Janice Allen: Both Phillips and DeHart need to go in Newberg
Failed Newberg School Superintendent Stephen Phillips, about to be reassigned, should be terminated instead. He should not continue to receive a paycheck, and most certainly not one including a $30,000 bonus.
And holdover school board member Trevor DeHart should go with him.
It was great to see the board take action to remove Phillips, but disheartening to learn he will get to continue working in the schools.
That means he will get to collect the rest of a salary and benefit package that totaled $266,000 in the 2023-24 school year and goes up every year. Worse, he’s also due a $30,000 retention bonus by next June 30.
Under Phillips’ watch, the budget accrued a crippling $4 million deficit. The district is now desperately brainstorming ways to make up the shortfall, imperiling instructional days, programs and jobs.
It’s been suggested Phillips’ demotion is just a first step. Let’s hope the board takes the second, which is to invoke the “for cause” clause in his contract, allowing the district to dismiss him outright.
There is definitely cause. Because this guy did not do his job, students and employees will suffer tremendous losses.
That raises an issue for DeHart, the lone board member supporting Phillips’ retention as superintendent:
Do you believe your actions on the board are improving Newberg schools? Would keeping sleeping-on-the-job Phillips help the situation?
After firing Joe Morelock in 2021, the board hired Phillips in early 2022 with your support.
While Morelock had a glowing record of successfully balancing the budget, Phillips, at the very time you interviewed him, was the subject of a highly publicized federal investigation into his management of 175 students in Jewel. And it was widely known he had been forced to resign in 2018 as deputy superintendent in Beaverton for reposting an outrageously false media message.
Earlier this year, the circuit court ruled you and three other then-members violated the law when you met secretly to hire a politically compatible outside attorney to supplant the district’s attorney. The court ordered the four of you to pay his $50,000 fee, but you are appealing.
The bill for the attorneys who challenged your action ran $370,000, and because the district had to be named in the suit, it is potentially on the hook. But it cannot sue to get the $300,000 from you until your appeal is heard, generating yet more legal fees.
Are your actions improving Newberg schools? It’s obvious that they are not — that, in fact, they are sucking the life out of our schools.
I ask respectfully, dear misguided fellow, that you resign from the board.
About the writer: Longtime Newberg resident Janice Allen serves as a direct service professional with MV Advancements in McMinnville. She previously served as director of public relations at George Fox University, assistant director of publications at Lewis & Clark College and features editor at the Newberg Graphic.
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