SEATTLE – Investigative reporters in Seattle have uncovered a very unpleasant truth about the city’s public school system: It’s being led by a group of liars.

MyNorthwest.com reports that Seattle school leaders lied – for a year and a half – to the head of a private school for special needs kids about their plans to kick the school out of the district-owned building it has been leasing for the last 28 years.

The private school for disabled students is Northwest Center, and it is led by Tom Everill.

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According to MyNorthwest.com, Everill had tried to get an answer from Seattle officials since October of 2012 about whether or not Northwest Center would be allowed to stay in the district’s North Queen Ann building.

District officials repeatedly assured Everill they had no other plans for the building.

However, Seattle officials suddenly changed their tune in December of 2013, when they told Everill the school’s lease would not be renewed because the district needed the building to accommodate its growing student population, MyNorthwest.com reports.

Email obtained by MyNorthwest.com reporters reveals Seattle school officials knew back in the fall of 2012 – the same time Everill was beginning his inquiries – that they were going to place the district’s program for special needs students in the North Queen Ann building.

Reporters also uncovered email showing “that a district employee was instructed to tell … Everill that they had no plans for the building,” MyNorthwest.com notes.

Everill explained the deception to the news site:

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“They received my email and they say, ‘What should we tell them,’ and someone said, ‘Tell him we have no plan.’ And they told me, ‘We have no plan.’ But they did have a plan and there were so many missed opportunities to include us in the conversation dating back to the middle of 2012 so that we could plan and could have the kind of orderly transition that we’re asking for now.”

As a result of the district officials’ lies, Northwest Center is facing an existential crisis. Everill says he might not have enough time to find a new building for the school, customize it to the needs of the students, and to get the city’s approval for all those changes before the 2014-15 school year begins, MyNorthwest.com reports.

In short, Northwest Center Kids could be forced out of their school.

From the reporting we’ve seen, nobody is asking the obvious question: Why did Seattle school officials lie to Everill?

Our guess is that Seattle officials view Northwest Center as a competitor for state funds and wouldn’t mind seeing the private school close its doors. Why else would Seattle officials go through all the trouble of coordinating their big lie?

It doesn’t make sense.

There’s another problem: MyNorthwest.com has not reported the names of the Seattle employees who organized this big lie. That’s a big mistake because parents and taxpayers deserve to see these public servants held accountable.

And if the news organization won’t expose the liars by name, the Seattle school board will have to.

Unless the Seattle school board fires the employees who lied to Everill and caused all this tumult and chaos for Northwest Center families, taxpayers will not – and should not – believe anything that school leaders tell them.

This group of deceivers has destroyed the district’s credibility within the community. Nothing less than a full-scale investigation will solve this problem.

It would be a mistake for Seattle school leaders go into a defensive crouch and hope this controversy eventually blows over. We suspect taxpayers will be very reluctant to approve a millage increase or a special levy to pay for school project until they can trust what their school leaders are telling them is true.