The reign of Luis Ottley as St. Paul Academy head of school is at least of local interest. St. Paul Academy is a large and venerable institution. On the other side of the river, Blake and Breck have not suffered anything like the humiliation that Ottley has delivered to SPA in response to parents who have had the temerity to criticize him. He has wielded his authority to dismiss the children of such parents under an enrollment contract provision that seems to have been introduced to protect “Dr. Luis Ottley,” as he invariably calls himself.
This past Sunday the Star Tribune took a look at the Ottley era at SPA in the page-one story “Claims of retaliation, suppression and secrecy fuel turmoil at St. Paul Academy.” Among other things, the story by Eva Herscowitz takes up the case of parent Matt Bauer and his two sons, the oldest of whom just matriculated at the Naval Academy this week.
Ottley had threatened to dismiss both of Bauer’s sons on account of no wrong attributable to them. Rather, dismissal would have been attributable solely to the offense Ottley took to Bauer’s expression of dissatisfaction with Ottley. That’s not the way Ottley puts it, but it’s obviously the case.
Bauer’s older son had been admitted to the Naval Academy. Dismissal would have complicated his matriculation. Ottley has in fact dismissed Bauer’s younger son from attendance in the 2026-27 school year. Bauer has brought a lawsuit against SPA seeking relief for his younger son. News of the lawsuit made the Star Tribune as well. I posted Bauer’s complaint here.
The underlying facts are in my view outrageous. Ottley is a tyrant. The widely read Daily Mail now recounts the facts alleged by Bauer in “Ritzy Midwest community rocked after private school expels boy whose father allegedly publicly badmouthed principal.” The Daily Mail concludes with its request to SPA and Ottley for comment.
The school’s practice is apparently to avoid comment in the press and to direct comment to “the SPA community” or some subset. In a message to “the SPA community,” Ottley responded to the Bauer lawsuit: “It is important for you to know that the School believes that this suit has no legal merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves against the claims made in it.”
Ottley also asserted: “As we have previously shared, we don’t make decisions like these lightly and, in fact, we are not aware of any other family having been asked to leave the school based solely on a parent’s actions in the last two decades.” Perhaps that is because the contract provision that Ottley wields as his sword is a creature of the Ottley era.
Regardless of the legal claims in the Bauer lawsuit, the facts underlying it are outrageous. Ottley is a tyrant. I don’t think Matt Bauer has done anything wrong.
Ottley’s arbitrary exercise of power can be seen in the case of the parent suspected of “leaking” the “ICE protocol” circulated by the school for this year’s Winter Dance to Liz Collin of Alpha News. I told his story in “At SPA, ordeal by Ottley.”
I don’t think this parent did anything wrong either and yet he has been treated like the perpetrator of a gross breach of national security. Despite Ottley’s characteriztion of the dismissal of Bauer’s younger son as an aberration in the message quoted above, Ottley threatened this parent’s two children with dismissal from the school under the contract provision on account of the parent’s suspected behavior. Ottley proceeded to impose humiliating discipline on the parent.
Ottley to the contrary notwithstanding, “the last two decades” are not the appropriate frame of reference for these stories. They are strictly stories of the Ottley era.
