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Parents at $20,000-a-year Portland private school Northwest Academy say the administration mishandled discipline of a ninth-grade boy, allowing the student to return to school this month after he wrote a "hit list" of fellow students he wanted to kill.
Parents say Northwest Academy suspended the student in December after he showed schoolmates his hit list, but he wasn't expelled.
"There's been this effort to whitewash or erase the actions of one kid," says Elizabeth Meyer, mother of a ninth-grader.
Northwest Academy head Mary Folberg, who founded the school in 1997, resigned today.
"My retirement has no relationship to anything but my age, my 50 years in high-school and middle-school education, and my goal to help the school move to securing a permanent home in downtown Portland," she says.
Board chair Emily Karr praised Folberg's work at the school.
"Being an educator and supervisor of thousands of children is never without controversy or debate, but Mary's innovative efforts to grow our school from a couple dozen students to more than 200 stand on their own," she said.
Willamette Week
