Philomath School District administrators plan to meet in the near future for a work session to discuss staff safety concerns that surfaced following an incident this spring on a local campus.
The Philomath School Board met for the second of two closed-door executive sessions Tuesday night to act on what Chair Rick Wells described as a complaint that had been brought against Superintendent of Schools Susan Halliday.
A June 11 complaint letter, which was shared with the Philomath News by a person familiar with the incident, included details about a mid-May confrontation involving a parent’s threat against an administrator and the school superintendent’s response. The letter, signed by 15 individuals, informed the School Board that they didn’t “feel appropriate action was taken in a timely manner and want to know in the future (that) action will be taken swiftly.”
Four days after the confrontation, the school administrator contacted the Philomath Police Department to have the incident documented. The police officer’s report details a situation involving a parent that was angry that the school had contacted the Oregon Department of Human Services.
The police report shows that during the meeting, the parent was swearing, acting aggressive and had threatened the administrator’s life. The police report mentioned that the “school superintendent was drafting a letter” for the parent to be “trespassed from all Philomath school properties.”
Wells said following Tuesday’s closed meeting, “We don’t feel there was a policy violation” in reference to Halliday’s handling of the situation. He added, “But we did find some possible missteps, you know, with timing that could have been better on different things.”
It’s the second time in a year that safety-related complaints from staff made their way to the School Board. According to the June 11 letter, one of the issues related to the threat was that the building had been “experiencing electrical issues and the magnetic door locks and emergency alarm were not functioning” which at the time they felt created a potentially dangerous situation.
Included in the 2024-25 fiscal year budget is a project to upgrade the door security systems in all school buildings.
“We have card readers, not at every door, but we do have card readers in a lot of places and primarily at the high school,” Halliday said. “The card reader system that we currently have is not functioning appropriately so that’s why we’re investing in a new iteration of that that will allow us to be able to add more keycard doors where we can actually set time limits.”
Halliday provided an example of the upgraded system’s capabilities.
“If somebody’s accessing the weight room at the high school, for instance, if you have a regular meeting there from 6 o’clock in the evening to 9 o’clock in the evening and you try to go at 10 o’clock, you’re not going to be able to get in,” she said. “So there’s a lot more manageability around that and a lot more safety.
“Especially what we want to look at is recess for our younger kids and being able to make sure that kids can get in and out and we don’t have to leave doors unlocked and have people around,” she added.
Both Halliday and Wells said they believe Philomath schools to be safe.
“I believe it’s a safe school district, I really do, and it continues to be an avenue that we do our greatest degree of diligence to be able to make sure things are safe, that kids, families and everybody feels safe in any of our schools and in any of the district,” Halliday said.
Said Wells, “As far as the schools being safe, I think they’re pretty safe. I hope this is an isolated incident with what happened in this particular circumstance.”
Wells believes a work session involving principals and other administrators on safety procedures is needed as the district moves forward.
“I’d like to get more of their input on what would be a good protocol or policy to put in place to cover something like this if it ever does happen again,” Wells said. “We’ve (board members) got pretty limited backgrounds on this type of thing.”
Beyond those plans, Halliday said the district will also consult with Philomath Police and Philomath Fire and Rescue.
“We’re going to start conversations again with police and fire about our safety plans on the larger scale if there’s a threat or something else like that,” Halliday said. “When COVID hit, we kind of lost the momentum on that and so we’re now getting back to be able to start those things again.”
