PORTLAND, Ore. — St. Helens Superintendent Scot Stockwell was placed on paid administrative leave, during a school board meeting late Friday afternoon.
The school district also announced earlier on Friday, just before noon, that St. Helens High School Principal Dr. Katy Wagner has been placed on administrative leave and St. Helens School District School Board Chair Ryan Scholl has resigned from his role.
The administrative decisions were made in the wake of a teacher sex-abuse case that has left the St. Helens community reeling and furious, leading to days of widespread student-led protests, school closures, and a large group of angry parents showing up to Wednesday’s school board meeting to demand that the school board and superintendent be fired or resign. Many also called for the high school principal to be fired.
"We've heard the concerns that have been raised and are committed to transparency and working toward fostering a safe, supportive environment for all students," the district said in a statement Friday morning.
Vice Chair Trinity Monahan will now perform the duties of the chair.
The school board was planning to discuss during a virtual meeting late Friday afternoon whether to place Stockwell on paid administrative leave.
"So, based off of our last meeting, it was pretty clear that at this point, the community has lost faith in a number of different things for the district, the superintendent, the boards," the board said during the meeting. "For the purposes of us to be able to move forward, I believe that it's going to be in our best interest to move towards placing our current superintendent on paid administrative leave."
The school board said it plans to have another in-person meeting, though its time and date were not determined. Plymouth High School and St. Helens High School will be closed on Monday but will be open on Tuesday.
Students protesting Friday morning outside the high school said placing school and district officials on paid leave isn't enough.
"I think it's a step in the right direction but it's not what we want," said Leah Yarbor, sophomore class president at St. Helens High School. "We want him gone from the school board and we want everyone else on the school board gone."
Two teachers — one current and the other retired — were arrested earlier this week on sex-abuse charges that go back years.
Eric Stearns, a 46-year-old choir teacher at St. Helens High School, was arrested Tuesday after a two-month investigation. Joseph Hogue, the acting police chief in St. Helens, told KGW that police first learned about Stearns from a tip that came into the Safe Oregon tip line. The tip mentioned a TikTok video that alluded to inappropriate behavior by Stearns. Police interviewed people who were involved with the video or commented on the video, and during that investigation, Hogue said the name of another teacher, Mark Collins, came up.
After his arrest Tuesday, Stearns pleaded not guilty Wednesday in court to charges that he sexually abused six different students between 2015 and as late as January 2024. Collins, a former math teacher at the school who is retired, was also arrested. Court documents for Collins list sex abuse charges with three minors between the years 2017 and 2023.
School board members acknowledged Wednesday that they knew Stearns was under police investigation since September. A parent whose child was in Stearns' choir class told KGW that Stearns remained in his position and was teaching up until his arrest Tuesday. Community members said accusations made by students and parents were ignored by the school board and school officials for years.
"The school didn't really do anything," Lucy Durant, a sophomore at St. Helens High School, said Friday morning outside the school.
During the police investigation, detectives submitted a subpoena for the personnel files of both Stearns and Collins. Hogue said there were multiple mentions in Stearns' file of inappropriate behavior between 2019 and 2023.
"The victims had reported some of this information to the school district, and in many cases, they found that there were records of that," Hogue said.
Police said Doug Weaver, a 2007 St. Helens graduate and current TikTok creator, was responsible for launching their investigation.
In September, Weaver emailed the school safety tip line SafeOregon and shared comments that St. Helens students had posted on a video he made about St. Helens teachers acting inappropriately.
"For a long time, I didn't think change in this district was a possible thing," Weaver told KGW. "My goal has always been the same: I do not want unsafe people in the classroom; I do not want these kids to go to school and not know if they're safe."
Students who spoke to KGW on Friday morning said school administrators did nothing to protect them.
"I've seen a lot of things that were wrong to me, and I think that there's little effort to change these things," Yarbor said.
Another student, senior Levi Hileman, agreed: "We're not going to stand for it anymore, because it was put under the rug."
During Wednesday's meeting, when a parent asked board members if they had anything to say to the parents or victims, Stockwell, the superintendent, answered, "We've made statements," prompting a hailstorm of boos.
Parents protesting Friday morning alongside their students said they've had enough of school and district officials not listening to them.
"If anybody reports this stuff, it was made to feel like it's not that big a deal, like (they) just want it to go away," said Brandon Hogan, a parent who said he's thinking of pulling his kids from the district.
"I'm not going to trust these people," he said.
All schools and offices in the district are closed Friday and all events are canceled. The district said it plans to resume its regular school schedule on Monday.
Police said they're still investigating the case but wouldn't reveal if more victims had come forward in the wake of the announcement of the two arrests.
Columbia County District Attorney Joshua Pond on Friday refuted rumors that his office and the St. Helens Police Department ordered or suggested that Stearns or Collins should not be dismissed or placed on leave.