Survey paints troubling picture of leadership, morale in Coupeville schools
Published 1:30 am Friday, April 24, 2026
A remarkable new survey conducted by two unions at the Coupeville School District describes widespread staff dissatisfaction with the performance of the superintendent and school board, fear of retaliation and a troubled working environment at the high school.
At the same time, Elementary School Principal Erica McColl received overwhelming praise and the elementary school was described as a positive and supportive place to work.
The Climate Survey Report was prepared by Nick Lawrie, the UniServ director for the Washington Education Association who represents the Coupeville Education Association and the Coupeville Educational Support Association. A total of 88 employees responded to the anonymous survey that was meant to gauge experiences, concerns, frustrations and fears, according to an email sent to staff by the leaders of the two unions.
The survey was presented to Superintendent Shannon Leatherwood and two board members last week. It was also emailed to staff with a message from Coupeville Education Association Co-Presidents Katja Willeford and Jennifer Mostafavinassab, as well as Shelly LaRue, president of Coupeville Educational Support Association.
“What you shared matters,” the letter states. “It is documented. And it will not be ignored.”
According to the union leaders, many staff members didn’t respond to the survey out of fear of retaliation, even with an emphasis on anonymity.
The survey comes after at least 15 staff members resigned, retired, were demoted or otherwise left the district in less than two years.
“That number doesn’t include all who have been placed on paid administrative leave or subject to formal investigations — processes that carry their own significant costs, both literal as well as intangible, to a district of this size,” Willeford, Mostafavinassab and LaRue said in a statement to the News-Times. “Perhaps there are valid reasons for some, or even all of it. But in a district this small, that’s a pattern worth paying close attention to.”
Just last week, the district announced that Will Smith, director of technology for the district and former Oak Harbor school board candidate, was leaving after eight years with the district. Earlier this month, Leatherwood placed High School Principal Dan Berard on leave pending an investigation. He was appointed to the position after she placed Geoff Kappes, the former high school and middle school principal, on “non-disciplinary leave” in December 2024 and then he resigned.
Several staff members told the News-Times that Leatherwood also initiated investigations into two school secretaries.
In a letter to staff that Leatherwood shared with the News-Times, she wrote that she hears the concerns and shares some of them. She promised to be more present in the schools and asked to hear directly from staff members.
“Please talk to me,” she wrote. “Stop me in the hallway. Send me an email. Tell me what is working and what is not. I am asking because I mean it, not because it is the right thing to say.”
In a letter to staff, School Board President Morgan White wrote that the board also respects and hears the concerns. Moving forward, she wrote, the board will work with the superintendent to further review the survey; encourage continued communications and engagement with staff and stakeholders; monitor progress as the district works to strengthen system and practices; and remain focused on student outcomes.
“Thoughtful, specific and solution-oriented input helps us better understand issues and respond in meaningful ways,” White wrote. “We value ideas for improvement, and we desire to engage in ways that foster constructive dialogue and a shared commitment to problem-solving.”
In preparing the climate study, Lawrie conducted an analysis of the quantitative and verbatim data, consulted with legal counsel and worked with union leadership. The study looks at each school — elementary, middle and high — and a series of leaders, specifically the superintendent, the three principals, director of special services, school chef, food service director and the maintenance director.
While the staff at the elementary school described a consistently positive and healthy climate where they feel valued and safe, the opposite was reported of the high school, while the middle school fell in between. The survey states that staff at the high school are “strongly and consistently dissatisfied” while the middle school is described as inhabiting a “fragile neutral zone.”
“District-wide climate results reveal three fundamentally different workplaces,” the survey states.
In an especially concerning section, the survey describes a special education department with staff working significantly over contract and a substantial volume of reevaluations pending, “with students potentially not receiving legally required services on schedule.”
In the section about Leatherwood, Lawrie identified several patterns. The first is that she received consistently low scores for visibility, awareness and input-seeking.
“A superintendent who is described by respondents as physically absent, relying on building principal filters for information, announcing decisions before staff input is sought and unapproachable in small interactions is not simply ‘not visible enough,’” the reports states.
The survey concludes that she has helped create “a reactive culture where retribution is a very real fear.”
“The public removal of employees under investigation and the use of legal investigations against staff are described as creating district-wide apprehension,” the report states. “Whether these perceptions reflect documented events or not, the data shows they are real in their consequences for staff behavior and morale.”
Leatherwood scored the highest among staff in the area of professional respect, with 45.6% agreeing that she respects the judgment of staff members in their areas of expertise.
In the section about the school board, the survey found that the core concern among staff isn’t whether board members are doing a good job, but whether they are given accurate information from district leadership in order to do their job.
“Across all buildings, a consistent narrative emerges: staff believe the board is receiving an incomplete or inaccurate picture of district conditions from district leadership, and that board decisions have been made without full awareness of building-level conditions,” the survey states.
The study included many verbatim quotes from those surveyed.
“I believe the school board is doing the best they can with the information provided and choose to take in,” one staff member wrote. “But I strongly believe that they do not recognize the true reality of the health of this district’s staff and students. I find it so frustrating that the lens through which they seem to be looking is so far off from ours. I really wish they would ask more questions and explore deeper.”
Like the differences in the schools, the survey describes wide differences in attitudes about the principals. The staff at the elementary school are “strong, actively enthusiastic” about Principal McColl.
“These results demonstrate what effective principal leadership can produce in terms of building climate, staff culture and — by extension — the conditions in which students learn,” the report states.
The survey notes that only 11 people from the middle school responded to the survey, which raises questions about the sample size. Nevertheless, the results were “moderately positive” for Principal Becky Cays. The document notes that distress within the building is mainly attributed to district-wide decisions.
“The principal appears to be largely shielded from blame for conditions that staff attribute to the superintendent and school board,” the report states.
The picture is different for Berard, who is currently on leave, although the document notes that he is relatively new to the job. The survey states that only one staff member at the school agrees that the staff respects the principal.
“A building where the vast majority of staff disagree that their principal is respected by colleagues is a building with a leadership legitimacy crisis, not a preference disagreement,” the survey states.
The surveys describes him as “administratively absent” while some staff members feel he does not understand how a high school works because of a lack of experience. Others felt that he created a climate of fear.
“The consistency across different dimensions — communication, discipline, trust, availability, respect, input-seeking — rules out the explanation that staff are unhappy about one specific incident or policy,” the report states. “The pattern reflects a systemic leadership deficit that spans every domain the survey measured.”
In the statement to the News-Times, the union leaders acknowledge that things have been hard and that staff members aren’t just looking for acknowledgment from school leadership — they are looking for real change.
“Coupeville has always had a culture built on respect, dignity, and genuine care for one another. It’s something many of us know about and refer to as The Coupeville Way,” they wrote. ‘Our teams are the Wolves, and throughout our school district, we quote Rudyard Kipling, ‘For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.’ As a school community, that is what we always strive to embody. Our members believe that. They chose this community at least in part because of it.”
