Hamilton Asked How School Cuts Were Chosen. Port Angeles Leaders Questioned Her Role.

Nancy Hamilton wanted to know why the Port Angeles School District was reducing classroom staff, what administrative cuts it had considered and how fewer paraeducators would affect students with disabilities.

Superintendent Michelle Olsen’s initial response proposed a closed-door discussion of the school board director’s role. Board President Sandy Long then told Olsen the questions could wait.

“In the meantime, it is not necessary to respond to the questions in the email until after the executive session with the board,” Long wrote May 15. “Please share this communication with entire board.”

A month later, Long and the other three directors voted to censure Hamilton, citing her information requests among other alleged misconduct. They also adopted a process allowing Olsen to disregard certain requests unless the board approved them.

Emails released to The Olympic Herald through a public records request show how district leaders handled the questions behind that dispute. 

Hamilton asked about the basis for spending decisions and whether the district’s own conduct was contributing to arbitration costs. Olsen described frustration with the requests, sought legal advice about requiring majority approval and, in the May exchange, proposed discussing governance expectations before answering the budget questions.

The correspondence also shows Hamilton offering to work within the collective decision-making process the district said she was bypassing. She invited corrections to her financial assumptions, distinguished existing records from new analyses and offered to seek a board motion for work that had not already been done.

The district maintains that Hamilton’s requests burdened staff and crossed the line between governance and administration. The censure raised separate allegations involving public statements, constituent complaints and executive-session confidentiality. Hamilton disputes its characterization of her conduct. The district has denied violating her rights.

In her May 14 email, Hamilton asked which noninstructional and administrative reductions had been evaluated before cutting classroom staff. 

She sought comparisons involving cabinet positions, freezes, furloughs and returning teachers on special assignment to classrooms. She also asked about special education staffing and a combined music and physical education position at Jefferson Elementary.

“Please feel free to correct or refine any of the background data cited below, I am open to being incorrect or down the wrong path my research has led me on,” Hamilton wrote.

Olsen’s initial response the next day did not explain the staffing choices. She proposed an executive session May 21 on communication expectations, governance responsibilities and her role in responding to operational and administrative requests.

She quoted contract language giving her authority to organize staff and requiring individual directors to refrain from administrative action except through collective board action. That same passage made personnel decisions subject to board approval.

Hamilton responded that she was seeking information, not directing employees. She asked which existing records could be reviewed.

“If any of these analyses do not yet exist, I am happy to discuss how we can formally request them through a collective board motion,” she wrote.

Olsen replied that Hamilton’s points would be “great things to discuss in the executive session.”

On May 20, Olsen supplied the district’s budget philosophy and goals, adopted budget and additional funding information. 

She described operating costs exceeding state funding and an unexpectedly large insurance increase. Hamilton thanked her the following day but again asked for the criteria used to prioritize cuts, the alternatives considered and the assumptions driving staffing decisions.

The follow-up exposed the gap between the information supplied and the explanation Hamilton sought: how the district chose which jobs and services to reduce.

An earlier exchange shows that the administration also controlled which side of a disagreement it would circulate to the full board.

In March, Hamilton requested a one-page breakdown of procurement-card spending, more timely financial reports and information about contracted services.

“The board’s role is to approve payment,” Olsen wrote March 24. “Unless directed by the Board we will not be listing items purchased.”

Olsen cited purchasing-card policy, explained the timing of monthly financial reports and said a contractor list could be prepared for a future meeting. She also told Hamilton: “I am also sharing this communication with the full board.”

When Hamilton asked that her response be shared too, Olsen invoked the Open Public Meetings Act.

“I understand your request to have your response shared with the full Board,” Olsen wrote that afternoon. “However, to ensure we remain aligned with Open Public Meetings requirements, we are not able to distribute or facilitate discussion of Board business over email outside of a public meeting.”

Olsen directed Hamilton to board comments at a future meeting or an April 9 work session. Hamilton questioned why Olsen’s response could be circulated but hers could not, arguing that one-way distribution was different from board deliberation.

Olsen’s email did not explain why sharing her own response was permissible while forwarding Hamilton’s reply was not.

Olsen separately explained her objection to interim financial reports: payroll, accounts payable, revenue timing and ongoing adjustments would make unreconciled figures unreliable. Producing and explaining them would require significant staff time, she said.

Hamilton’s arbitration questions concerned another cost of district operations: whether recurring labor disputes reflected problems the district could correct.

On March 5, she requested arbitration decisions from the previous five years and information about outcomes, costs and recurring issues. She followed up March 11 with a direct question about what was driving the expense.

“I am trying to understand whether arbitration expenses are driven by frequent filings or by repeated contract issues,” Hamilton wrote.

Olsen forwarded that email to district attorney Heidi Maynard: “I’m feeling very frustrated.”

Maynard advised that, if the information required staff effort Olsen considered significant in light of other priorities, Hamilton should seek approval from a board majority. The attorney said the board could discuss the request in an open meeting and decide whether to direct the work.

The next day, Olsen told Maynard that she and Long had met with Hamilton and that Long would seek input from the full board about an arbitration analysis.

“I can ball park the costs given our previous conversation. I will not be doing any analysis,” Olsen wrote.

She described Hamilton as wanting to look for faults in collective bargaining agreements and potentially in the district’s handling of matters that led to arbitration. The email also addressed a separate dispute over Hamilton’s recusal obligations. Olsen closed by apologizing for “all the drama.”

Arbitration rulings provide a concrete reason to examine the district’s conduct.

As we reported Oct. 15, arbitrator Marsha Saylor found that the district fired a longtime secretary without just cause and ordered reinstatement with back pay and benefits, minus interim earnings. The firing occurred in November 2024 on then-Superintendent Martin Brewer’s recommendation.

In a separate June 2025 ruling, Saylor found that a union waited roughly nine months for the complaint that prompted an employee investigation. The employee had been placed on leave and fired before the union received it.

“There was no possible excuse for this kind of delay on such an important document,” Saylor wrote.

Those findings gave Hamilton’s question about repeated contract problems a basis in the district’s arbitration record.

On April 29, Olsen confirmed a June 1 target for providing arbitration information identifying dates, bargaining units, costs and district counsel, along with redacted decisions. She again said the district would not provide an analysis. Hamilton accepted the scope and said she would review the material.

Some of Hamilton’s requests were extensive. In December, she sent seven attachments covering finances, transportation, contracts, legislative priorities and board operating principles. 

Questions included the justification for bus purchases, controls on construction costs and whether contracted occupational therapy services could meet student needs. She also asked about bus accidents and insurance-related repairs over the previous decade or a reasonable time frame.

Her requests included work beyond retrieving existing records, particularly in compiling and explaining arbitration outcomes. That distinction supports the district’s argument that responding could consume staff time. It does not resolve the separate question her May emails raised: what information an individual director could obtain to assess the administration’s recommendations.

On June 18, Long, Kirsten Williams, Stan Williams and Ned Hammar voted to censure Hamilton. Hamilton voted against it.

The resolution established a process for requests Olsen deemed so extensive, complex or repetitive that they disrupted operations or diverted staff from current priorities. Those requests would go to the board president for placement on the next meeting agenda. Without collective approval, Olsen would disregard them.

The process gave the superintendent whose administration Hamilton was questioning the initial decision about whether a request met that threshold. It gave the board majority that censured Hamilton control over whether those requests would be fulfilled.

The board maintained that Hamilton retained the rights and powers of her office. It also reserved the possibility of seeking a court injunction to exclude her from future executive sessions; the resolution did not itself exclude her.

Hamilton sued July 14, alleging retaliation, speech restrictions and violations of the Open Public Meetings Act. In its Sept. 23 answer, the district admitted adopting the censure and information-request protocol but denied violating her constitutional rights or the open-meetings law. It sought dismissal with prejudice.

Before that vote, Hamilton had already challenged the way her objections were being characterized internally.

On May 27, she asked Long to correct a proposed superintendent evaluation summary that described her concern as a “barrier in communication.” Her actual comment, she wrote, identified a “barrier to governance,” concerning board process and oversight rather than interpersonal communication alone.

Long replied the next day: “Change noted and corrected. Thanks.”

Three weeks later, the board adopted a process making the majority’s permission a condition for answering the requests Olsen classified as burdensome.