Issue 26 – SPS Leaders Rally Around Controversial Principal

Two meetings this week demonstrated fault lines are growing in response to the placement of Anitra Jones as principal at Adams Elementary School: with parents and educators unhappy that Jones was appointed without accountability for past allegations of misconduct, and an SPS leadership that is increasingly defensive of Jones and critical of the Adams community.

We’ll give you the quick version of what happened first, and then dive into the full details. 

At a community meeting at Adams on Monday night, Jones repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying the behavior described in allegations made against her by students, parents, and educators “did not happen.” 

SPS Chief of Staff Bev Redmond revealed at the meeting that the previous Superintendent, Brent Jones, removed Anitra Jones as Rainier View Elementary’s principal “as an act of care” for her, not in response to the concerns about Jones’s conduct. Redmond said that Brent Jones was concerned about how the conflict was affecting the day-to-day operations of the school. (Brent Jones and Anitra Jones are not related.)

At the Adams meeting, SPS Superintendent Ben Shuldiner argued that he had no choice but to place Jones as a principal, owing to her contract, state law, and a mysterious “internal document.” Shuldiner also said that Jones’ personnel file doesn’t contain any discipline records, and he cannot retroactively investigate claims.

He did suggest that Jones was placed at Adams in part because the school community “is strong, is tight, is mighty, is loving, is supportive.” As he explained it: “Where best to make sure that we have a person who we are contractually obligated to put?” 

Many Adams parents went to the meeting hopeful that Jones would show some sign of having learned and grown from the disturbing conduct reported at Rainier View, and give them confidence that she could be a positive leader at Adams. But Jones refused to take accountability, instead saying that the allegations against her were false. Adams families left the meeting with deeper concerns than when they arrived.

Some parents at the meeting were openly hostile to Jones, interrupting her and Shuldiner and booing on several occasions. Others were respectful and tried to provide Jones an opportunity to reassure the community about the allegations regarding her past conduct.

At Wednesday’s school board meeting, Shuldiner criticized the Adams school community for their conduct at Monday’s meeting, including what he called microaggression. He did not address community concerns about Jones’s record or larger concerns about SPS’s HR practices regarding educators who commit misconduct.

Two former Rainier View Elementary teachers told the Seattle Times today that they were "disappointed by Shuldiner's remarks" and characterized them as "scolding the community."

Below, we take a look at what was said at this week's meetings and what this ongoing incident reflects about SPS as a whole.

In this issue:

• Anitra Jones Denies Allegations
• How Did SPS Respond in 2024?
• Superintendent Shuldiner States He Must Appoint Jones
• Shuldiner Calls Out Microaggressions
• What Comes Next?

Anitra Jones Denies Allegations

As we covered in our last issue, the allegations against Jones are extensive, credible, including those that were substantiated by the Public Employee Relations Commission.

After years of raising concerns through SPS channels, families and educators spoke out at a March 2024 school board meeting, and in the media, to tell their story. The Seattle Times described Jones as having led a “toxic learning and working environment” at Rainier View Elementary when serving as its principal.

At the March 2024 school board meeting, one teacher said, “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.” Others reported “students feel insecure at school,” “there’s a culture of bullying,” “our children's IEPs are being violated,” and “our students are not receiving the academic intervention, social, emotional, literacy, and multilingual services they need.”

The Seattle Times reported that the Rainier View PTSA “filed a May 2023 federal civil rights complaint, alleging harsh discipline policies and practices that fell disproportionately on Black and brown students.”

Speakers at the March 2024 board meeting 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.”

On Monday at Adams, Jones claimed none of that was true. 

In her opening remarks, she welcomed students and families back from spring break, and immediately made it clear that she had been waiting a long time to share her side of the story. According to notes taken at the meeting, she said:

“Three years. Three years I’ve been silent. Today what you can expect from me is to get to know me as a person, to get to know me as a leader. There are some things we’re unable to talk to because of personnel issues. I assure you it’s not because we don’t want to answer your questions.”

Jones went on to suggest that there had been a coordinated effort against her:

“Personally, I did not read the public articles, especially the comments section — that’s meant for people to laugh. But I do want to share that I have received just a high-level summary shared by some. And my response is, to those who sent me a ‘Welcome to Adams email,’ Thank you for being willing to engage with our community, Thank you for being willing to lead Adams Elementary. Also thank you to those who took the time to just write a card. Also to those who may have stated unkind things about me without knowing me, without knowing all sides of what has been written — some things in a coordinated and intentional manner.”

Jones then invited the community to work with her:

“We all still belong at the same table. We all in the Adams community belong at the same table, working on behalf of the children, the educators, and the families of this great school. So Adams community, starting today, I’m asking that you join me, that we work together. Let’s be the model for the city. Starting today, I extend my hand to each and every family, teacher, and everyone a part of Adams.”

Later in the meeting, one parent asked Jones if those allegations raised at the March 2024 school board meeting were true. Jones responded:

“I say this honestly, there’s some personnel issues within that. If you knew the whole story, I’m confident you would have more information to make a judgment. I’m fully reflective. I’m fully ready to move forward.”

Attendees at the meeting hoped that Jones would provide assurance that she has learned from her mistakes at Rainier View. Some even asked leading questions that practically provided Jones with the script for answers that would reassure them:

Parent: “What mistakes do you acknowledge that you’ve made and what won’t you do with our children?”

Jones: “Let’s take this opportunity to move forward, being the best principal for the students, parents, and teachers. I need more time to work with [current] Principal Doug [Sohn]. I want to be that principal who works for this community.”

How Did SPS Respond in 2024?

Adams families also pressed for an explanation of why Jones was removed as Rainier View principal in spring 2024 and whether SPS investigated the complaints against her. Though Jones’s supervisor from her time at Rainier View, Katrina Hunt, was at the meeting, she didn’t step forward to answer this question. 

Finally, Chief of Staff Bev Redmond responded that SPS removed Jones from Rainier View as an “act of care” for Jones. 

Redmond explained that former Superintendent Brent Jones was concerned about how the media attention and complaints from families and staff were impacting school operations on a day-to-day basis. There was concern for Anitra Jones’s well-being, and Brent Jones also wanted to be able to take a look at what was happening inside the school. Redmond said that it was hard for Rainier View to operate under that kind of confusion.

This raises questions about whether SPS leaders prioritized care for students and educators — or care for Anitra Jones.

It is unclear based on the public record and public statements what exactly SPS did to investigate the concerns raised about Jones during her time at Rainier View. Families and educators had been trying to get SPS to address those concerns for several years. In frustration, they began filing complaints with other agencies. The Seattle Times reported they filed a federal civil rights complaint, and filed a complaint with the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Educators also filed a complaint with the state Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC).

The PERC investigation bore fruit. 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 PERC report found that Jones “has a pattern of using vague, accusatory language in employees’ evaluations in response to employees’ protected union activity.” Jones had written in evaluations that employees were “dishonest” and “self-interested,” language that the PERC report found to be retaliatory in context.

SPS did ask the Puget Sound Educational Service District (ESD) to investigate their handling of the complaints against Jones. A June 2024 report by ESD focused only on the process, not on the substance of the complaints themselves, and concluded:

“Based on interview data and a review of relevant policies, it appears the District followed its written policies and procedures related to staff and family complaints about principals.”

The ESD report claims that SPS did investigate Jones, including in response to concerns flagged at the March 2024 board meeting:

“The District has investigated formal complaints, as well as new complaints raised during public testimony. Complaints included grievances, ethics complaints, and general complaints about climate, culture, and leadership style. These investigations resulted in no findings against Principal Pinchback-Jones.”

Superintendent Shuldiner States He Must Appoint Jones

At Monday’s meeting, Shuldiner was asked why Jones had to be placed as an elementary school principal, rather than at a secondary school. He said there was an internal document, created prior to his arrival at SPS that suggested she should be placed in an elementary school, but did not provide further details.

Shuldiner argued that this “internal document,” as well as contracts and state law, require him to appoint Jones as a principal:

“In order to be a superintendent I have to follow legal and contractual obligations. If I don’t, not only would I immediately get fired, but also we would be open to lawsuits, which is terrible for the entire district.”

“If you’ve been a principal for more than three years, you have to have cause [to fire them]. If there’s nothing in a file, you have to place them.”

Parents asked several times why there was nothing in Jones’s HR file about the allegations from the Rainier View community, something Shuldiner was unable to answer. He also pointed out he cannot retroactively investigate complaints against someone. 

Parents also asked why the PERC ruling against Jones wasn’t in the HR file, or why it could not serve as a basis for denying Jones an appointment as a principal in SPS. 

Ultimately, Shuldiner said that if he does not appoint Jones, he would put SPS at legal risk.

Shuldiner is surely correct that there is a legal risk to SPS if he does not place Jones as a principal. But that is not the only legal threat SPS faces here. 

There could also be legal action if Jones is appointed at Adams, or any other school, and causes similar problems to what Rainier View families and educators described in 2024. If something were to happen, families or educators will be able to point out that SPS knew full well that Jones engaged in misconduct and appointed her anyway.

Similar suits have been filed before. In 2015, SPS settled a lawsuit for $250,000 involving Marni Campbell, who remains in a senior position in SPS administration. More recently there is the $8 million judgement against SPS for the failure to protect student Zakaria Sheikibrahim from a teacher who punched him and caused lasting brain trauma. The teacher had been previously investigated by SPS but was allowed to remain in the classroom.

Shuldiner Calls Out Microaggressions

Jones is a Black woman. Adams, where all three of my kids previously attended at various times during their elementary school years, is 62 percent white.

Shuldiner felt that Jones had been unfairly treated by attendees at the Adams meeting on Monday. At Wednesday’s school board meeting, Shuldiner took 14 minutes prior to public comment, where seven Adams parents had signed up to speak, to share his concerns:

“I also want to highlight a feeling of sadness I had and a feeling of unease of what I also saw…What was so disappointing, I think, was that in the middle of her initial remarks, the community just interrupted her and said, how long is this going to take? When are we going to get to the questions?

So here's the person that's just trying to introduce themselves.”

Shuldiner went on to point out the composition of the room at Adams on Monday and the larger community:

“I appreciate that this is an important conversation, but I will say it is uneasy when I look at that school, when you look at the equity tiering. It was the seventh richest school in the district. The people in the audience were at least presented almost as all white. And you had a Black principal saying these things and being interrupted.”

Shuldiner described some of the nasty emails he had received, and came back to how he saw Jones treated by some parents at the Monday meeting:

“I would like to believe that when they asked Anitra to speak faster, they didn't mean that microaggression. But again, who am I to judge? My job is to just speak about details and data that I saw.”

Shuldiner then invited Redmond to speak. She said:

“As a Black female, sitting in that space, watching another Black female be addressed in a way that I thought was insulting, undignified. That was discouraging for the Seattle that I had grown to know.

We can disagree on presentation. We can disagree on facts. We can speak with passion. But what we should never be asked to do is to surrender our dignity and be treated as less than human.

To the Adams community, I speak with honesty when I say I'd love to come back to the table.”

Redmond also called for Adams to reconsider its opposition to Jones’s appointment:

“What I'm hoping for that community and for Principal Jones is for the chance. Give her the chance. Give her the conversation. Suspend the judgment that has already been delivered. Let her have the conversation.”

Adams families then gave their public testimony, reiterating their concerns about Jones’s appointment given the credible allegations against her at Rainier View and the findings in the PERC report. 

Kerry Lynd, Vice President of the Adams PTA, testified:

“I deeply apologize because we want to stick to the merit of our concerns.

But what you did not mention is that you looked us in the eye and told us to document everything and send it directly to you.

That is why you gave out your personal cell phone number.

This is a clear indication that you do not have trust in the process or in the appointee.”

Erin Stone, a teacher at Greenwood Elementary, took time out from her testimony on a separate topic to note that she had taught at Rainier View, was at the March 2024 board meeting, and stood in solidarity with the educators and community members raising concerns about Jones:

“I came quietly to support my colleagues who were braver than I was and had the courage to speak out about the emotional abuse and HR violations we endured at Rainier View Elementary.

To those coming from Adams Elementary, I see you, I hear you, and I'm advocating for you. Today, I do feel courageous.”

The Seattle Times reported today:

“I’m disappointed,” one of the [former Rainier View] educators who was listening to the meeting online said. “I feel like the superintendent inherited this issue, but it is up to him now to deal with this and deal with it in a way that really helps the people who work for him — the teachers and educators in that building and the Adams community.” 

What Comes Next?

Shuldiner has pledged reforms to HR processes. After describing the central office to the Seattle Times as “the Wild West” of cronyism, he told KUOW he is going through every pending investigation at SPS to bring it to a resolution. He also plans to create a Department of Student and Family Support as part of a larger reorganization of the central office:

“Shuldiner said he hopes the reorganization — and the creation of the department — is finished by this summer or the start of the 2026-27 school year. First he’d establish a ‘mental health and wellness’ division, then definitions for offenses like grooming, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.”

These are good ideas. Yet they rest uncomfortably against the events this week. All of us in SPS should be deeply concerned by the district's actions and its implication for our students and for teachers.

The root problem here is the failure by SPS to address the allegations raised by Rainier View families and educators earlier this decade.

When Jones was removed as Rainier View principal in spring 2024, it looked as if SPS was finally taking the allegations seriously. Yet Redmond’s comment this week that the removal was an “act of care” for Jones, not the Rainier View community as a whole, undermines that belief.

Jones’s denial of the allegations against her and the lack of any accountability on her part or SPS’s part for them did not suggest to the Adams community that their children and teachers would be in safe hands under her leadership. It significantly undermined SPS’s efforts to smooth the transition.

Shuldiner’s comments about the Adams community’s conduct at the Monday meeting appeared to have come from a sincere effort to address what he perceived as unfair treatment of a Black woman by a visibly white community. The criticism of some parents’ behavior at the meeting may be accurate and necessary.

His comments were also perceived by many in the room and watching online as an attack on the Adams community itself for daring to oppose Jones’s appointment as their principal due to her record at Rainier View, not for how some of them went about that opposition. 

Shuldiner may not be fully aware of how this playbook of attacking critics as being racist has been used at SPS in the past. As just one example, parents who tried to point out the flaws with SPS’s effort to end the highly capable cohort were told they were engaging in white privilege. When parents of color spoke up to defend the Highly Capable program, they were attacked from the dais as being “tokenized.”

Shuldiner’s remarks at the school board meeting reminded many observers of that playbook.

His comments also leave Adams families and educators in a difficult position. If they speak out about any future misconduct under Jones, they risk being labeled as discriminatory. Some may decide to not raise a concern, or just quietly quit SPS instead.

Jones would likely have elicited intense opposition had she been placed at any other elementary school in SPS, just as she had at Rainier View — a school that was 56% low income and 33% multi-language learners in 2024 when Jones left as its principal.

A mostly white school in a high-income community still has every right to oppose the placement of a principal with a proven record of lawbreaking and credible allegations of creating a toxic environment for students and teachers. It’s not acceptable to subject any child to that experience, even if their parents are comparatively privileged. 

Shuldiner said in his comments on Wednesday that he wants a “better Seattle Way.” Families and educators do too. They want to know that the toxic central office culture that Shuldiner himself called “the Wild West” of cronyism will end. They want to know that SPS will take concerns raised about educator misconduct seriously, that those who raise these concerns will not face retaliation, and that SPS will prioritize the protection of students over the protection of colleagues.

Instead, the Superintendent sent a different message yesterday: that if you speak out about educator misconduct, you risk public criticism from SPS leaders.

This is not just about Anitra Jones or Adams Elementary School. The same thing can happen anywhere. In fact, it’s what happened to Isolde Raftery and Ella Hushagen nearly 30 years ago at Garfield High School. As they described in KUOW’s Adults in the Room podcast, they got publicly attacked for pointing out that a beloved educator was assaulting students. Has anything changed?

Last night, Adams PTA Vice President Kerry Lynd quoted John Stanford, SPS superintendent from 1995 to 1998, in her testimony:

“We lost our way when we became more interested in the employment of adults than in the education of children.”

It’s clear this week that SPS still hasn’t found its way.