Issue 25 – Notorious Principal Gets Assigned to Another SPS Elementary School

It’s never easy for a school when a beloved principal leaves and is replaced by someone that the community had no role in helping choose. 

But it’s a lot more difficult when the replacement is a principal with a long track record of causing harm to teachers and students.

That’s what’s happening at Adams Elementary School in Ballard this week. Families and educators learned on Monday that longtime principal Doug Sohn will leave at the end of the school year, and his replacement will be Anitra Jones. 

Jones is the former principal who left Rainier View Elementary school in 2024 after an unprecedented outcry from families and educators. Jones created what the Seattle Times described as a “toxic learning and working environment” and was found to have broken state labor law.

Multiple sources have told The Bulletin that Seattle Public Schools administrators in recent weeks attempted to place Jones at Dunlap Elementary School in Rainier Beach, but backed off after educators and other staff there protested.

SPS did not comment on those reports, and neither Superintendent Ben Shuldiner nor SPS media representatives responded to any of our other questions before we published this article.

The Adams school community is understandably furious and is mobilizing their own effort to block Jones from becoming their new principal. They’re asking instead for Shuldiner to work with them to conduct an open school leader hiring process to find a new principal who has the support of the community.

They’re right to be upset. Jones’s record clearly demonstrates she should not be serving as a school principal. (Read on to learn the details of her tenure at Rainier View.) The fact that she was placed at Adams Elementary — especially without any consultation with the school community — is totally unacceptable.

This is just the latest example in a long series of contentious principal placements and removals that have generated intense public pushback. The seemingly arbitrary decisions about where to place principals, and the shuffling around of principals who have serious allegations against them, is a major cause of public distrust in SPS as a district.

Superintendent Shuldiner has promised major reform. On Sunday, the Seattle Times wrote a glowing editorial about his leadership. Their headline claimed he is “unafraid to turn the mirror on the district,” and praised his “brand of honesty.” Shuldiner was said to have characterized the Central Office as “a ‘Wild West’ of cronyism” and pledged to make “difficult, unpopular decisions.”

Concerns about how SPS handles allegations against educators, including principals, has intensified in recent weeks due to a stunning new KUOW podcast, “Adults in the Room.” The podcast is produced by former Garfield High School students who recount their experience as student journalists in the late 1990s investigating allegations of sexual abuse against a popular teacher. The podcast has drawn new attention to SPS’s failure to take meaningful action to protect students, especially when there have been previous investigations against an educator.

Shuldiner has broad public support for cleaning house at the Central Office. But his decision to parachute Jones in as Adams’s new principal without consultation or explanation, despite her long track record of poor leadership and allegations of misconduct against students, raises questions about whether Shuldiner will turn his bold words into action.

Let’s take a closer look at the issues surrounding Jones, other problematic principals who seem to fail upward in SPS, and what this means about Shuldiner’s leadership so far.

In this issue:

• An “Oppressive” and “Traumatic” Environment at Rainier View
• Jones is Moved to Rainier Beach HS
• Adams Families and Educators Fight Back
• A Pattern of Problematic Principal Placements
• Will Shuldiner Clean House?

An “Oppressive” and “Traumatic” Environment at Rainier View

Anitra Jones, who has also gone by the name Anitra Pinchback-Jones, was principal at Rainier View Elementary school for 13 years. In that time she won awards, but also increasingly drew numerous complaints about mistreatment of students and teachers that SPS failed to properly address. Under intense public pressure, Jones was finally removed as principal at Rainier View in spring 2024.

Jones was a darling of corporate education reformers who praised her singular focus on student test scores. But these early results came alongside troubling signs of a lack of care for the well-being of her students. In 2006, the Seattle Times reported on rising test scores at the African-American Academy, an SPS school where Jones was teaching: 

“She kept students after school until 5:30 four days a week, and if they complained that other kids didn’t have to work as hard, she told them: ‘Success looks different.’”

Jones went on to serve as an Assistant Principal at West Seattle High School until 2010, when she was appointed by then-Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson to be principal at Daniel Bagley Elementary. In 2011, she was appointed principal at Rainier View by interim Superintendent Susan Enfield.

In 2018 Jones won a Milken Educator Award from the Milken Family Foundation, founded by Michael Milken, who served prison time for securities fraud in the 1980s (and was pardoned by Donald Trump in 2020). The press release announcing the award cited “devotion, discipline and delivering on promises,” but notably did not actually explain what the discipline was.

These achievements came at the expense of the well-being of students and educators. After years of their complaints about Jones falling on deaf ears at the SPS central office, Rainier View parents and teachers spoke out at a March 2024 school board meeting about what they called an “oppressive” and “traumatic” environment Jones had created.

The stories told in public testimony about Rainier View at that meeting were devastating:

• “Students feel insecure at school and have become untrusting of educators.”
• "I have witnessed working mothers being denied their pump breaks."
• “Our students are not receiving the academic intervention, social, emotional, literacy, and multilingual services they need.”
• “There's no community partnership regarding preventive safety, regarding a sexual assault from a couple years ago.”
• “There's a culture of bullying.”
• “The principal was mentally abusive to staff during our workday and has set up several one-on-one staff meetings with us to intentionally speak ill about us and our children.”
• “Our children's IEPs are being violated without the necessary services and support.”
• “Our children were labeled only by the principal as incompetent and or disruptive when normally they are not seen as such.”
• “Educators and parents report students have received dishumanizing punishments, facing exclusion, receiving undocumented isolation and restraints, denied lunch, recess as disciplinary measures, and denied access to water, restrooms, during class.”

Speakers said they had raised concerns about Jones with SPS administrators for years – but never got a response. One teacher said of Jones that “her personal ties with the district staff have made all her misconduct invisible which led to injustices within the workplace.”

Community groups got involved on their behalf, describing a prison-like atmosphere at the school:

“A letter this week from the Southeast Seattle Schools Fundraising Alliance alleged that students were made to walk in the hallways in silence, couldn’t wear coats when going from the school building to portable classrooms, and could only use the bathroom during recess.”

The Rainier View PTSA desperately tried to get SPS to intervene, and when district officials refused, took their concerns to state and even federal agencies:

“The PTSA has filed several complaints over the years, including a May 2023 federal civil rights complaint, alleging harsh discipline policies and practices that fell disproportionately on Black and brown students, discrimination against English learners, religious discrimination, and violations of students’ individual education plans. (The group refiled the complaint in June 2023 with the district’s compliance and investigations department.) The complaint was also filed with the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.”

During Jones’s tenure as principal, a Rainier View educator sexually abused a student, according to a KING/5 report.

The Seattle Education Association (the SPS educators’ union) also filed numerous complaints about how Jones mistreated teachers. In November 2024 a state Labor Relations Adjudicator/Mediator found Jones had broken state law for “discriminating against employees for their union work.” According to the Seattle Times:

“Jones’ decisions to reprimand a teacher and threaten her with discipline for copying colleagues in an email asking how they’d be paid for substitute teaching work and whether the work was in line with union policies were 'textbook examples of interference with union activity.’ 

‘The pattern of discriminatory conduct by the employer in this case is concerning,’ the examiner wrote in a Nov. 4 ruling. None of the employees were fired, but they didn’t return to Rainier View for the 2023-24 school year, ‘demonstrating the chilling effects of the employer’s discriminatory actions,’ the examiner wrote.”

Although Jones had received plaudits for bringing test scores up, those scores began to decline at Rainier View well before the Covid-19 pandemic. This chart shows consistent declines in student test scores in English Language Arts (ELA), math, and science after the 2016-17 school year, with little recovery in the years preceding Jones’s 2024 ouster:

Despite the strong, clear, consistent evidence of Jones being unfit to continue as principal, and the precipitous slide in student achievement, SPS did not remove her from Rainier View until spring 2024. That only happened after parent and teacher complaints drew widespread media attention.

Rainier View PTSA President Hala Mana’o was quoted by the Seattle Times as saying, “I’m a little relieved, and I am a little surprised” that Jones was removed. Denisa Superville, who wrote that article, added that the PTSA “was still hearing ‘heartbreaking’ experiences from families connected to the school.”

Jones had her defenders. Chris Bennett, publisher and CEO of the Seattle Medium, slammed Jones’s critics as “gentrifiers and community squirrels” in an April 2024 editorial. Yet many of the Rainier View families who spoke out against Jones were themselves people of color, and the allegations against Jones included disproportionate discipline against students of color, as mentioned above.

Jones is Moved to Rainier Beach HS

After being removed as Rainier View principal, Jones was appointed as a “principal on special assignment” at Rainier Beach High School. SPS administrators said Jones “is not supervising or evaluating staff” and that her role “will be reviewed at the end of the school year,” but it is unclear whether this took place or what the review concluded. Assistant Superintendent Rocky Torres-Morales told the Seattle Times: 

“‘Ultimately, a principal is the one that dictates roles and creates the culture and climate for a school,’ he said. ‘So, in that vein, she (Jones) would not be assuming that role. She would be directed by a principal.’”

It is not clear what changed to convince SPS that Jones should now assume that role at Adams.

Jones’s placement at Rainier Beach drew criticism from SEA:

“Seattle Education Association President Meesh Vecchio said the union has communicated its concerns about Jones’ placement at Rainier Beach High. The union filed unfair labor practices complaints against Jones with the state’s Public Employment Relations Commission in 2023 on behalf of several Rainier View staff members.

‘We are surprised to see Ms. Jones reassigned to another school after PERC found that Ms. Jones violated state law and committed unfair labor practices by retaliating against SEA members for their union activity,’ Vecchio said.”

The Bulletin asked Shuldiner and SPS media relations whether Jones had undergone any training or other guidance to try and prevent a repeat of the problems that she presided over at Rainier View Elementary, but we received no reply.

Adams Families and Educators Fight Back

Given Jones’s awful track record, it’s no surprise that the school community at Adams Elementary is rising up against her being imposed on them as their new principal. 

It is difficult to imagine your own kids, or their teachers, will be subjected to the abusive practices and disrespectful behavior of a principal, especially when that behavior has been publicly documented.

(Disclosure: All three of the kids in my house went to Adams Elementary at one point during their K-5 years, but are not there now, as they’re in middle and high school.)

The Adams PTA is asking Superintendent Shuldiner and the school board to withdraw Jones’s placement as their new principal, and instead conduct a regular, open hiring process. According to an email the Adams PTA Executive Team sent to their members this week:

“We believe strongly that our children deserve a school leader who will not only foster, but also enhance the special culture of our small school. The families of our school deserve a say in who will be our principal. As such, we request the superintendent, with the support of the school board and district leaders, to formally post this position and consider multiple candidates. All applicants are welcome, including the district’s current appointment.

Our principal is committed to finishing out the year. There is no rush to fill the position. The PTA is advocating for due diligence to be done in selecting the best principal for our kids. Without community support, it will be difficult for any appointee to be successful.”

This is an entirely reasonable request. It should be the standard regardless of the size or location of the school in question.

A Pattern of Problematic Principal Placements

This is not the first time in recent memory that SPS’s attempt to place a principal with a record of creating an unsafe environment for students and teachers at a new school generated intense community opposition. In 2022, SPS attempted to make Marni Campbell the principal at the South End’s Cleveland High School. SPS pushed out a popular, successful principal who attempted to protect students from Covid to make way for Campbell. 

But the community revolted. Students held a walkout, and Campbell resigned as Cleveland’s principal as a result.

Campbell was notorious for an incident that took place in 2005 when she was principal at Eckstein Middle School. When a student reported to a counselor that she felt “uncomfortable and threatened” by a teacher, Campbell “suggested the girl needed counseling and was making the complaints to get attention,” according to the Seattle Times. This generated a lawsuit that was settled in 2015 for just under $250,000, the threshold at the time for board approval. 

Remarkably, Campbell was allowed to remain a principal. She was moved to Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, where she was the first principal on the school’s opening in the late 2010s. She was not popular with families there. Her subsequent attempted placement at Cleveland HS was met with intense opposition.

Campbell has a knack for failing upward. After the community successfully blocked her from becoming Cleveland’s principal, former Superintendent Brent Jones appointed her to roles in the Central Office, where she serves today as Assistant Superintendent of School Operations. Campbell was a key figure in the 2024 effort to close up to 21 schools, leading the initiative and appearing at community meetings to defend the closure plan.

She also continues to draw intense opposition from the public. Campbell was denounced after giving what attendees said was an insensitive and unresponsive presentation on gun violence in the South End in 2025. At the March 11, 2026 school board meeting, past Seattle Council PTSA president Sebrena Burr called for Shuldiner to keep Campbell out of the community.

So far, Campbell remains in her job as Assistant Superintendent of School Operations.

Will Shuldiner Clean House?

The fact that Jones and Campbell remain employed by SPS is genuinely stunning. It also raises questions about Shuldiner’s commitment to reforming how SPS operates.

Jones’s story raises numerous questions about how investigations are handled by SPS. Among them: Are principal hiring, firing, and discipline conducted on a consistent basis across SPS, or are district administrators protecting their friends and pushing out their perceived opponents?

In addition to Shuldiner’s comment in Sunday’s Seattle Times editorial that the central office is the “Wild West” of cronyism, Shuldiner also had extensive comments on the topic of investigating educators in a recent interview with KUOW’s Adults in the Room podcast.

Adults in the Room is hosted by Isolde Raftery and also features Ella Hushagen, both of whom were students at Garfield High School in the late 1990s. At the time, they raised concerns that a popular teacher at Garfield, Tom Hudson, was abusing students. Hudson then took his own life, part of a sequence of events that led to intense criticism of Raftery and Hushagen for their investigation.

Nearly 30 years later, the podcast concludes that not only was Hudson guilty, but that SPS could have prevented his later behavior. They discovered that SPS had investigated Hudson earlier in the 1990s but took no action.

Raftery interviewed Shuldiner for the seventh and final episode of Adults in the Room. In the interview, Shuldiner claimed there was “a renewed vigor within the HR department,” but argued that it is often difficult to remove educators who are creating unsafe or toxic environments:

“‘When you fire a teacher and you don't follow the contracts and you don't follow the discipline matrix, and there's not progressive discipline, not only are you gonna lose, you have to pay all the fees, all the things. This is why you have lawyers.

‘If a lawyer says to me, ‘Ben, You are not gonna win this. You have zero leverage here. This is just a fool's errand,’ why would I want to hurt the district? It’s just, I don’t do things for show, right? I don't do virtue signaling.

‘I think what matters is make sure that you follow the rules and maybe the rules have to be tighter. Maybe we have to look at that.’”

These rules are real. In SPS, both teachers and principals are covered by union contracts. Teachers and many other certificated employees are represented by SEA. Principals are represented by PASS, the Principals Association of Seattle Schools.

Unions are required to defend their members during a grievance process under a provision of federal law known as the “duty of fair representation.” Essentially, unions have to act as a defense attorney for a member covered by their contract if that member files a grievance against management, including for wrongful termination.

This does not mean it is impossible to fire someone covered by a union contract. It does mean that the union member has a right to a hearing and a fair process. Nothing in a union contract prevents SPS from investigating and firing an educator who they can demonstrate should not be teaching or supervising students.

But the reality is it takes time and effort, and district administrators often find it easy to simply refuse to go through the necessary steps. It can be easier to protect a colleague than a student. 

In his interview with Raftery for the podcast, Shuldiner explained the calculus that goes into disciplinary decisions against educators and principals:

“He said firing a suspect teacher without following complex protocols could result in the district having to compensate that teacher to the tune of half a million dollars.

I was hearing Shuldiner say, ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’

Which sounds less like an issue of a few bad apples, and more like an orchard with a pest infestation.”

Raftery went on to detail numerous recent examples of educators abusing students, and noted that in every single case, there had been prior allegations and investigations against the educator in question. This is totally unacceptable.

We do not live in an autocracy — yet — and it’s good for union members to have rights and protections from arbitrary dismissal. But that is also not an excuse for inaction. Every time a district administrator chooses to avoid the risks that come with firing an educator for misconduct, that administrator makes it more likely that students and staff will be harmed as a result.

There are many reasons for inaction, but one is that administrators often feel a desire to protect their friends and allies. 

Anitra Jones has not been accused of assaulting students. But she has been accused of other acts that amount to abuse and harm toward students. Her story is sadly not unique.

It is clear that SPS has a longstanding failure to protect students by removing problematic, abusive educators, or remove those leaders who failed to intervene when they had a responsibility to do so. Jones faced years of complaints. Only when the Rainier View community went public with their concerns did SPS act to protect the students and educators at that school.

Raftery concluded her podcast with these words:

“From what I’ve experienced, and from what I’ve found in my research, and shared throughout this podcast… they’ve been doing so for decades. It’s just that adults rarely take action … until it’s too late.

what happens after we tell the stories … well, that’s not on us.

It’s on you… the other adults in the room.”

Families and educators at Adams are now wondering what the adults in the room at the district office will do to protect them.

And Superintendent Shuldiner must now decide what kind of adult he will be. If he wants to be truly student-focused and clean up the cronyism he criticized to the Seattle Times editorial board, he cannot appoint Jones as principal at Adams or at any other school. She should no longer be employed by Seattle Public Schools. The same goes for Marni Campbell. 

It’s time for Shuldiner to show that he will match bold words with bold action.