OPB News: "Phillips' Departure Takes Portland Schools By Surprise," 4/26/07

By Rob Manning

PORTLAND, OR 2007-04-26 Parents and others in the Portland Public School district are reacting today to the unexpected news that their Superintendent Vicki Phillips will be leaving. She announced late yesterday afternoon that she's taking a job directing education programs with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As the news sinks in, some parents are concerned that Phillips' departure will lead to problems. Rob Manning has more on the outgoing superintendent.

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....This emotional Vicki Phillips stands in contrast to the superintendent who never blinked when assailed by angry parents at school board meetings. But her top staffers say that Phillips formed a deep bond with Portland and its schools.

Leslie Rennie Hill runs the new Office of High Schools, which is incidentally funded by a Gates grant.

Rennie Hill: "I'm sure this was a very difficult decision for her to make, because she is so invested here. I think you saw genuine emotion, and I see that in the commitment, reflected in her commitment, every day."

Hill and others say they were very surprised by Phillips' announcement. Some parents were immediately critical. School board members at the press conference put a positive spin on the announcement, saying that Portland wasn't losing a superintendent, it was gaining a friend at the powerful Gates Foundation.

But school board candidate Ruth Adkins called the move "deeply disappointing."

Ruth Adkins: "Especially because so much work is left in the district. And it was also surprising considering the Superintendent and the board had just signed a 3-year contract. You know, I've questioned some of the initiatives that the Superintendent put forward, but I was really looking forward to working with her to mend the relationships with teachers and the community."

Vicki Phillips, for her part, says she understands why people might be upset. She says it wasn't her intention to leave Portland Public Schools after only three years.

Vicki Phillips: "In the best of all worlds, I would have stayed longer, absolutely, and a couple more years would have given us an additional amount of steadiness, that's certainly true. But you also never know when the right opportunity is going to come along, and this one would not have waited. That's on the personal side of it. But on the side of how parents and teachers and others should think of it: this work is getting steadier every day."

But some parents say the superintendent is leaving her own initiatives half-done. A numer of schools are in the process of changing to a Kindergarten-through-8th-grade structure. At the high school level, the principal that Phillips hired for Jefferson High is on administrative leave after having conflicts with that school community.

Anne Trudeau is with the parent advocacy group, Neighborhood Schools Alliance.

Anne Trudeau: "Phillips has initiated many reforms, but because she's leaving at this time, there are many are left up in the air, including the K-to-8 conversion, the Jefferson reforms, and the curriculum reform -- all of those are up in the air."

Phillips and her top deputies say that the district has made progress, and can sustain the changes. Leslie Rennie Hill says her Office of High Schools is an example of something Phillips started that will help guide positive changes. She says reform efforts began before Phillips arrived, and will continue after she's gone.

Leslie Rennie-Hill: "I look at the Office of High School's work, that's data-driven, it's based on the analysis of our resources, the status of our system now, where we need to go, so this isn't the idea or the whim of a particular leader. This is a long term process that's going to take a long-term solution."

The next leader will be chosen by the school board. Four of the current board members were around when Phillips was hired. But former school board members led the way. Julia Brim-Edwards was one of them. She also sat through a failed search a year earlier. She says there is a magic formula.

Julia Brim-Edwards: "We decided that we were going to conduct a recruitement, not have a search. So we went out and found who was going to be the very best person, and bring them to Portland."

Brim-Edwards says it's also important to balance community involvement with the confidentiality of the candidates. Vicki Phillips, for her part, says the job at the Gates foundation could be a career capstone, even though she says she wasn't looking for it.

Vicki Phillips: "There's not something else sitting out there as a step sitting out there past this one. I've always been one to think of this not as a ladder, it's been a 'where can I have the most leverage, and where can I make the most difference?' And this job offers that, and offers it for a long time to come."

Phillips will be the Portland Superintendent through June 30th. The school board is holding a special meeting later this week to decide how they'll go about finding her replacement.

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