Accusation against Everett school principal probed

Correction: Former Superintendent Carol Whitehead reported receiving a death threat through the mail. An earlier version of the story was wrong.

EVERETT — When confronted by anonymous accusations about the conduct of a school principal, Everett School District administrators quietly asked an attorney to investigate.

When The Herald received an anonymous letter making accusations against the same employee and last week called Everett School District officials to ask questions about the investigation, they denied conducting one, then began discussing a media strategy with their attorney.

On Monday, they said they had called police and asked them to figure out who was sending the anony­mous letters about the principal.

The school board has called a special meeting for 5 p.m. Tuesday to go into a closed session — out of the public view — to discuss how the district handles complaints against employees, potential litigation and to discuss how communications regarding their investigation were treated by board members and district officials.

The letter received by The Herald makes claims of misconduct against the principal in staccato, broken English. It says the district was investigating. The legitimacy of the letter is questionable; it is signed, though no person with that name appeared in a search of public records.

On Thursday, The Herald called district spokeswoman Mary Waggoner to ask whether the district was investigating the principal.

“Nobody is being investigated,” Waggoner said Thursday. “I got that straight from HR.”

While the district’s spokeswoman was misdirecting The Herald, other district officials were deciding what to do next.

On Friday, Lynn Evans, the district’s human resources director, sent a memo to district Superintendent Gary Cohn. In light of The Herald’s questions, she wrote, an attorney for the district advised her to report the anonymous letter-writer to Everett police. The district’s internal investigation, she wrote, already had concluded that prior anonymous misconduct accusations against the principal were “completely unfounded.”

Attorney Duncan Fobes “will work with us to develop responses should any media inquire further,” the memo said.

Friday night, Cohn sent the five-member school board an e-mail telling it about the internal investigation into the principal. He also said he hoped board members would remain silent about the investigation because he believed it had become part of an “open police investigation.”

Over the weekend, the e-mails from Evans and Cohn came to light, showing that district officials hid the truth.

There also is no police investigation, as school district officials were claiming Monday afternoon.

“We’ve been a recipient of the information, but we’re not launching an investigation,” Everett spokeswoman Kate Reardon said.

The district later said police weren’t contacted in an official capacity.

“Somebody could have made a call from one chief of something to another, but I was told today that there’s no paperwork that’s been filed,” Waggoner said. “But we will be working with the police.”

The district wants police to treat the anonymous allegations as harassment and defamation against the public employee. The district will consider all “appropriate legal or disciplinary action” against the person, if found, according to a press release attributed to Waggoner.

“It appears that someone is now perpetuating false rumors out of spite or malice, and common decency demands that this should not be tolerated,” Cohn said.

School Board President Ed Petersen was briefed about the district’s investigation, Cohn said.

School Board member Jessica Olson said the district shouldn’t be hiding information from taxpayers in the 18,400-student district. She said she wasn’t previously told about the investigation of the principal and couldn’t get a straight answer as to whom on the board was in the loop.

“If it turns out the superintendent intentionally tried to conceal this from the board, I do think he should resign,” she said.

She wondered if the investigation ever would have been shared had it not been for questions from The Herald.

“It makes me wonder what other types of litigation the board doesn’t know about,” Olson said.

Other board members declined to comment.

Board Vice President Kristie Dutton referred questions to Petersen.

Asked when she found out about the investigation, Dutton said “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Board member Jeff Russell said he believed all board members found out about the investigation at the same time. He declined to comment further.

The district’s investigation was conducted by the Seattle law firm Patterson Buchanan Fobes Leitch and Kalzer.

The district has a history of conducting secret investigations of staff and lying about it.

The Seattle law firm also was at the center of an investigation about three years ago into Kay Powers, a journalism teacher at Cascade High School. Powers was suspended, fired and then reinstated after an underground student newspaper was published using district equipment.

At that time, union leaders asked whether a camera had been used to spy on Powers and students in her classroom. They had reason to believe one had been installed in the ceiling.

District officials denied the truth.

After records surfaced showing the district hired a video company to install the camera, district officials admitted that, indeed, they were using a spy camera on the teacher. No surveillance pictures or video were ever released; district officials maintain that those records were lost.

That investigation eventually cost taxpayers more than $200,000. The law firm’s share was at least $17,000.

This also is not the first time school district administrators have asked Everett police to investigate communication they received. The former superintendent, Carol Whitehead, claimed she’d received an e-mail death threat in the mail, which Everett police investigated. Contents of the threatening letter were never made public.

Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455; arathbun@heraldnet.com.