Former Preschool for All Director Alleges County Officials Knew She Owned a Preschool

Leslee Barnes, the former director of preschool and early learning at Multnomah County, filed notice Jan. 23 that she intends to sue her ex-employer, alleging she was discriminated against for months at the county and was essentially forced to resign.

Barnes resigned her post on July 31, two days after WW reported that the preschool she owned, Village Childcare LLC in North Portland, was one of four examples of “wasteful spending” cited by Oregon officials in an audit of the state Preschool Promise program. Public records showed the preschool had received $833,494 in state funds from 2020 to 2023 to pay for 63 Preschool Promise seats but enrolled students for just nine.

Preschool Promise is a state-run program to provide child care to low-income families, separate from Preschool for All. But the spending raised questions about the role Barnes played in overseeing the Preschool for All program at a time when it was under intense scrutiny by the state’s top leaders.

In the hours and days after WW’s initial reporting, multiple county commissioners called for Barnes’ resignation. They did so, they said, not on the grounds of the Preschool Promise audit but because they didn’t know Barnes owned a preschool. Some commissioners were quick to call that a conflict of interest. The fallout from Barnes’ resignation includes an ongoing external investigation of the county’s ethics and conflict of interest policies. In late December, county officials told WW the status of that investigation was still pending.

The tort claim notice, first reported by The Oregonian, alleges Barnes was effectively forced to resign, and had been subjected to months of discrimination at the county prior to her ousting. Perhaps most notably, the tort claim alleges Barnes’ ownership of Village Childcare, the underlying reason many called for her resignation, was no secret.

“Before Ms. Barnes accepted the position of PELD Director, she told Multnomah County that she would only accept the job if she could retain ownership of Village Childcare,” wrote Barnes’ attorney, Monica Goracke. “She and the county agreed in writing to several conditions relating to her ownership of Village Childcare that both parties believed would avoid any actual or perceived conflict of interest.”

The tort claim notice alleges that her ownership of the preschool, which it claims was an known provision of her hiring at the county, was used as the reason to ultimately terminate her.

Barnes’ allegation that her ownership was a condition of her hiring revives key questions about who at the county knew what and when. County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson was particularly quick to distance herself from Barnes in the aftermath of the Preschool Promise audit, even though she was quoted singing Barnes’ praises at the initial announcement of her hiring.

In August, Vega Pederson’s spokesperson told WW that the chair was one of several people who attended a virtual meet-and-greet with Barnes. But crucially, she noted that Vega Pederson did not know Barnes kept an ownership stake in the preschool after her hiring. “She was aware that Director Barnes had owned a child care center from [planning and advocacy] work [around Preschool for All] but was unaware of her ongoing relationship after that.”

A spokesperson now says the county has no comment since it’s now a pending legal matter.

The notice further alleges Village Childcare suffered competitively from Barnes’ work as Preschool for All director, and in no way benefited from her public position. “Village Childcare lost business after she took the PELD position because Preschool for All created opportunities for clients to obtain child care at lower to no cost with other providers,” it reads.

In making its case against the county, Barnes’ tort claim notice also disparages WW’s reporting on the Preschool Promise audit and Barnes’ ownership of the preschool. Most notably, Barnes argues the state audit criticized the Oregon Department of Early Learning and Care for its handling of Preschool Promise dollars, not the providers that received the money.

“Village Childcare was not responsible for low enrollment,” the notice says, “and it did not have significantly lower actual costs to remain open with fewer children than it would have had with more children, mainly due to salaries and other operational costs.” Barnes adds that she sought to reduce the number of publicly subsidized seats her preschool qualified for when they weren’t filled.

By focusing attention on her preschool, WW “did not let these facts get in the way of its determination to smear Ms. Barnes in connection with her oversight of Preschool for All,” the tort claim notice says.

WW stands by its reporting.

Its July 29 story contained the bulk of the written statement Barnes provided to the newspaper. Back then, Barnes confirmed Village Childcare had collected more than $800,000 in awards despite low enrollment. She is quoted in the initial story mentioning the fixed costs her business incurred during the pandemic. She told WW that “it has no bearing on my role.”

“We did not operate wastefully,” she said then, in a quote WW printed. “I operated in accordance to our contract and operating agreement with DELC. Publicly funded programs must be able to operate during times of crisis.”

The notice also alleges that Barnes had fallen out of favor at the county well before WW reported on her preschool—and states her belief that her ouster may have been in response to increased state pressure on the program. In June, Gov. Tina Kotek sent a sharply worded letter to Vega Pederson expressing her concerns that the Preschool for All tax was driving high earners out of Multnomah County, which was having downstream economic effects on Oregon. In that letter, the governor also expressed concern the program was underspending the money it raised, and urged for tax relief. In the days after, an eleventh-hour bill in the Legislature threatened to kill the program entirely. It did not pass.

Barnes’ attorney alleges that as political tensions flared up, the county’s preschool director was excluded from “key conversations and meetings” and “was receiving disparate treatment compared to her subordinate employee, a white woman.” Barnes, who is Black, alleges Vega Pederson was having separate conversations with Barnes’ subordinate about the scrutiny Preschool for All’s was under. When she raised those issues to her supervisor, Mohammad Bader, the county’s Department of Human Services director, she alleges he told her that “people at the county were more comfortable talking with a white woman.”

While on a week’s vacation in June—the same week as the eleventh-hour bill made its rounds, threatening to kill Preschool for All—Barnes alleges in her notice that no one tried to contact her about the developing threat to the program, even though she had explicitly asked to be alerted. Barnes was on vacation, and later on medical leave in July, because the director job had taken a significant mental toll, the notice alleges.

Racial discrimination also seeped into an investigation of Barnes after the WW story, her notice alleges. While white male directors accused of misconduct resigned weeks or months after claims were made against them, the tort claim alleges the county had no interest in digging into the truth around Barnes. A county spokesperson told WW in late July ahead of its initial story that the county was working to verify information around Village Childcare. But it quickly dropped that initial investigation. “Ms. Barnes is no longer a county employee,” the spokesperson told WW in August, justifying its closure of the probe.

In calling for Barnes’ resignation, the tort claim notice alleges, county officials acted hastily and denied her a proper investigation. “Officials made these statements before anyone at the county had made even the slightest attempt to investigate the facts, which were that Ms. Barnes had disclosed her ownership of Village Childcare to the County, she had never acted unethically, and that Village Childcare had suffered financially, not benefited, as a result of Preschool for All,” the notice reads.

Notably, the notice alleges, she was not presented with any opportunity to push back against the allegation that she had misled county leaders.

“Two days after Willamette Week published its article, on July 31, 2025, Ms. Barnes received a telephone call from Mohammad Bader and Travis Brown, the County’s head of Human Resources. Despite admitting that they had not read the state audit, they told her that because she had not disclosed her ownership of Village Childcare, if she did not resign within two hours, she would be fired,” it reads. “She told them that she had disclosed her ownership of Village Childcare.”

It continues: “They then said that she would still have to resign or be fired within two hours because of the ‘scandal.’ Given this threat, Ms. Barnes agreed to say that she had resigned. At the time, the County had not conducted any investigation into Ms. Barnes’s actions as PELD Director or as the recipient, through her business, of state funds.”

Barnes’ attorney did not immediately respond to WW’s request for additional comment.