2018-05-10 PPS School Board Special Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2018-05-10
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	special
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Special Meeting of the Board of Education - May 10, 2018

00h 00m 00s
the special session of the Board of Education for May 10th 2018 is called to order this meeting is being televised live on our PBS TV Services website and the purpose of this meeting today is to receive the report to the Portland Public Schools Board of Education the finding and recommendations of the Whitehurst investigation team before we get started I'm going to ask we have interpreters here present to come forward introduce yourself the language will be interpreting in and where you'll be so if anyone needs your interpretive services they'll know where to go and please use miss larges and I'm the Spanish interpreter sitting on the back assalamualaikum and I go high-pitched whining ask O'Malley hi my name is Halima I'll be interpreting Somali today I'll be sitting on the back table reading minnesota maria perry watch across cazuca hello my name is Maria and I've been with translating in Russian and I will good evening my name is Dow dong I'm speak with me tonight dick big toe say no a video in this comes Egypt ow TP t c'mon Thank You hey come to any home wanna que toman cocooned oh what a fun game my name is Jenn I'm the Chinese Mandarin Cantonese interpreter I'll be sitting in the back thank you so our agenda for this afternoon is the following there'll be some background information and an introduction of the investigation team there'll be a presentation of the highlights of the report including the finding and recommendations there'll be questions and dialogue with the investigative team in the board comments and reflections from board members and the superintendent and then next steps so as background last summer the new leaders of the district committed to a thorough independent investigation into the three decades of alleged misconduct by former PBS employee Mitch Whitehurst the previous Board of Education the one that served the 2017-18 school year had asked for an examination at the Whitehurst case and what lessons could be learned from what was known at the time that examination didn't happen then this summer new information from investigative reporting highlighted additional cases of misconduct by white hers without as a catalyst and the unanswered questions from the previous board the new board and our incoming superintendent committed to a comprehensive an independent investigation of Whitehurst and identified an experienced and into investigation team to do the work at a special board meeting on September 19th this board met and approved the funding and scope for the independent investigation we hired a strong experienced an independent team of investigators Amy Joseph Peterson was to be the lead managing the overall investigative effort in connection with the district and a strong team of investigators which would include joy Ellis Bob Weaver and Norm Franken the team has more than 100 years of experience and a wealth of relevant investigative experience the scope of this independent investigation was guided by 21 questions which the board of education asks the investigators to answer and I mean I asked director more to share the questions that were put to the investigative team the scope of this independent investigation was guided by 21 questions which the board of education asked the investigators to answer the questions were what response did the district make to each notice it received and what was the timeline for that response was each of those responses adequate in if not why not what policies directors and procedures were in place at that time that would have been applicable to the complaints of concerns that were raised were there system failures and/or employee performance failures and if so what were those failures were there performance failures by external agents or representatives of Portland Public Schools did any PPS employee or employees fail to comply with mandatory reporting requirements or violate any policies laws or ethics rules if so who and when were there any consequences for those failures did any of those failures have lice licensure implications is there any evidence that any person or group of people protected mr. Whitehurst who initiated and approved mr. Whitehurst's transfers is there any indication that district personnel used transfers as a way to avoid taking
00h 05m 00s
disciplinary action was there any follow-up by the administration following settlement of the Rory Thompson matter as directed by the board and if not why not what complaint an investigation procedure should the district adopt to ensure that complaints regarding personnel and agents working on behalf of PPS are received and acted upon promptly inappropriately to the district's record-keeping or other procedures allow for consideration of all prior complaints related to employee misconduct involving students such that the district can identify any patterns of related issues if not what should be done to change that are there provisions in the union contract that impact the district's ability to adequately address complaints do PPS employees receive adequate training and recognizing possible predatory behavior and how to respond appropriately and finally are there other complaints about sexual misconduct by other employees or agents of the district that have not been adequately addressed Thank You director Moore so we asked for answers to these questions for findings and for recommendations then on February 2nd board leadership transmitted another referral to the investigation team we ask that the Whitehurst investigation be informed by the district's response to allegations raised about inappropriate conduct a former PBS teacher norm Scott including the agreements entered into between the district and Scott and employment references provided by PPS to other districts before we get to the investigation team I want to thank the students the girls and young women who voiced their concerns or spoke up over the years about the misconduct their voices and the failures spotlighted in this report are called to action to school district leadership with that I'd like to ask our general counsel to provide some guidance for our discussion this afternoon to share why the report receiving has some redactions and just provide some general overall context Thanks thank you the report that is making being made available to the public will have some redactions or blacked-out text and we want to explain why that is first and foremost most of the read actions are designed to protect the privacy of the former students who came forward to share their story with investigators it is required by federal law the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act which you may have heard of as FERPA you will also see at times that there are there's identifiable information or details shared by some former students and that's because those individuals have given permission for their stories to be told another category of redactions constitutes communications between PBS employees and their counsel that is protected by law the third category or redactions that were made to protect the privacy of certain teacher personnel information we attempted to limit those redactions to only those areas that are legally required for instance evaluation and discipline materials all teachers in Oregon have privacy rights by law related to certain information about their work performance finally we would note that there may be information that is redacted that readers have read or learned of from other sources and to make clear that the district's obligation to protect student and other information isn't relieved by the publication or dissemination of information from other sources with that I'd like to now turn to the investigation team and for the presentation of the report I want to thank the team for your diligence and thoroughness applied to the investigation and for the empathy that it was extended to students who were impacted by Mitch Weiser's actions I know that the investigation created discomfort for many adults but this long systemic failure needed a rigorous examination and thank you for doing that I'd like to start by introducing amy joseph peterson the board's external counsel on employment matters to introduce the investigative team for presentation of the report I just want to make keep my comments really short I want to address three things one I think the public needs to understand the depth of the independence of this investigatory team I supervised the outside investigators and almost all communications between the district and the investigators went through me and me alone there were certainly occasions when some of the investigators dealt directly with district personnel regarding collection of relevant materials but we did we kept that separation very purposefully to maintain
00h 10m 00s
the independence of the investigatory team to ensure that there wasn't any and undue influence by any member of the district any personnel of the district on the investigatory team they were truly free to look where they thought they needed to look to ask the questions that they needed to ask so that in the end although the district commissioned this report and paid for the work this truly is the work of the three people that you see sitting in front of you today second thing I'd like to comment on is on the redactions that your general counsel miss large described she described them perfectly accurately the only thing that I would add to that discussion is for the public to understand that this team did not make those redactions this team was free to explore what they needed to explore and to delve into areas that they needed to go into and the redactions themselves were made by an entirely separate legal team as a consequence of what is required by law and were not made with any consultation or preference expressed by the investigatory team the last thing I'd like to comment on is about the comments made today and the team members will introduce themselves to the public but this is this report is just over 200 pages long with substantial exhibits appended to it and there's simply no way in the time permitted that they'll be able to go into everything that's contained in the report and I'd encouraged the public to review it themselves it's extremely detailed thorough well done a very very careful job and there's a great deal of information that they won't be able to give to the public today and with that I'd like to turn it over to Bob Weaver who was the head of the investigatory team thank you good afternoon first of all on behalf of Norm Frank and Joe Ellis my investigative teammates we want to commend the board for undertaking this independent investigation and giving us independence to do that we also want to commend you for what we have learned through this processes this these processes of investigation is your commitment to make the changes necessary to be sure that those matters which we have had under investigation for these past seven months will never never be repeated as the chair mentioned among the three of us couldn't we have over a hundred years of experience in conducting high-level complicated detailed investigations internal investigations of this kind and as with many investigations once we got into it it became larger a little more complex and a little more involved and therefore took longer than everybody expected at the outset this is a normal development but I want to be sure to thank the board and every in Portland for their patience in allowing us to do our job and get to this day let me begin by putting very quickly excuse me reciting what we understood the scope of this investigation to be we were retained on September 20th of last year and instructed to address the 21 specific questions that Miss Moore spoke about this this afternoon all pertinent allegations of sexual conduct by Mitch Whitehurst during his 32 year career as a PPS educator from 1982 to 2015 in February we were asked to expand our investigation somewhat to include former PPS employee norm Scott with particular focus on two agreements one his resignation agreement negotiated by the district at the end of his employment and the second agreement entered into almost a year later dealing with that first agreement lastly but perhaps the most important you sought recommendations on policies and practices that should be changed to make the district a safer place for students we've made numerous recommendations and joy will speak to those after some remarks for me initial remarks from me and from the presentation from norm let me talk about our methodology first of all we served our first public records request on that very day we were retained and diligently investigated this matter for the next seven months we reviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of documents they were
00h 15m 00s
provided to us by PPS by Miller Nash the law firm retained by PPS by public entities such as the TSP C and the Portland Police Bureau Bureau and many community members in fact the majority of our documents came from PPS district employees readily provided everything they that we asked for time and time again if they were able to find it we strategically searched emails archived back to mid 2001 there was no way to access earlier emails I'm sorry to 2011 there was no way to access earlier emails there were other challenges to the paper collection and review older documents stored in a manner that they could not be found was one issue and this was particularly pointed at a particular point of that challenge occurred in 2001 when the the the Portland Public School police gave way to the Portland Police Bureau there was a dramatic change in that organization and in 2001 ppb took over policing of the schools those Portland police officers who were independent of ppb at the time were dispatched to other assignments and the Portland Police Bureau took over the policing of the schools those records that had been maintained up to that point were archived and have never been found and we have tried and the district employees have tried and we have looked everywhere and we have contacted every former police officer that might know about this to give us some guidance on where those might be but that was one we and we were unable to determine where they were we're unable to collect them and that was a challenge another challenge is that some documents we believe are important we believe were purged and destroyed because of the union contract provision that requires removal of materials from building and personnel files we were also handicapped because the district lacks an effective document management system that was problematic for our investigation it is a systemic failure that we highlighted in our report and it contributed to the district's failure to be able to connect the dots of mr. Whitehurst conduct over his long career at so many different schools witnesses we contacted or interviewed over 100 witnesses twice the number that we initially thought we would be required to interview the outreach was exhaustive we telephoned potential witnesses we emailed others we wrote letters to others we wrote letters to all the known addresses of others we sometimes made visits to their home and for some witnesses we did all of those things to be sure that we've done everything we can to locate and talk to them almost everyone we contacted agreed to speak with us many followed up later with other comments or some documents that they remembered existed nearly all these witnesses we found to be very credible only a handful were non-responsive or affirmative Lee declined to participate in the investigation we did not have subpoena powers so we could not force them to talk to us if they didn't want to a few witnesses from mr. Whitehurst's early years of teaching had passed away some that we spoke to acknowledged that their memories of specific events had faded or been affected by what they'd read in the media and we took account for that in our report we also had a dedicated confidential phone line and an email address where members of the community could contact us many did our witnesses included students former students current and former administrators district employees Portland Police Bureau officers agents and attorneys of the district so we want to thank everyone for participating in this investigation with us so what did we find during his 32 year career as a Portland public school educator on very few occasions mr. Whitehurst was spoken to about allegations of sexual conduct he denied them every time our investigation developed substantial credible evidence that mr. Whitehurst
00h 20m 00s
persistently engaged in sexual conduct with students over his 32 year career the conduct ranged from boundary violations which the students universally described to us as creepiness or him being creepy inappropriate behavior that would rise to the that did rise to the level of sexual harassment boggling female students as they passed in the halls commenting on their appearance their clothing their chances of becoming a model one day all the way to illegal conduct such as asking minor female students to meet him at a hotel room to have sex and engaging in sexual intercourse with a minor some of the conduct was reported to the district but not much what we found over the course of three decades was this mr. Whitehurst conduct went largely undetected by supervising administrators when detected and he follow up with mr. Whitehurst's was typically not documented when documented it was not maintained in his personnel file and not passed on to future supervising administrators such as the next principal of that school but at no time was the conduct documented in a manner that ever rose to a level of grievable discipline or that could be considered for progressive discipline when the conduct was reported by students the district investigations were more often than not inadequate and incomplete we attribute these failings to a number of systemic failures first the lack of documentation of sexual conduct there is a decentralized system that gave building administrators to to address they gave them discretion to address issues in their school directly some that did this with mr. Whitehurst and verbally counseled him about inappropriate behavior that was brought to their attention but they often did not document it so it was not passed on to the next supervisor without documentation of past issues administrators the next time were led to believe mr. Whitehurst conduct was a first-time offense a lapse in otherwise good judgment not a pattern of inappropriate behavior and he was given the benefit of the doubt lack of documentation met the district could not detect this pattern of behavior to what documentation there was transient and not well tracked PPS lacked a viable document management system we remain concerned that that is the case while mr. Whitehurst was employed the HR department could not just click on a name of an employee and pull up his records instead HR would run around and try to chase down hard copy documents from various locations and various file systems never sure that they had the whole story building files were purged when supervisors such as principals moved or when mr. Whitehurst moved to another school this was a regular occurrence in mr. Whitehurst's work record third the decentralized response to sexual conduct complaints created a system whereby no one saw the whole picture or was held accountable when a complaint was not seen through to a full fair conclusion the district encouraged reports of sexual conduct to be made to a number of different district resources there was the PPS police force until 2001 building administrators had files the HR department had files the legal department had other files ppb after they took over had even other files there was no coordination and this fragmented filing system often meant that important evidence was lost along the way fourth administrators underreported mr. Whitehurst sexual conduct or did not proceed with formal discipline for it some administrators we spoke to clearly preferred taking a route that would not involve him or her in contesting a grievance with the teachers union for any formal discipline of an educator the teachers union can and usually does participate they told us that formal discipline was time-consuming and they were had limited resources and
00h 25m 00s
more to do than they could they feared retaliation from the Union where they tried to remove a well-liked employee or an educator they suffered fatigue from past battles with poor results such as where an educator was temporarily suspended but reinstated due to the settlement of his or her grievance and they often did not feel like the HR department or the board had their back so the whole number 5 the whole was not greater than the sum of these parts everybody did their job and stopped and expected others then to pick it up and do their job somehow make the whole system work this fragmented system of passing on responsibility resulted in a failure to do what was necessary failure to understand that everybody had to do what was necessary to get the job done and keep students from harm there was a failure to insist that this was everybody's job 6 we found a collective failure by PPS employees at all levels the buck never stopped anywhere it was passed and passed and passed and passed this is a cultural change that has to occur no co-workers reported mr. Whitehurst inappropriate conduct in the hallways we have found that hard to believe given the number of students who recognized it and reported it to us and described it we in our report report those few PPS employees who believed responded inappropriately went on notice of potential sexual conduct by mr. Whitehurst in particular inadequate investigations by the HR department where HR legal counsel worked in 2001 and 2000 eight when conduct was reported by a current and then a former student respectively a thorough investigation in either case would have surfaced evidence that could have supported his removal from the district 10 possible inadequate response a possible inadequate response by the Jefferson administrator when the concerns were also brought to her attention as if in fact that occurred and that is what is described to us by a former student that is what that student contends also there was inadequate investigation by building administrators the general counsel and and possibly others in late 2012 and 13 when sexual conduct was reported by several different current students Andrey reported by the same former student who had already come forward in 2008 in that case all people responsible somehow were satisfied that the record reports by current students those reports were quote a possible middle school rumor even though there was no documentation or explanation as to how this conclusion was reached when only two weeks earlier both the principal and vice-principal of that school were advocating that mr. Whitehurst be removed from the school and put on paid administrative leave you asked us to determine where whether there were any performance failures by agents of PPS including the law firm of Miller Nash which acted as the district's outside counsel for many years we did not find any evidence that Miller Nash was consulted about mr. Whitehurst at any time during his employment Miller Nash defended the district when a former employee sued PPS for sexual harassment arising from adult-to-adult sexual contact by mr. Whitehurst but that was after mr. Whitehurst was gone and it was beyond the scope of this investigation that firm was not involved in the negotiation of mr. Whitehurst resignation agreement we did not find any performance failures within the scope of our investigation and although not an agent of PPS we would like to comment because we were asked to comment on the role of the Portland Police Bureau in mr. Whitehurst employment and during the course of the time that he was educator here and for that part I'll turn it over to mr. Franco gnorm Frank and for those of you who
00h 30m 00s
aren't familiar with my background I was with the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office as chief deputy for 30 years Wow until six years ago so it was distressing to me that our investigation discovered two incidents where some of mr. Whitehurst conduct came to the attention of local law enforcement first in 2001 and secondly you know I believe it was 2013 in both instances there were failures either by individuals or by the system that led to those not being resolved as they should have in the second incident it was sort of a normal no harm no foul thing in it ultimately because of the work and of an aggressive tpc investigators subsequent to white errs plead to a Class B misdemeanor in relation to a fellow of teacher and his offense of conduct with him he did not become a teacher again but that was through no contract consequence of the actual conviction when it should have been so there was that more disturbing is that the incident that occurred in 2001 did not lead to appropriate action now rather than just focusing on individuals in that incident I think it has to be viewed in the context of the fairly chaotic and insufficient transition between the school police and they takeover of some of their functions by the Portland Police in that year but in any rate best practices were certainly not met and an opportunity to end this situation in 2001 was missed I do want it just as an aside add on to miss largest point about redact ation and that it may appear to some you know very odd that there's a some outside the board and and us that there's a redaction of the victim's name in 2001 and I just want to make sure everybody understands that even though that's been widely reported in the media and even though the person is now obviously an adult that is based on what public bodies or their agencies us being hired by you are required to do so but our review of these two incidents led us to recommend that the school board and school administration at the highest level meet with the Portland Police Bureau and the District Attorney's Office at the highest level and establish some form of a group of representatives from each of these agencies that would be responsible for knowing when a portland public school employee is referred to a local law enforcement agency in regard to criminal conduct and for making sure that all the information that each of the agencies have is exchanged with the other and for following up on what happens to those cases because it was our conclusion from the incidents that did occur that there was not a full exchange of information and that there was not consultation and follow-up now we've emphasized in the
00h 35m 00s
report that because of obviously the the charge given to us by the board instances were those involved sexual conduct but I would think that it would be desirable for the board to extend that to any school employees they're referred for criminal conduct because I think you can obviously see that some of the same failures that occurred here could occur in you know just to take one instance in an embezzlement case or something of that nature so that's was the focus of our conclusions based on those two actions with outside law enforcement agencies thank you I want to make it clear that our charge was not to indict mr. Whitehurst but to focus on the failures of the district to detect that conduct and then deal with it responsibly more importantly we have been offered we have been asked to offer recommendations one of which you've just heard from mr. Frank and now joy Ellis will summarize the others so we have a lot of recommendations some are easy to implement and others are more challenging I'm going to start with our recommendations that address training we recommend that the district improve its training on how to prevent identify and report sexual conduct in four different ways first it needs to improve the training provided to its employees this type of training is required by Oregon law to be provided annually and PPS does that at the start of the school year in a silent ten-minute slideshow that comes after a half-hour slideshow about child abuse reporting obligations while it may be legally compliant it is woefully unstimulating it is not very informative and it is not very educational we recommend that you work to create a much more engaging educational presentation and there's a training guide put out by the US Department of Education that's a good place to start in revamping your materials second we require the same training we recommend that you require the same training for PBS volunteers and independent contractors as you require for your employees it's really important to close the gap here and make sure that any adults who are interacting with our students all know what's appropriate behavior and how to report it if they observe anything that is not third we recommend that you improve the training provided to PPS students the same Oregon law that provides requires training for the employees requires that you offer this training to parents and to students the students need to know what's okay what's not okay when does it cross the line and we need to be really clear with them about that they have asked for guidance that's more clear about who to report to when they think something has been done wrong at school and it isn't currently clear so we want to see age-appropriate sexual conduct prevention and reporting training incorporated into the curriculum and that training should be translated into other languages to the extent you have students who don't understand English as a first language and went up trouble understanding the issues if it weren't presented to them in their native tongue the last recommendation about training is I think hopefully easy to implement there are materials on your website that need to be corrected there's information that is just buried it's very hard to find the materials on your website there's incorrect dates and deadlines in your materials and there was outdated information referring people to contact the former general counsel who had left over two years ago now let me move on to recommendations about how to respond to a report of sexual conduct we recommend that you adopt new procedures to investigate your sexual conduct complaints first we recommend that you train and require the building administrators and all HR staff who receive a complaint about sexual conduct to document it document every complaint and every concern of sexual conduct and report them all to a centralized designee it could be the title 9 coordinator or someone similarly situated if you do this you should be able to work on the systemic failure about documentation as well as the one where you need centralized reporting rather than a fractured reporting system we recommend that you have a specialized trained investigator with expertise in this area to investigate each sexual conduct complaint thoroughly and fairly this is a big change we understand building administrators typically lead the charge when they're investigating something that involves
00h 40m 00s
someone in their school we strongly advise that investigations for sexual conduct complaints get rerouted to the title 9 coordinator or some other experienced can be external or internal and take it out of the hands of the building administrators third we think you should have a core group of a multidisciplinary administration counting the employees supervisor who should certainly weigh in in-house legal counsel the title nine coordinator and the investigator if that's different from any of the people who I've just named and they together should make credibility decisions about the staff and about students but that shouldn't be done in isolation by one person and the group should also try to agree regarding what level of discipline if any is appropriate lastly we think you should implement a centralized tracking mechanism to document all the complaints including their outcome whether the complaint was substantiated meaning found to be true unfounded meaning found to be baseless or unsubstantiated meaning you couldn't figure it out what happened it may be true and it may not be true by maintaining a centralized tracking mechanism it will be finally the district can detect a pattern of inappropriate behavior something that has not happened yet we recommend that the district address certain provisions in its contract with the teachers union p80 to ensure the protection of students keeping students safe is a common goal shared by everybody so this should not be controversial but there are some provisions in the complaint procedures and the personnel provisions that are described in the p80 contract where it appears the protection of students is taking a backseat to the protection of teachers a key issue is the removal of materials from an educators files when behavioral issues are documented in a building file it they do not magically resolved when the educator gets a new supervisor or moves to a different school and behavioral issues that are documented in a building file should remain in the building file similarly if it's important enough to place something in the educators personnel file it should not be removed at a later date and it should be the district's choice not the educators choice whether something is from the district's personnel files we also took issue and make a recommendation about the complaint procedure in the p80 contract where it presumes that the supervisor typically the building administrator would conduct the investigation as I mentioned we advise against this we want you to involve the supervisor but we have recommend that you use a separate investigator trained in sexual conduct complaints to lead the investigation we list a few other concerns in our report regarding the p80 district contract including the set timelines for responding to a complaint which might be tight the document management challenges that could arise from the requirement that there be five multiple separate files regarding one incident of misconduct such that they might not all be put together and we are concerned about provisions regarding disclosure of a complainants identity and they need to bolster anti-retaliation provisions we should note we only reviewed the p80 contract and we're aware that the district has five other union contracts so we would recommend that you review and change and negotiate districts other union contracts as appropriate to adequately address sexual conduct complaints and to ensure the protection of students we're thinking of provisions that protect employees / students or require the removal of documentation of sexual conduct issues or present unrealistic timeframes for investigating complaints or that create document management challenges I'm going to move to a recommendation that we feel very strongly about and it involves employees separations we recommend that the district exercise transparency with employee separations and that they stop entering into resignation agreements that restrict the disclosure of possible sexual conduct PPS like other school districts sometimes opts to allow a problematic educator perhaps one under investigation to resign rather than be terminated involuntarily and that does avoid the con the potential of a costly legal battle to defend the termination it cuts to the chase and it gets the employee out of the district in a final and timely fashion in the past these agreements have also included neutral reference and a restriction on what the district can say about the reasons for an employee's departure and allowing any employee accused of sexual conduct to leave quietly and take a job at another school district however only passes the potential harm on to other students we recommend PPS cease entering resignation agreements with employees
00h 45m 00s
who may have engaged in sexual conduct if they have done so they are profoundly unethical educators who are breaching everyone's trust and its mission critical that the district goes through the dismissal process for these employees and calls it out if PPS ever does enter into a resignation agreement it should not tie its own hands and agree to ever restrict the district's ability to disclose information about the employees past inappropriate behavior or the fact that the employee left during an investigation into alleged sexual conduct before the district could determine whether or not it had occurred I'm going to move on to recommendations about policies one of our chief recommendations is the district adopt an adult student boundaries policy boundaries policies set clear and appropriate boundaries for interactions between school employees and students PPS does not have one many other school districts do we recommend it such a policy would ensure that contact and communication with students occurs in a professional appropriate manner and that students are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve boundaries policies clarify expectations for those gray areas where it may be innocuous or it may be a slippery slope to something that isn't and it's very important for the district to make it clear what PB s employees can and cannot do and what the expectations are so what kind of areas does a boundaries policy cover it should cover expectations around appropriate social media interactions capturing and using images of students personal cards notes gifts or emails to students contact touching hugging hugging tickling wrestling discussing personal details about the employees personal life marriage or drug or alcohol use protocols for trips with students especially out-of-town or overnight travel when they're going away for sports or other competitions or field trips after school or weekend communications with students what's okay what's not in the office or in the classroom what are the protocols for physical spaces does a door need to be open is it inappropriate to have it shut these are the types of things that should be covered clearly so everyone knows when anybody is crossing the line we also recommend in such a policy that the district explicitly forbid retaliation against anyone who reports boundary violations in good faith to other policy recommendations first we were quote we think you should require PPS employees to check with the HR department before providing a reference to a former employee it's very standard for businesses to ask for some sort of channel for recommendations for former employees to go through and that's because discipline is typically a confidential personnel matter appropriately so and peers and past supervisors would not necessarily know if an employee left PPS due to misconduct or under a cloud during an ongoing investigation and employees routinely ask their past supervisors or their peers for references after they have left the district so in those relatively infrequent times when an employee is leaving because of concerns that he or she engaged in sexual conduct a positive recommendation on PPS letterhead mail and that employee another job where that employee will interact with more children and it looks from afar like PPS has recommended this employee and that carries some weight so we recommend that you require that before PPS employee ever writes that in glowing reference on PPS letterhead they check with the HR office to make sure it's okay to do so our last policy recommendation is to revise the administrative directive entitled prohibition against employee child abuse and sexual conduct with students this ad tracks the language of the Oregon statute and correctly states the law with regards to the process the district will go through if it substantiates sexual conduct or abuse by an employee but it is worth clarifying in that ad that this policy speaks to when the district has a legal obligation to go through certain procedures and disclosures because it has found the conduct meets the statutory definition a sexual conduct the district can and should discipline employees for something short of that if it finds that the employee has engaged in inappropriate behavior so we think it is worth dropping a line or two in the ad to explain that engaging in behavior that is sexual in nature and directed as a student is unacceptable conduct that
00h 50m 00s
merits discipline on its own without any need to go further and speaking of that statute we have recommendations about what the district can do that goes beyond PPS and looks more largely to the rest of the state we think the district should lobby for changes outside the district to make Oregon safer for all students first we'd like to see you lobby the Oregon Legislature to revise its statutory scheme that addresses sexual conduct by school employees we currently have a statutory scheme that requires training on how to prevent identify and report sexual conduct by a school employee the law also sets up a background check system where education providers must check with the past three employers about a prospective employee and the past employers must disclose it if the educator engaged in substantiated sexual conduct or abuse while employed at that district we are lucky to live in a state that has any law like this at all because many don't and there's many good things about this statute but we believe the definition of sexual conduct is not one of them it sets too high a bar of what has to be shown to qualify as reportable sexual conduct before it can meet that definition the conduct must be of a sexual nature must be directed at a K through student and here's where we take issue it must have the effect of unreasonably interfering with a student's educational performance as well as creating an intimidating hostile or offensive educational environment so in other words the damage must already be done to a student before you will meet that definition and have any reporting requirement and we think it is too high if you have to require damage first and you can't just move to perfect this varies from the TSP see definition which does not require that same threshold of unreasonable interference or intimidating hostile or offensive educational environment before sexual conduct is considered unethical we think those last two elements are highly unnecessary in addition to lobbying the Oregon Legislature to change their definition of sexual conduct we hope you will address the TSP timelines for completing their investigation of licensed educators the TSP C takes months and sometimes years to investigate educators and there's no public acknowledgement that the educator is under investigation during this time period so in other words an educator under investigation could go off to another district and get another position quietly while their license is being scrutinized so we hope you can influence the TSP C to move more quickly when it does investigations of educators thank you miss Ellis thank you we're ready to take your questions but I would like to just close with these two thoughts first of all I want to make it very clear that our report is evidence-based it's based upon what we read and what we heard and what we corroborated not on supposition or rumor or innuendo or guesses and as a result you will find when you read this perhaps that not all questions were as fully answered as you might expect but what was answered is based on back secondly I want to offer this one note of hope if I can that despite how regrettable or deplorable much of the conduct is that we were required to investigate there's good news in this report this is preventable moreover almost everybody we spoke to at all levels and all different constituencies we learned were united in sharing the same goal that this board has is to make sure that what happened with Mitch Whitehurst never ever ever happens again thank you thank you vice chair Esparza Brown to lead this section of the board related to questions and we thank you very much for your thorough investigation and particularly the helpful recommendations okay so at this point we're going to have an opportunity for the board members to ask questions of the investigation team so we'll start with director Constance my first question would be mr. Weaver in your opening remarks you you noted how few actual reports of misconduct there were verified reports of misconduct so if you all had to say what you thought was the single biggest barrier to people in our school buildings who heard
00h 55m 00s
concerns elevating those concerns what would it be or what was it rather I I think we all should take a shot at answering that and my my impression is that that it was so much I think many of the administrators that were this rose to the level of let's say the principal or vice-principal thought in good faith that if I just talk to this guy and tell him to stop doing it that'll work and that will save me an enormous amount of time and energy that's how I think it began and then there was just no scrutiny following that to see whether the conduct was repeated or just done in a more surreptitious way what would you say joint didn't feel that they would be believed and I think they believed at the time that the administrators must have known because it was so prevalent to the female students in the hallway this was in front of other male employees it was in front of other teachers and I think they believed that the administrators were endorsing this conduct by not taking action so some didn't come forward because they thought nobody would believe them and others thought nobody would do anything to most egregious acts of sexual misconduct we were unable or determined that they were never reported to a portland public school employee or an adult you know I should add that both when those came to our attention and the other to potentially criminal instances that came to our attention we immediately salted with the moment County District Attorney and determined the statute of limitations or double jeopardy in one case would bar any further proceedings miss Ellis I think your heartbreaking comment about kids not feeling like they would be believed or taken seriously goes to the heart of mr. Weaver's assessment that this is a problem of culture so we don't just need to address our policies and our procedures but this is a problem of culture that likely still persists to a large degree I have no questions thank you director more I don't this was a very thorough report it's painful to read and I think but most of the questions I think have been answered most of the questions I had I think we're going to have a lot of questions going forward and I'm hoping you'll be available for consultation going forward culture um I agree with you that there were system failures people failures and cultural failures here and although the it sounds as though many of the recommendations are mechanical you know just a policy here I just a reporting mechanism here I think those things will actually go a long way to changing the culture if if the complaints are handled in the way that Ms Ellis described if all complaints are elevated in the way miss Ellis described I think students will begin to believe that they actually are taken seriously and that will change the culture side if we follow up on the trainings with fidelity Rosen I wanted to know does the union contract actually limit who conducts the investigation limits it but it certainly presumes that the supervisor the direct supervisor will do it and that's certainly been the practice there's been past practice director Bailey I don't know that well just to clarify your last point around the TS BC rules and what that would mean I think when I asked about this last night it was to clarify that there are times when there's an unethical relationship that
01h 00m 00s
at the moment seems okay to the student and so would not be part of the reporting the statutory reporting and it's only later or soon after or years later that the damage is apparent to the student and that's that's what we need to change in terms of how that operates no matter how consensual any high school student for example who's 18 thinks he or she is at that moment having a relationship with an employee it always would violate TSP C standards if that person is a licensed educator however under the current statute it would not I don't think violate that statute because it doesn't meet sexual conduct by unreasonably interfering with the educational performance or creating that hostile offensive environment so in those situations you technically would have no obligation to disclose that relationship to prospective employers who asked in their HB 206 two forms about an employee at PBS it doesn't mean it's okay but it would not cross the line of the statutory scheme that requires certain disclosures to be made to future employers who do have a preference check with PBS students who believe that they're in a consensual exchange with an educator the piece of we all know that that actually can't exist by definition although to the child they think it exists that's why the the provision of the recommendations about student education is so critical the students also need to understand where these boundaries are and why they exist legally cannot consent and an addition and an apropos to your recommendation around student training there's also sexual conduct between students that is a big issue you know this is a this is an issue across our nation now is is really apparent that's another issue around culture that we need to address and just a rhetorical question and that you touched on is how can we have students know about a creep and not have administrators know that and your report was evidence-based and think thank you for that but that's one of the questions I speculate on is how does it do we have administrators reporting that they followed the rules how did they not know what was going at least the reputation of a teacher and the same thing with the the situation of fabien where it just raises a lot of questions and I'm glad you didn't try to speculate on the answers of those but it certainly leaves us wondering director Bram Edwards so in your summary you said that you found that most staff did their jobs I in the findings there's clearly some that there were findings that some didn't but that in general you found that most people did their jobs so if that's what most of the staff people did maybe we could talk about both how it could be that we could have three decades of most people doing their jobs but what what what was lacking in terms of the integration the integration or the communications between staff people other than the lack of documentation and then what specific item if you think about the accountability the accountability I have an organization of where's that responsibility of to lie of people doing sort of more than just their job because you know the job's not done until the job is done so talk about that recommendation you have that will address that particular issue of getting that getting the the job done is that
01h 05m 00s
the worth the title nine coordinator or how exactly will that change when we say they got the job done that was what we were told time and time and time again by PPS witnesses who had been involved at some stage along the way and we got pushed back when we challenged employees and asked if they felt like they had failed in some way to connect the dots to use that expression and repeatedly we we got some indignant responses of I did everything I was supposed to do and I followed every policy to the letter and I did my job and I don't think I should be faulted for this which is why we see this as a collective failure because when you have a decentralized system with no sense tracking and everyone's doing their job it's very hard to put all the little pieces together because with Mitch Whitehurst how he would have been tagged is probably by having a pattern of detectable behavior not because he did one thing and they nailed him on some smoking gun so the decentralized problem sometimes decentralization is great but I think here it was a system failure we think by centralizing it and having all the complaints reported centrally and maintained in a database that should alleviate some of the system failure of employees feeling like they did their job and if everybody did their job why did this go on right I think there were also the system failures of this going to many different places without accountability there really was no department or position that said I own this and that's very problematic when you have an issue that many people don't want to deal with or feel like they don't have time to deal with or they don't have the resources to deal with or is outside their scope so we expect that if you can centralize this to someone who is high in authority such as a title 9 coordinator or a designee at the central office who will own it and be passionate about taking accountability for sexual misconduct in this school district that that should be a vast improvement to having nobody own it and nobody feel like it is their job to root out the sexual conduct that takes place in this district what was striking to us in the two circumstances that I mentioned in my opening remarks where there was some collective knowledge at the district of previous allegations of misconduct in the people that we interviewed in those both those circumstances none of them ever said wait a minute look at this why is this guy still here even and to go outside of their job description or their understanding of their role nobody said this is probably beyond my you know written responsibility as a fill-in-the-blank HR person or lawyer but why is this guy still here we got to get this guy out of here that never happened and it was just kind of a stunning absence I would say just one other follow-up you interviewed about a hundred individuals who at some point had interactions with Mitch Whitehurst and I'm wondering if you can from the perspective of either principals or school staff what's the one thing that they would identify was the most important for them to get from the central office or from the board what what would that be so they're they're out you know I think many times doing the the best job they can sometimes in a very challenging school environment what so what's the one thing maybe that as district leaders that would have been most would have been most helpful for those either principals or sake school counselors or even students who are trying to raise issues from I don't know many administrators is right but what we certainly heard from a significant number of administrators was that during this time period they did not feel like HR or the board supported them when they wanted to move forward with discipline or determination we heard this at least with norm Scott particularly that it was very very difficult to move forward with discipline and to not have it settled and suddenly taken out of the file at one point a principal was told he had to apologize to norm Scott for even attempting discipline and that sets a
01h 10m 00s
tone that makes these building administrators not want to go through all the hard work of trying to root out a bad apple educator if at the end of the day it's gonna be reversed and he's gonna walk in the front door or she's gonna walk in the door so we did hear from a significant number of people in the field that they felt like there was no way to put forward an involuntary termination because the board would not support that and it was very very difficult to put anything forward to HR because it would be sent back as you don't have enough evidence and you know this isn't gonna work and this will be fought by the Union and we're gonna lose and that might have been true but I think they would have appreciated of HR instead had supported them and helped them develop the evidence that would have made that discipline very defensible and assisted them to know how to do a good investigation that's defensible but that didn't happen you know I would just add as my personal opinion I I think there was permeating a lot of people's actions the perception and maybe the reality that the procedures that have been negotiated through contracts and just made vigorous action a fool's errand and I think did a commitment clerk amendment to to the extent those concerns are based in the reality of procedures to address those and I you know would hope it wouldn't have to be a confrontational situation with the PTA because I would think excuse me PTA would I I would think that you know the vast majority of teachers would want to address this as well in an appropriate fashion my turn so I'd like to clarify something you said in reporting about k-12 students within our system we have many come pre kindergarten or Head Start classrooms and then also just children that may be here English speakers who are not yet very versatile didn't English kids with disabilities how would you suggest we well first of all do the [Music] what legal protections are there for preschool so you because you get said k12 does that then apply to anybody within our system and we also have children up to 21 the K through 12 is pulled out of the statute so that is strictly for reporting to other education providers who are doing a background check to the district you have an obligation to report if it's K through 12 for TSP C it is any student of any age or any ability or disability so you would always report the unethical educator for doing anything with a PPS student and you could certainly discipline any employee who engages in any inappropriate behavior from grooming onward with those little guys or you know up to 21 because when you're in that position of power as an educator it really isn't a fair consensual relationship and it takes high school students of any age years to realize the damage that it does to be in that relationship and many of them don't recover and their self-esteem is ruined and it can have mental health effects about working with our legislators about changing current laws so is that kind of a gap in that law too with the age okay right thank you I think anything remaining questions before we move on to the next director Bailey you know one other one you commented that the previous board had asked for an investigation and nothing came of it kid could you clarify what actually happened and what didn't happen yeah so apparently at the same board meeting where the board approved settling Rory Thompson versus PPS which is a sexual harassment lawsuit that Bob
01h 15m 00s
referred to in his remarks the board there said we would like some sort of due diligence on what systems are in place at PPS and what we need to change and this was an executive session but then they came out and acknowledged when they were voting on the settlement that just because they're settling this lawsuit doesn't mean they're burying it and that they can agree to settle as well as ask Bob McCain the interim superintendent to look into the systems that existed at PPS Bob McCain went back and talked to the new chief HR officer well not that new at that time Shaun Murray and they went over the training module and they reviewed the investigation policies that HR had and they reviewed the sexual conduct policies that HR had and Bob McCain felt that there were policies in place that should be effective and Shaun Murray explained that he had updated them and was doing sexual harassment training and whatnot and so between the two of them they felt that the existing systems would catch something like this now and if it were reported it would be treated differently Bob McCain did not report back to the board formally nor did the board ask him or put it on the agenda for him to report so there was a disconnect there of ships in the night where I think the board was waiting to hear back and Bob thought if they wanted to hear back they would ask him because there were multiple priorities at that period of time and he described it as drinking from a firehose for a full year and he said the board knew how to ask me for things and had definitely asked me to present things and I assumed they just knew I went back and did this then in April there was a business and operations committee meeting where the anti-harassment policy was being introduced and at that meeting in April the board committee said you know what we really need is a lessons learned on Mitch Whitehurst before we go further with this anti-harassment policy because we want to make sure instances like what we've heard happened with him would be caught and dealt with using this anti harassment policy Bob McCain was not at that meeting other high-level administrators were and so after that meeting there was an email exchanges about who would do that work and come up with the lessons learned information that the board wanted to receive and the specifically the business and operations committee wanted to receive before June when the anti harassment policy was going to go through its first reading and unfortunately none of those high level administrators followed up it sounded like they all kind of thought someone else was going to do it and the CEO at the time referred to the vacant title 9 coordinator position as the perfect person to do a lessons learned look back of the Whitehurst manner but of course there was no title 9 coordinator and one wasn't hired during that time period so did the extent that was going to get delegated as his or her first project it never was delegated so I believe that contributed to it and then during that spring there was a revolving door on high level administrators leaving the building changing their jobs what-have-you and that certainly has got to have had an effect on the follow-through that didn't happen when the business and Operations Committee asked for it so at this time so thank you very much not only for the report but also the presentation of the findings and the recommendations and at this time I'm gonna ask individual board members if they have any reflections or want to share anything and I'm also an ass superintendent Guerrero as well so dr. Esparza Brown I just have a few comments about this situation and once again really appreciate the depth of your work here and the many thoughtful recommendations that we will pursue so children should in our system and in any system should not need to just survive school child and sexual abuse are often silent crimes we know that but this that was not the case here many courageous young women came forward and reported this abuse but tragically no one took them seriously enough to do that follow through that as you discussed so a thorough a thorough investigation such as the one we received today should not come after decades of reporting and of rumors and elephant actions I know this is too
01h 20m 00s
little too late and we will do better so this is a wake-up call for all of us so I'm going to talk about what yeah every stakeholder in our community can do so students first what you can do report any behavior or communication that makes you feel uncomfortable and if you don't feel heard report it to someone else until you do feel heard and until somebody takes you seriously and know you are not to blame we're here to keep you safe and to provide a secure place for you to learn that's our duty in our moral obligation and what educators can do so often you know when your report it was clear that educators thought that somebody else was going to follow through or that and then also they thought that maybe something was going on but they didn't want to be responsible for taking down a colleague or ruining their life and but we're charged with protecting the lives of our children so we have to commit as everyone in our system to report in all incidents and being diligent in observations of questionable or creepy behavior parents you know it's crucial particularly in this day and age of cell phones to the social media that we're diligent and that you monitor all texts and social media accounts because it's far easier today than ever before to send inappropriate communication to children and we also need to make sure that the communications that are going to children from educators should be copied to parents so that they're not you know personal communication as a district we have to work with our unions to change the current contract provisions to adequately address sexual content complaints abuse and all abuse charges and partner with the Union in ensuring the protection of our children we as a board we need to adopt social media policy banning communication between teachers and students on personal devices we have to again work with our administrators and the Union to change those provisions and as you've pointed out we have to lobby our legislators and making legal changes necessary to ensure that all of our children are protected that there's no provision there's no weight for them to fall through the cracks as well as working with a licensing agency to for the speed of following through and s-two investigations as well as immediately reporting to districts when they have received a report those are huge gaps that have to be changed now so it's it's one thing to say that have one other piece through something that we can all do is empowering ourselves by knowing these statistics 90% of sexual abuse fiction victims know their abusers and only four to eight percent of child sexual abuse reports are fabricated a very small percentage so we have to believe what we're hearing and that there are 10 percent and increasing students who are victims of sexual misconduct in our schools now again we know that the vast majority of teachers are wonderful dedicated talented teachers and we are immensely blessed with those at Portland Public Schools and it's one thing to say that we protect children but it's another thing to do so so I commit that we will work to making these changes immediately so that we can ensure this director of Arthur Brown director more I guess a more than a few comments so forgive me this is a bit long this report is painful to read and it's infuriating it documents and appalling and sorry and persistent breach of trust on the part of Portland Public Schools for 32 years a child predator harassed intimidated and exploited young women and we allowed it to happen let that sink in PBS allowed it to happen as this exhaustive investigation shows the district in countless individuals in it failed to recognize the warning signs of Mitch white hers pattern of sexual
01h 25m 00s
misconduct as he moved from school to school student complaints were routinely dismissed or downplayed by adults in authority even when presented with allegations of gross misconduct adults repeatedly failed to investigate or intervene to protect students and as a result students were harmed repeatedly this investigation has uncovered strong evidence that some students were sexually exploited while in our care other students were subjected to prolonged or episodic harassment many more students witnessed or heard about the menacing and abusive behavior all of these students were harmed any abuse of children is unacceptable but experiencing sexual abuse or the threat of sexual abuse especially at the hands of an adult in a position of trust and authority has devastating effects on children those effects offer a lifelong and can echo through many generations the stakes don't get any higher than this we owe these students and their families not only an apology for our past failures but also an unshakeable commitment to action so that the systemic dereliction of duty never happens again this report makes it clear that a profoundly dysfunctional system severely hampered the ability of individuals to connect the dots and stop the abuse while reading this report what struck me was that this case may be the quintessential example of how persistent dysfunction and PPS has impacted children for decades many of us have complained that see that PPS was a system with no system a system with no systems everybody was in charge nobody wasn't charged a decentralized organization presided over by a disengaged rudderless leadership that was more intent on hiding problems than solving them created the conditions in which a myth Mitch Whitehurst or a norm Scott could not only exist but thrive as a current board member perhaps the most disturbing thing is in this report is the evidence of a broken organizational culture there is no smoking gun here there were individuals who demonstrably failed to do their jobs but the investigators noted that most people actually did do their jobs just very narrowly defined they complied with legal mandates and they followed bureaucratic procedures they did what they were supposed to do but not one thing more assuming apparently that somebody else would do something to stop it no one did for 32 years what's missing in the reported testimony from those involved in this case is any real sense of individual responsibility for the well-being of the children we serve yes it's true there were very few systems of accountability in PPS but accountability is after the fact to protect children we need an organizational culture that is founded on a bedrock commitment to serve the best interests of children even maybe especially when that makes adults uncomfortable every day families entrust more than 49 thousand children to PPS at a very minimum they have a right to expect that their children are safe from harm while in our care as this report shows too often we fail to meet that minimum standard school should be a safe haven a nurturing place that allows children to learn and thrive if children do not feel safe nothing else matters every single person in this organization must understand that he or she has a personal responsibility to ensure the well-being of every student every day PPS exists to serve children it does not exist to serve adults but for far too long PBS s function primarily to promote the interests of adults too often at the expense of children that stops now that must stop now our new superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero is committed to working with this board employees parents and community members to transform Portland Public Schools but changing organizational culture is notoriously difficult so all of us have to share the responsibility to focus our energy and our imagine doing things differently child abuse is not exclusive to PBS we have to take responsibility for our part and ignoring and perpetuating it and stopping it this report offers many excellent
01h 30m 00s
suggestions for changes in policy and practice in PBS and other systems that will enhance our ability to protect children I speak for I think I speak for all of us in this new administration when I say that we intend to pursue these but to pursue changes diligently and quickly however bureaucratic reform will mean nothing if we don't change the organizational culture of PBS from being adult focused to being child focused I'm confident that the overwhelming majority of PBS educators and staff at all levels work their hearts out every day to do right by kids but we cannot deny that bad people exist and it only takes one to ruin many lives a famous bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks he said simply because that's where the money is predators seek out schools because that's where the children are it is our individual and collective responsibility to remain vigilant not paranoid but vigilant I want to thank the many students who had the courage to speak up now and in the past I'm sorry you weren't listening - I want to thank Bethany bonds for uncovering the story she's done a great service to this district and its children by giving PBS this opportunity to do better I want to thank the investigators who produced this excellent report I look forward to working with the superintendent our employees our students and our families toward a common goal of creating a unified collaborative effective organization dedicated to helping children reach their fullest potential director Anthony thank you very much for your report it makes frequent reference to the system of Portland Public Schools as director Moore just said what is beyond the scope of your report is that the district system did not happen by accident it was the product of years of deliberate decisions made by former superintendents Vicky Phillips Carroll Smith and their predecessors previous boards and senior leadership decisions as to who was hired who was promoted who was rewarded who was transferred and where and who was punished and on what basis and for what behavior and what the community and the members of this board have seen time and again for more than a decade is that the district system was constructed to hide problems to deflect knowledge culpability and blame from the superintendent and what the education needs interests and safety of children at best a poor second if not last also although I appreciate the your sincerity in pointing out the barriers to effective complaints in the last three years the board has seen many examples of administrators firing laying off or otherwise driving out of the profession teachers when it suits their convenience the contract with P 80 does not seem to be an insurmountable impediment when it suits the personal or political agenda of a savvy administrator the contract only seems to be cited as an effective barrier when it impacts the interests of children by itself although it's a very excellent report your report can do nothing to change the system that enabled this behavior this board does not have that luxury your report makes seven fine recommendations recommendations I completely support I hope and expect that we will begin implementing these immediately and that we will continue to monitor and pursue their effectiveness eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty there is an eighth I believe is also urgent I refer you to the section law enforcement agencies on pages 110 to 115 as one PPS senior administrator told me just this afternoon very convenient building administrators as a rule don't have a good working knowledge of PPS administrative directives and board policies this is exponentially more true when building administrators teachers students and parents have to deal with the Department of Human Services the Portland Police and the district attorney unfortunately while absolutely
01h 35m 00s
necessary in its own right everything in my personal experience says neither meetings at the highest level of the district the Police Bureau and the district attorney's office nor coordinating panels are likely to change the realities our employees and our community faces every day we have seen repeatedly ad nauseam that responsible employees of this district responsible members of the community motivated by the highest concern for our children's welfare do not know what to report to whom and how what to expect when they do what information to expect or not in return and how to escalate if there is no response or an unacceptable response we have had some good luck in the last year getting that information on the Department of Human Services to our principals we need to see it expanded to cover the police and DEA and include all of our mandatory reporters and our students so that the safety of anymore of our children doesn't continue to end up entered as a non-response on a historical account thank you very much most remarkable to me about this report is that at every level this organization failed what I consider our most important responsibility which is to hold the child at the center of every decision and that's that really is true of even obscure central office functions but at every level of the building in the classroom the principal and we did see failures at every level in our school buildings teachers administrators central office direct school support Human Resources legal advice this office of the superintendent the board local law enforcement are our union partners state lawmakers at every point of the system we were failing our kids and so I appreciate that you have taken the opportunity in your recommendations for us to use this moment to advocate beyond the reforms that are necessary in our own institution and I am sure that our superintendent and our board will support activities lobbying activities advocacy to make those systemic reforms outside of our organization but it really is true what Rita said that this report is almost a microcosm of so many issues that we see in this organization in terms of lack of historic lack of accountability and lack of transparency and lack of personal responsibility and decision-making and this was in fact one of the most important challenges really the all-encompassing challenge that we identified when we set out on our superintendent search that this is what we need a leader to fix and to orient and organization around reforming and I think most of us here on the board no one here has has served longer than two years everyone came to this role with an pretty intense reform mindset and we have a superintendent who is building a team around reform from in every corner of this organization from our curriculum foundations to our training to our professional development to our culture to our how we accommodate student voice in our decision-making I mean every aspect of this organization but most importantly really accountability and I think and I hope accountability for holding the child at the center of all decision-making so you really have done us a great service and we are going to take it beyond our four walls and appreciate mr. Frank your unique insights into how we might work with the law enforcement local law enforcement to address these issues and we have a chair our legislative and governmental committee of this board and we will certainly discuss how we're going to put some of these issues at the
01h 40m 00s
top of our legislative advocacy agenda for the next session so thank you very much first of all thank you all of you for this investigation secondly also thank you to Bethany Barnes and I would invite her and other media and the public at large to hold us accountable for enforcing putting these recommendations into being as well as the broader cultural changes that we've talked about and that's my pledge going forward and we need our partners along with us I think I'll just stop there I think plenty has been said that I agree with I want to thank the investigative team to the report was thorough illuminating very readable and I really appreciate your hard work indulgence and producing it I also want to thank all the people who came forward to tell their stories I know it was really difficult and very painful and I appreciate that bringing us to this point what I read was shocking and disturbing and clearly the PPS system was broken and that's why Whitehurst was able to commit 32 years of sexual predation in every school he worked however I'm confident if the board and district administration and superintendent fully commit to following the recommendations of the report this will likely never happen again thank you Supergirl as Portland Public Schools relatively new superintendent as a parent I'm frankly appalled I'm deeply disturbed and upset by the findings in this report I also want to thank the investigators for your thorough report your findings and your recommendations it demonstrates without argument failures at every level of the organization that resulted in students in children being harmed and that is unacceptable to me and it should be to everyone who works in this district in my form in my short time here in Portland I've begun to observe that we are a district full of educators and administrators who are passionate about their work who are deeply committed to our students placed in our care and I'll continue to applaud our outstanding educators and leaders and remain committed to supporting their work and educating all of our students but this report shows that we have to do more much more to ensure that those students we care so much about are kept safe we must do everything we can to ensure our systems and process for reporting investigating and taking action have the necessary integrity and oversight to prevent something like this from happening ever again we need to take a hard look at our internal structures and critically examine our practices against the findings of this investigation you can count on my administration working with the board to take steps that will restore parents trust that their students will be safe when they are in our schools when they are under our care the report outlines a number of reasonable workable recommendations for the district which we will study closely and where we can adopt quickly I invite and hope to work closely with the Portland Association of teachers and our other employee unions to ensure nothing in our labor agreements allow problems such as the ones addressed in this report to fall through the cracks my thoughts this evening are with those students and families who have been hurt whose trust we have shaken because of institutional failures over the course of three decades we owe those who have bravely come forward a commitment to do much much better to do things right and
01h 45m 00s
it's my intention to make sure that we deliver on that pledge Thank You superintendent so as a parent whose daughter had Whitehurst as a teacher it was painful and pretty frustrating to read the 203 page report I was pretty angry when I finished reading it but I want to thank the investigators for it because in the report Whitehurst behavior and PBS's response to it is no longer a secret thank you to that report and the investigative work that you did and to the students who reported it over the years I also want to thank you for it because in this case Whitehurst didn't get the benefit of the doubt so the commissioning of this investigation was step one and I think we can say now that curtains been pulled back on three decades of systemic and individual failures which have been well outlined by the board and they're outlined in the report so now we have some work to do and the the work that we as a as a board and the superintendent and the superintendent and the staff and the broader school community because seven individuals on the board and the superintendent can't do it alone this is as the report outlined individuals and all the schools families teacher other teachers administrators we all have a role to play to make sure this doesn't happen again and this board I know from speaking to members of the board and the superintendent that we're not going to let the report sit on the Shelf that were committed to really reviewing all the detailed findings which ones can be implemented which ones are things that are the superintendent's and the staffs to implement and which ones belong to the board and then which ones belong to the broader community and the putting it together a plan to work together so thank you again for providing us with a road map and providing clarity so that we can all together get on a path to really change make the changes that need to be made and they have been highlighted in the report so thank you again I want to just briefly I'm going to ask there is a slide I want to get put up Justin so one of the things we have a report but it's not a static this isn't as we know something that we can say well now that we have the report and we're going to act on it that the work is done as others have referenced we want to make sure that there is an opportunity for if individuals in the communities have concerns that there's a way to do it so we still have a confidential reporting hotline that's open it's 503 972 1580 also people can email to Whitehurst investigation that stole sto e Elcom also there's other places that students parents and communities can report concerns regarding misconduct either WWF Oregon comm or eight calling eight four four four seven two three three six seven also there's numbers here at the district where families can or students or staff members can call and report so we want to create we want to create you know date today is they want to creating a new culture where we protect and take care of our students and we and we believe them and we act in their best interests so with that unless there's any concluding comments anything from the investigators that you'd like to know thank you I'll just close by I want to sorry directors first Brennan to let the community know that the executive summary is available in our five supported languages now on our website so thank you for the team that worked so diligently on that today thank you so with that I'm going to turn the meeting but before I do that I want to once once again thank you or this report and giving us a roadmap for the future thank you meetings adjourned

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2017-2018, https://www.pps.net/Page/12568 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:51.006202Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2018-05-10 PPS School Board Special Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Special Meeting of the Board of Education - May 10, 2018

Sources