days due to a family matter and ultimately left for the same reason, leaving the school in the lurch, McKean said.

Much of the teaching staff was also new, with 12 of the school's 28 teachers having left at the end of 2015-16.

The traditional sixth-grade participation in Outdoor School, a treasured Portland tradition, had to be delayed because Vestal's sixth grade was in too much chaos and conflict to spend three days together in the woods.

"Whenever people would complain or have concerns, my immediate response was 'We have to stay around. We have to be a part of the solution,'" said Reed, whose older child attended Vestal before high school and younger daughter is a sixth-grader. "We need everybody to pull together and not abandon our neighborhood school."

But in the end, Reed felt forced to do just that. Last semester she pulled her daughter out of Vestal.

"I find the current lack of effective classroom support to teachers and disciplinary consequences to students to be abusive," Reed wrote. "By making room for disrespect, defiance, hostility, and violence, we are communicating to the children of Vestal, 'You can't do any better than this.'"

This week, Reed and other parents took their frustrations online, writing a Change.org petition begging the school board to tackle "escalating school violence, plummeting academic performance and unresolvable conflict" with Principal Emily Glasgow.

Portland Teachers Association President Suzanne Cohen said the petition is a good summary of the issues her union has been trying to get the district to face at Vestal for a long time.

Reed said she personally likes Glasgow and hesitated to call her out in the petition, but felt "regardless of any personal experience I've had with the principal, it just is where the buck stops at a school." She said it's possible the district is to blame for problems, but it's "above my pay grade as a parent" to know, which is why she wants an investigation.



"If Vestal just got some attention right now, all I care is that it becomes impossible to pretend any longer like there are not problems at Vestal," Reed said. "My goal is to make enough noise that somebody finally turns around and says 'What?'"

McKean said he met Glasgow when he visited the school and found her to be a "quality educator." Other district officials also praised her work and qualifications.

Glasgow would not agree to be interviewed for this article.

The petition has exposed the painful community debate among Vestal parents who want to support their neighborhood school but disagree on how and what needs to be addressed.

Some Vestal parents have said they don't recognize the school in the petition. The Vestal they know has a strong, involved principal and children who are thriving in a diverse, supportive community.

Vestal is the second Portland school in recent weeks where the district has taken sudden and swift action after a history of sluggish and tempered responses to concerns.

Recently, the district began an investigation of the principal of Ockley Green Middle School, who is now on leave. The North Portland school is one of four the union called out for McKean as being "in crisis" and needing district leadership to step up. The other two are Lent K-8 School in Southeast Portland and Cesar Chavez K-8 School in North Portland. Cohen said just because the union has deemed a school in crisis does not mean the principal is the problem.

Three of the four schools are K-8s, a configuration the district plans to dismantle after parent and activists complained they offer less to students who need more. Ockley Green, a K-8 until this year, now serves grades five through eight, which is also not ideal, district officials say. The four also serve enrollments that are majority children of color and low-income. Vestal and Ockley Green enroll a substantial share of white and middle-class students, however. And there are schools with far more poverty and mobility among their students where the climate is fine, even as the district has turned to restorative justice in place of harsh punishment and suspensions.

The challenges at the four "crisis schools" differ. But all are struggling with what's called a "climate plan" - a document required under the teachers' contract which hammers out how school discipline will be handled.

The plans spell out expectations of students and the consequences when they are not met.

"It's everything from 'How do we walk in a hallway?' to 'Are we allowed to say bad words?' and where it escalates: 'Can we throw a chair?' 'Can we push a teacher?' and 'What happens when I do these things?'" Cohen explained. "It makes people feel on edge. There's uncertainty about what happens when a student exhibits these behaviors that leaves everyone on edge."

The approach to discipline in Portland Public Schools has radically changed in acknowledgement that black and special education students have long been suspended at far higher rates than other students. The change has gone smoothly or hit just a few bumps in most schools.

But in a few, the switch has spurred or magnified huge problems - which district overseers failed to notice as they compounded and which have yet to be fixed.

Cohen said Ockley Green presented a situation where the union felt the response was too slow, but when it did happen, it was unusually -- and refreshingly -- fast. She said this might be attributed to the district feeling that, on paper, Ockley should have been doing fine with plans that were put in place. That illusion likely shattered once district officials actually went to the school and began talking to people beyond the senior director who oversees Ockley Green, Cohen speculated.

Lopez, the assistant superintendent, oversees the eight senior directors who each supervise roughly 10 principals and has since 2014. In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive Tuesday, he said he didn't think the district's approach to Vestal was unusual. He said the district checks in with the union and responds as needed when concerns come up. He added there are always lots of different perspectives on what is happening at a particular school, with some teachers or parents feeling something is wrong when others think things are going great.

But the union says what's happening is unusual. For the first time in a long time, they see hopeful signs of action and accountability. And they say it is coming not from a high-level employee whose direct responsibility it is to make such change, but from McKean, the district's chief executive and a leader new to Portland Public Schools.



District communications staffers had directed The Oregonian/OregonLive to Lopez as a person knowledgeable of Vestal's complicated history as a school serving a diverse, low-income population. But when asked about this history, Lopez said he didn't know Vestal's past.

McCall, who has been the senior director overseeing Vestal since 2014, said she hadn't heard many complaints about the school and said a lot of good was happening. She acknowledged Vestal had experienced high teacher churn this year, but couldn't say why.

"I hear very positive things that are going on, but there are also some concerns more around the school culture and climate," McCall said. "Parents really want the best for the child so I don't see that in a sense as a bad thing. If from their perspective things are not working, well then let's say, 'How can we do things better?' I see this as opportunity."



McKean said it's a fair criticism that the district's response to concerns about Vestal and the other crisis schools should have been quicker this year. He said it's possible he played a role in any delay because he had to get up to speed on the district, having only taken the helm at in late August.



The teacher's union is cautiously optimistic about the district's assurances of change.

When the union deems schools "in crisis," she said, "they need immediate intervention and can't wait. When you have educators who feel unsafe and can't teach, immediate action is needed," Cohen said. "We're grateful that the majority of schools are not in crisis -- but I don't even think there should be one."

-- Bethany Barnes

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