Parents Call For Ouster Of Principal -- `Damaged Morale' At Newport High

BELLEVUE - A group of parents has called for the ouster of Newport High School's principal, saying he has damaged staff morale at the city's highest-rated high school and driven teachers away.

But Bellevue schools Superintendent Mike Riley said he's getting a mixed message from parents and teachers about Newport principal Fred Cogswell, and thinks district-wide changes in high-school programs and rumors about staff turnover are largely to blame.

"A lot of this stuff is exaggerated and made to sound a lot worse or more powerful than it really is," Riley said today.

One of the most persistent rumors is that a third of the staff is not returning to Newport this fall; rather, 14 of the 72 teachers are not coming back, some because they are unhappy and others because they're moving, retiring or going back to graduate school. That rate of turnover is fairly typical.

Parents say they at first welcomed Cogswell, a newcomer to the district who began the job last fall, but became concerned when teacher morale hit a low point by the school year's end.

More than half the teachers said they would leave Newport if they could find another job, according to a survey in June by the Bellevue Education Association (BEA), the teachers union.

"A significant crisis exists at Newport High School in the relationships between a very significant number of staff members . . . and the building principal," the report concludes. "It is ludicrous to assert that a small minority of staff members have concerns or are somehow `out of step' with their colleagues."

The union's executive director, Mike Schoeppach, would not comment, saying only that the union is working with the district to resolve the problems. He said two grievances have been filed.

More than half of the 63 teachers who responded to the union's survey said they did not feel personally or professionally supported by Cogswell.

"He's really reluctant to sit down and talk to the staff," said Janet Sutherland, a former Newport teacher who retired this spring.

"We've had a shift from every decision being made at the school level to some decisions being made at the district level," Riley said. "They're unsettled, maybe angry about how decisions got made. I think that's a transition we've got to go through."

Beginning next year, freshmen and sophomores will be required to take seven periods instead of six, and more advanced-placement classes will be offered.

Cogswell believes the changes are largely to blame for the discord.

The survey, Cogswell said, "was taken at a time when there was some anxiety, at the end of the year when people were talking about retiring."

Teachers, most of whom would not give their names, describe an atmosphere of mistrust at the school. They say Cogswell has not included them in decisions and that he is difficult to talk to.

This week, some parents on the school's Program Delivery Council (PDC), an advisory group, met with Riley and asked him to reassign Cogswell. At a recent Bellevue School Board meeting, parents also showed up to complain about Cogswell's leadership.

"I do not believe that our current principal has the administrative or management skills necessary to run this building effectively," said parent Ellen Rubin, a PDC board member. "There's a real feeling that the older, more outspoken teachers have been cleaned out."

Sutherland described morale at the school as "very bad, and programs were starting to come apart." Sutherland, 63, had planned to retire at 65.

She said the mandated advanced-placement classes encouraged students to abandon longstanding curriculum, such as honors English and British literature. Those classes then were canceled because not enough students signed up.

"There was no evidence our system wasn't working," Sutherland said, noting the school's high standardized test scores.

But Cogswell said the large number of students who have signed up for advanced-placement classes demonstrates how much students like them.

Advanced placement is a national program with a set curriculum that can lead to college credits for students who pass the advanced-placement exam.

Newport High, located in the 4300 block of 128th Avenue Southeast on the edge of Newport Hills, has a reputation as one of the Eastside's best public high schools. It draws from middle- and upper-class neighborhoods of South Bellevue, and about 65 percent of its graduates go to a four-year college after graduation. Its standardized test scores are among the highest in the area. It's the largest high school in Bellevue, with about 1,300 students.

To help smooth other relations with teachers, Riley, said, he'll meet with the faculty in the fall "to get a dialogue started, and give the rationale for the decisions that have been made."

Cogswell knew Riley when they both worked for Baltimore County Public Schools in Maryland, and Cogswell, a principal at one of the district's high schools, had an excellent reputation as an instructional leader. But Riley said he was not a shoo-in for the job; he was the "hands-down" choice of a panel of 14 Newport teachers and students who interviewed him.

His wife, Evelyn, who has been working in the Bellevue schools' central administration office, will become principal at Sammamish High this fall.