Former Superintendent Stephen Phillips is suing Newberg-Dundee Public Schools for up to $2.5 million.

In a civil complaint filed to the Yamhill County Circuit Court Tuesday, Phillips argues that the district, and the school board more specifically, has acted in bad faith, wrongfully blamed him for the district’s financial woes, and is not properly executing his contract.

Tuesday evening, the same day the case was filed, the seven-member Newberg school board placed Phillips on administrative leave, pending an internal investigation. The motion passed on a 6-0-1 vote, with Trevor DeHart abstaining.

OPB reached out to the district and school board for comment on the lawsuit. Neither is commenting at this time other than to confirm Tuesday night’s vote.

The superintendent’s lawsuit is the latest conflict for a school district that’s seen years of turmoil.

The mid-Willamette Valley district, which enrolls about 4,100 students, made national news back in 2021 when its board banned teachers from displaying symbols supporting LGBTQ+ pride, Black Lives Matter and other “political” signs, flags or articles of clothing.

The board fired then-Superintendent Joe Morelock that November, technically without cause, though many close to the issue have said it was because he was not aggressively implementing the symbols ban.

Though Oregon school boards are nonpartisan, the board was considered to have a conservative majority, described in an Oregon Capital Chronicle commentary as “an activist conservative slate of trustees.” That changed with the May 2023 election, in which five seats were filled by candidates considered more moderate or liberal.

Phillips, who has worked in education for 25 years, was selected as the new superintendent in May 2022 by the Newberg board’s then-conservative majority.

He came to the district with baggage. Phillips was forced to resign in 2018 from his role as deputy superintendent in the Beaverton School District after retweeting a false statement that claimed “illegal aliens” kill thousands of Americans every year and are “more dangerous than assault rifles.”

Phillips was also one of three administrators from the Jewell School District named in a federal lawsuit this May. He served as superintendent at the north coast district in his most recent role before Newberg, from 2019 until being put on paid leave in 2022.

The federal suit claimed the former Jewell administrators failed to properly protect a then-14-year-old student in the district from a predatory teacher who has since been imprisoned. The recent lawsuit says some Newberg community members wanted to terminate Phillips in response to this “without any regard for the facts of that case.”

Phillips’ time leading Newberg has also been criticized.

This spring, a roughly $13 million budget gap affecting this past school year and the 2024-25 budget arose unexpectedly just a couple of weeks before the state budget deadline.

Phillips announced then that he would be on medical leave for two months. Former Newberg Superintendent Paula Radich — who, according to the recent lawsuit, financially supported the political campaigns of the newly elected school board members — became the interim superintendent.

Phillips did not respond to repeated requests for comment in June. However, the lawsuit released this week gives a glimpse into his side of the story.

The case against Newberg schools

Phillips’ lawsuit against the district outlines many of the same events in Newberg leading up to his hiring and the lingering effects once he began the role. The narrative outlined in the lawsuit often shows Phillip at the center of a culture war.

“Upon arriving at the district, the political division within [Newberg’s] staff and community was immediately apparent,” the lawsuit states. “Roughly half of the community and most of the teachers’ union politically identifying as ‘liberal’ were extremely distrustful … from the outset because the ‘conservative’ school board had hired [Phillips].

“In fact,” the suit continues, “following the prior superintendent’s termination, many ‘liberal’ staff members assumed, incorrectly, that [he] would be targeting them.”

The lawsuit says Phillips made multiple attempts to unify the community, such as creating small committee “think tanks” made up of equal numbers of “liberal” and “conservative” community members to brainstorm ideas.

“Regardless of how conservative or liberal people might be, everyone wants their children to excel in the core academic areas,” the suit says.

The lawsuit then walks through the next several months of Phillips’ employment, including his receiving positive feedback from the board, his negotiating a new, longer contract with the new school board, and his and his wife buying a home in Newberg in August of last year.

Though other things were happening behind the scenes and tension was building, things largely came to a head with the financial problems this spring.

The school board read a statement blaming Phillips for the crisis, and students held a walk-out protest, calling for his termination. The lawsuit said one board member who previously took issue with Phillips joined the student protest.

The lawsuit is seeking to clear his name:

“Like the school board, [Phillips] had reasonably relied on information from the business manager regarding the budget and did not know there was a crisis until shortly before the board was informed at the meeting in May,” it states. “In fact, [the] budget manager has stated in writing that [Philips] did not have prior knowledge of the budget shortfall and could not have.”

Phillips later brought in the Oregon Association of Business Officials to fix the budget crisis in time for the state deadline.

The stress of the events leading up to June adversely affected Phillips’ health, according to the lawsuit. After going on medical leave, it says, Phillips was prematurely told to pack up his office.

He was later given a one-year notice, as required by his contract and Oregon law, that they were firing him without cause — and that they’d be continuing their search to find cause.

The lawsuit says the board threatened — before he was put on paid leave this Tuesday — to put Phillips in a different position in the district over the course of his remaining time with them. The suit says the board threatened to deprive him of the pay he is entitled to under the terms of his contract.

The lawsuit also claims the school board met in executive session to talk about Phillips’ performance without properly announcing it or notifying Phillips, as called for under state law. It claims the board did not give written notice that they were at all dissatisfied with his work leading up to his firing, nor did they give him a chance to fix it.

These events and more, the lawsuit argues, have impaired Phillips’ ability to perform his duties under his contract, damaged his reputation and lost him sick leave and opportunities for other employment.

Phillips is pushing for the district to properly enforce his contract or pay up to $2.5 million in damages.

Related: Read the full lawsuit here.