New principal charts turnaround at Jefferson

First goal is to stanch hemorrhaging of students and teachers

By Todd Murphy

The Portland Tribune, Aug 30, 2002, Updated Oct 30, 2009

He has roamed these wide halls before.

But twice, Larry Dashiell was forced to leave Jefferson High School as he experienced firsthand the sort of reorganization and upheaval that have afflicted the school for most of its recent history.

This time, Dashiell says, he’s here for a longer stay. And people who care about North Portland’s Jefferson High Ñ maybe one of the most misunderstood and unquestionably one of the most troubled public schools in Oregon Ñ certainly hope so.

The 47-year-old Dashiell starts school Wednesday as the seventh Jefferson High principal in six years. His long-term mission: Turn around a school mired in low student test scores, high student-dropout rates and an academic reputation that increasingly chases North Portland students away to other Portland high schools.

His short-term mission: Stop the bleeding.

The repeated changes in leadership and direction at Jefferson in recent years have pummeled the school’s reputation, its students and its staff.

Jefferson’s enrollment of 855 last year was by far the lowest of any Portland high school and had declined 20 percent from six years before.

This fall, 920 students are expected. Another 256 students from Jefferson’s neighborhood got district approval to transfer to other high schools; 66 of them got those transfers through a new federal law calling for school districts to provide free transportation for students to leave low-achieving schools.

In the meantime, Dashiell had to hire 18 teachers this past summer to fill out a teaching staff of 70. The 18 are replacements for Jefferson teachers who left after last year, some in frustration with the continuous administrative changes at the school.

“I think people were burned out from it,” Jefferson teacher Carrie Rohn says of the repeated leadership changes. “They were just exhausted, starting over again every single year.”

So all the affable Dashiell has to do is turn around a school with a heavy load of first-time Jefferson teachers and with the rest of the staff dizzy from constant change.

“It’s a challenge,” he says almost matter-of-factly as he sits at the desk in his office. “But that’s OK.”

Five-year commitment

The first issue Dashiell has tried to address is the revolving door into the principal’s office. He has publicly committed to spending at least five years as Jefferson principal.

The repeated principal changes “gives the perception that it’s really, really tough to even walk in the door,” Dashiell says. “And that’s just not the case.

“I’d like to give it five, at least,” he says. “That sounds like a good number.”

Of course, past Jefferson principals also came to the job believing they would stay longer than they did, Jefferson supporters and teachers say. Kevin Bacon, for one, resigned in early 2001 after serving as interim principal and principal for about a year. In a letter to then-Superintendent Ben Canada written before Bacon resigned, Bacon bitterly cited “broken promises and lack of support” for the school from district leaders.

“I think the principals we’ve had have cared deeply,” says Barbara Lescher, a mother of a Jefferson student and head of the school’s parent-teacher association. “I think the struggles they’ve had have come from those over them, and not anyone under them.”

Whatever struggles lie ahead, Dashiell will negotiate them with plenty of experience within Portland Public Schools, although none as a permanent principal.

In more than two decades in Portland, Dashiell has been a middle school assistant principal, vice principal at Lincoln and Madison high schools, and twice vice principal at Jefferson. (He was vice principal in 1995, before district layoffs required each high school to lose an administrator, then became vice principal again in the fall of 1997 Ñ before the district “reconstituted” Jefferson at the end of that school year.) He also served as acting principal for four months at Northeast Community School and was assistant principal for the previous three years at Southridge High School in Beaverton when he was named Jefferson principal.

Concerns about experience

Dashiell’s lack of experience as a principal concerns some Jefferson advocates.

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