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Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith plans in two weeks to ask the Portland School Board to fire Marti Diaz, the former Kelly Elementary School principal who was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, but never charged with a crime after an alcohol-fueled camping trip with fellow PPS principals went awry.
A school board vote is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 20—almost exactly one year after Portland police arrested Diaz at work and PPS put Diaz on paid administrative leave.
But this won't be the end of Diaz's fight with PPS, according to her attorney, Craig Crispin, who says Diaz plans to sue in federal court if the school board fires her on the grounds PPS discriminated against her, defamed her and inflicted emotional distress, among other claims.
"The expectation is we'll be in court fairly quickly," Crispin says, adding that PPS initially offered Diaz a settlement to resign. Diaz rejected the offer and made a counteroffer, but Crispin wouldn't disclose the amounts.
In dozens of pages of new documents released to WW, PPS lays out its case against Diaz, noting in a 12-page letter that it doesn't much matter to PPS officials that prosecutors never charged Diaz, a principal once considered a rising star in PPS, with a crime.
"[Y]ou engaged in actions that constitute criminal conduct, even though that conduct was not charged, and you are no longer fit to perform your responsibilities at PPS," Sean Murray, PPS's human resources chief, wrote to Diaz on July 22.
New allegations
Documents from PPS level new accusations against Diaz, including that she failed to report to district officials, police or state child-welfare advocates parents' 2013 allegation of sex abuse against a 10-year-old girl by a male teacher at Kelly. Diaz denies the district's accusation in an 11-page written response dated July 30.
Crispin says the new allegations are the result of PPS's efforts to justify, months after the fact, its decision last year to put Diaz on administrative leave before she was charged with a crime.
"After several months, they raised these additional allegations, which they had been digging for," Crispin says.
PPS officials declined to comment.
The correspondence between the parties makes clear PPS and Diaz agree on little, if anything. PPS's new allegations against Diaz include the following:
- On June 23, 2015, a new administrator started working at Kelly and found a letter dated March 22, 2013 from parents of a 10-year-old girl at Kelly. The letter contained startling accusations that a male teacher “took his hand and rubbed up [the child’s] thigh (from knee to top of thigh) almost to the vaginal area” and “told her he loved her.” PPS writes: “There are no notes of the steps you took to address this letter, if any. There is no record of a report to DHS. Following an interview with you on July 9, it is apparent that you did not interview the student, parents or other teachers identified in the letter as having information. You described the girl as a ‘young woman’ with a troubled background and someone who needed attention and that you made a decision after talking with [the teacher] that no report was necessary because you credited [the teacher’s] version of events over the student’s.”
In Diaz's response, Crispin disputes PPS's version. He writes Diaz "would never allow a child to be in danger and would have fully investigated the complaint" but that she could not respond to the allegation because Diaz was not permitted to review PPS's documentation of the event, meaning Diaz had "little recollection of the matter." Crispin also noted Diaz was heavily involved in bargaining with the teacher's union as a representative of PPS management at the time, and that the school's assistant principal helped run the school then. "The contention that [the assistant principal] had no involvement in the complaint lacks credibility, but may be understandable as an effort to shift blame to an individual, i.e., Ms. Diaz, who is already the subject of a witch hunt," Crispin writes.
The teacher is now under investigation by the state Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, says Patty Liddell, an investigative assistant with the state agency. However, he remains employed at a PPS school, says Christine Miles, a spokeswoman for PPS. "We cannot comment on a personnel matter," she adds.
- PPS contends, based on statements from other PPS principals who were friendly with Diaz and her partner, that Diaz on two other occasions engaged in threatening or violent behavior toward her partner. On one occasion, Diaz allegedly “took a knife and rubbed it back and forth on [the partner’s] leg in a threatening way.” PPS also contends that Diaz “came at” her partner with a razor blade at home but ended up cutting herself in the face, requiring a trip to the emergency room. Later, when asked about a bandage on her face, Diaz told other PPS employees she had a mishap “when dealing with holiday ornaments.”
Diaz's partner, in a signed declaration provided to PPS, says she never made any such statements about a knife and that the rubbing never took place. In the same declaration, she gives an entirely different story to explain Diaz's cut. She says Diaz was in the bathroom at home trimming her sideburns with a straight razor. She entered the room suddenly, startling Diaz and causing her to cut her face. Diaz, her attorney writes, made up the story about the holiday ornaments because she didn't want to tell her co-workers that she shaved.
- PPS says Diaz displayed inappropriate behavior at work, including yelling “keep her the fuck away from me” about a school secretary. In April 2014, the secretary allegedly told Diaz she didn’t want to be treated that way. Diaz allegedly responded by daring the employee to file a union grievance against Diaz. “Grieve me, please, grieve me,” PPS says Diaz said in a “growling” tone.
Diaz, through her attorney, contends the district's allegations concerning the secretary are "especially unfair" and a conflict of interest given that the PPS lawyer involved in Diaz's proposed firing was also directing Diaz's handling of earlier work-place issues involving the secretary.
- PPS also says 43 out of 44 staff members at Kelly agreed Diaz “created the very definition of a hostile work environment through her fear-based leadership style that included intimidation and abusive interactions with staff, parents and students.”
Crispin counters that Diaz created "an expectation of success and a refusal to accept performance by teachers who were unable or unwilling to perform at a high level." He notes, too, that the state raised its rating of Kelly under Diaz's leadership to a four out of five.
Throughout its investigation of Diaz, the district has refused to turn over documents that would help Diaz defend herself, Crispin adds.
Camping trip
The additional allegations, PPS contends, are secondary to what happened in October 2014 at Milo McIver State Park. "Although this proposed recommendation to end your employment with PPS takes the circumstances in their totality into account," PPS writes in its July letter to Diaz, "the district would be making this recommendation based on your conduct on the camping trip if that is all that had occurred."
Not surprisingly, PPS and Diaz have different versions of what happened on the camping trip.
As first reported by WW in January, principals at Grant High School and Hosford and Lane middle schools told a school resource officer almost two weeks after the camping trip that Diaz had allegedly assaulted her partner. The officer investigated, leading to Diaz's arrest.
PPS, in its letter to Diaz, says it believes "it is more likely than not" that Diaz engaged in violent or threatening behavior toward her partner, including on the camping trip when the other principals alleged that Diaz's partner told one of them Diaz "fucking hit me."
Diaz's partner, in her declaration, says the principals' statements are misleading and that one principal's allegations in particular are not credible, because she spent "considerable time and energy attempting to establish a romantic relationship" with her.
The principals had been drinking on the camping trip.
"What happened," Diaz's partner says in her declaration, "is that after [Diaz] left the group of very intoxicated women, she returned to our RV and put on her pajamas. [Another principal] continued to urge me to drink more, and [Diaz] called for me to come in, saying that I'd had enough to drink. I did go into the RV and the two of us got into a heated verbal argument. I pushed [Diaz]; she pushed back. That was the total scope of the physical contact."
Diaz is now under investigation at the TSPC, the state agency that oversees teachers and principals, according to the TSPC.
Diaz declined to be interviewed. "I would like to leave my comments to my attorney," Diaz wrote in a message to WW.
Willamette Week