Principal of West High School in Salt Lake City fired - Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake City School District initially put Ford White on leave following the Nov. 14 incident. On Thursday and after two months of investigation, his lawyer said, the district told White “it was terminating him.”

Attorney Michael Teter said that the district’s probe did not include ever meeting with White to ask about what happened.

“The picture of the events of Nov. 14, however, are much more complicated than the district has led the public to believe,” Teter added. “They involve real crises and emergent concerns that the district, in its letter terminating Principal White, nonchalantly labeled ‘fairly routine and typical.’”

When they’d had so much that they were starting to black out, one of the girls said, she remembers seeing their principal walk around to the south side of the school where they were sitting. Much of what happened next is fuzzy, she said, but both 17-year-olds said he drove them home.

The next day he was put on leave. The district’s official policy is that he should have called police when he found the girls.

On Thursday, Salt Lake City School District spokeswoman Yándary Chatwin said only that the investigation into White had concluded and she wasn’t able to say more. She noted he has 30 days to appeal the decision. “I can’t talk about what was concluded,” she said. “I can’t comment on personnel matters.”

“They were targeted,” member Michael Nemelka previously told The Salt Lake Tribune. “The board would not leave the superintendent alone."

The board called an impromptu meeting for Thursday evening. The agenda didn’t specify whether members would take a public vote on either personnel issue, but after 12 minutes in closed session, they came out and declined to answer questions.

“We will not be making any comments to the press at this time," said Board President Tiffany Sandberg. “We are adjourned.”

Teter, White’s attorney, said the firing and resignations show the district “is in disarray.” The former principal, he added, is “weighing his [legal] options.” He noted, too, that the school warned White not to speak publicly about what had occurred.

“More time is needed to assess the role that personal politics played in the district’s action today,” Teeter said.

The girls whom the principal drove home joined the protest and said they felt guilty that he was put on leave because of their decision to drink — which they said they were doing because they were going through a lot in their personal lives. White’s attorney described his actions as caring about students “without resorting to involving the police.” The girls called it mercy.

“Our school loves this principal,” one of them said. “He’s the only one that treats students like his own kids,” the other responded. “Instead of looking at us like we’re ghetto kids from Rose Park,” the first added. Both girls are students of color.

The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not identify minors associated with minor crimes. The girls have not been charged.

According to a letter written by White on the school’s website, the former principal was raised in Michigan and served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a tank commander during the Gulf War. He became principal at West High about two years ago, based on a 2017 tweet from the superintendent.

White wrote in the note online: “Becoming a Panther has been a decade long journey for me as my dream was to work in an inner city school somewhere in America." That post has since been removed.

West High’s student body is 64% minority. And the district, as a whole, has a population that's more than half students of color.

Many of the student protesters said that White specifically wanted to work with them when issues arose and saw discipline as a last resort. He often talked to students about scholarships, and several noted with a laugh that his catchphrase is: “Show up, do the work and get paid, baby.”

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Principal of West High School in Salt Lake City fired - Salt Lake Tribune
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