Newberg School Board Fires Superintendent Without Cause, Warning

NEWBERG, OR —At the beginning of Tuesday night's school board meeting in Newberg, four of the seven board members put an item on the agenda for the end of the meeting. By the time it was over, the four members had fired the district's superintendent, Joe Morelock.

Since the 4-3 vote fired Morelock without cause, the district will pay his full $175,000 salary and his health insurance. It also means that if they are able to hire another superintendent, they will be paying two at the same time.

Live in Portland? Click here to subscribe to our free breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox and mobile devices. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and download our free mobile app on Android or iPhone.

The board's three objecting members tried to adjourn the meeting, maintaining that they had not been given notice and not had time to review the resolution to fire Morelock. Their four conservative colleagues voted them down and moved ahead with the firing.

The firing is effective Nov. 19.

"The Superintendent Cabinet of district administrators is shocked and dismayed that the board would take this disruptive action in the middle of the school year," they said in a statement.

The filing stems from a move by the four members earlier this year to ban all visual references to gay pride and Black Lives Matter on school property. The original proposal was reworked to ban all political symbols after questions were raised about whether it was illegal.

Even after it was reworked, a lawyer for the district advised Morelock that it still might be illegal.

At a board meeting earlier this year, Morelock was taken to task by conservative board members for not doing enough to enforce the ban. Those board members didn't seem assuaged by the fact that the ban requires a complaint to be filed about a political symbol and that none had been filed.

On Tuesday, the board finally heard a complaint.

Someone took issue with a poster hanging in the window of an elementary school that had a rainbow and the words "Be seen."

The poster is for near by George Fox University, a Christian school outside of Portland. "Be seen" is their slogan.

When Morelock was hired in 2018, the district had an ending fund balance of less than $500,000 on their $51 million budget. At the beginning of this year, their safety net had grown to more than $9 million.