During the 2017-18 school year, Bend-La Pine Schools’ student population was 82 percent white, according to Oregon Department of Education statistics, making the non-white student population roughly 18 percent. Compare that to the 1997-98 school year, when the district had a “minority population” of 4.3 percent, and it’s clear demographics are changing.
With 18,064 students, that means over 3,200 Hispanic/Latinx, Black/African-American, Asian, Native, Pacific Islander and other minority students attended BLPS schools last year.
Some of those students report ongoing racial harassment, comments and bullying, perpetrated by students—and even staff—within the district. Students and their parents say what’s adding insult to injury is a lack of direction from school officials about how to handle incidents as they happen.
“Everyone wants to think of Bend as a utopia,” said Megan Perkins, parent of two students of color in the district. “And so, all the things that happen at schools, it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s just a one-off, just kind of slip it under the rug, that was just that one kid that said that.'”
Parents organize around students of color
Perkins is among a group of parents who formed an invite-only Facebook group, Embrace Bend, in December. The group, which Perkins reports had more than 175 members as of February, is a forum for parents of students of color to gather, organize and advocate for their kids.
The group formed, Perkins said, because, “all of our kids have been treated differently, sometimes horribly, in the school system—and what can we do about it?”
Perkins presented me with a list of racial slurs reported at local schools, from students opting to leave certain schools for being called the “N” word, to Asian students being called “ching chang,” to one student telling a black student to “go work in the fields,” to students using the word “beaner” to describe Latinx students.
While Perkins says the list offered was “deliberately vague” because some parents feared retribution, other incidents were more specific. Perkins said her group was especially disturbed by an incident this past Halloween at Mountain View High School, where a student came to school grounds dressed in a manner depicting someone of another race.
Mountain View Principal Michael Hicks confirmed that a student showed up on school grounds after school, saying, “It wasn’t a costume, but there was some racial component” to the student’s dress.
Jim Boen, BLPS’ executive director of South County and Middle School Programs—a role that includes oversight of discipline—said, “There was an incident that was investigated and followed through with in terms of some consequences for kids involved.”
Perkins and other group members feel that when incidents like that are substantiated, and discipline issued, school officials should do more.
“I would be having a school-wide assembly and saying, ‘Let’s talk about this, what’s going on here and why is that wrong?’ And that’s not what’s happening,” Perkins said.
“There’s obviously going to be times and places where a school-wide response is appropriate and is necessary, and when or when not to isn’t always clear. That’s when we have to do our diligence and have conversations and make that determination,” Hicks said.
Investigations and discipline
BLPS’ Boen underlined the district’s policy around discipline, which he said includes an investigation, interviewing witnesses and issuing discipline when warranted. Sometimes, “discipline” involves getting victim and perpetrator together to share how the incident impacted them, in a restorative justice-type circle. Because of privacy laws, Boen said the terms of student discipline won’t be shared publicly.
But some students feel having more conversations would help them feel supported.
“In my experience, a teacher has never done anything—which has kind of fostered that anger, feeling like, well, none of the teachers are looking out for you,” said one student of color, who shared their story on the condition of anonymity. “It would be better if the teacher did intervene and say something, because it’s hard for the person who’s being told these things to rationally fight back.”
That student detailed ongoing experiences with a teacher at Summit High School, including the teacher saying, “shooting up” a mosque “wasn’t so bad,” as well as defending the use of the “N” word, since it’s used in literature. The student says the teacher was out of school for several days following that last incident, that school officials investigated, and that the teacher came back to school and told the class he felt students had gotten “so worked up” over one word.
“If he had just said, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t say it,’ and moved on, it would have been fine,” the student said, “but his whole attitude was so angry and defensive and just, the classroom felt like a very unsafe environment at that moment.” Summit Principal Michael McDonald would not comment on the allegations due to privacy laws, but did say. “When we see racism, classism, homophobia, etc. in our schools or community, we take appropriate action and then educate.”
And then there are the most serious cases. In December 2017, a black student Deshaun Adderley, took his own life after reporting ongoing bullying at Summit. Adderley’s father, Donavan, told the Source last May that he saw his son falling into depression over the bullying.
Asking for guidance
Another BLPS teacher—who asked to remain anonymous—said they want to hear more from district or school officials about how to interrupt incidents of harassment, or how to respond to offhand comments.
“There’s no policy in our district around racial bullying or harassment, so I think that principals don’t really know how to proceed and how to… (create) expectations and policy around it in the school district.” BLPS does have an equity policy, adopted last June, along with a general policy around discrimination and harassment. But this teacher hopes for more direct guidance about what to say to students.
Perkins of Embrace Bend agrees. “We need a policy put in place, district-wide, for when these incidents happen. And it can’t just be anti-discrimination; it has to be a proactive… for when these incidents happen.”
A call to action from outside the district
Several years ago, a small group called the Restorative Justice and Equity Group approached officials at BLPS with the idea of bringing restorative justice practices to area schools.
According to the not-for-profit member association, Restorative Practices International, restorative justice involves placing focus on the harm done to people and relationships, and then integrating a “way forward” that involves “wrongdoers, victims and the community in efforts to heal the harm and put things right.”
“We were concerned about bullying and things that we were picking up in the paper and coming to our attention just by word of mouth, about some students being harassed, and very unhappy students who were black or brown,” said Dalton Miller-Jones, a member of the group, who’s also a former Portland State University professor of neurodevelopmental psychology and the former chair of PSU’s Black Studies department.
“The superintendents were very much in agreement with what we were attempting to achieve in the schools—which was some kind of advocacy, some sort of position in the schools that students could turn to when they were feeling really out of sorts.”
Miller-Jones says they brought ideas and presented lists of potential speakers to officials at the district level, and to individual schools—but that district officials didn’t take up the group’s suggestions.
Today, he believes the election of Donald Trump has made racism even more visable.
In testimony to Congress Feb. 27, the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, stated plainly: “Mr. Trump is a racist,” sharing anecdotes of racist comments made by the president.
“It’s no longer under cover,” Miller-Jones said. “It doesn’t just leak out. The permission to voice white supremacy has been unleashed, and now we’re seeing it. And it doesn’t look pretty—but you better look at it, because it’s sure there, and it’s been there.”
In that landscape, “We decided that we couldn’t wait for the schools to step up,” Miller-Jones said. “The ambient level of stress that these students are under, I don’t think can be fully appreciated unless you’re a person of color. Latinx students, these days are under unbelievable stress,” he said, pointing to the ongoing debate around asylum seekers and migrants at the U.S. border as sources of stress.
“And so, you’re going to be aware that the police are looking at you, that other people in the community may have hostility towards you, if they’re driving around with MAGA symbols on… They’re just synonymous now—the country’s leadership is synonymous with anti-Latinx.
“And the tears and the emotion that these kids are burying daily—I think we really need to be cognizant of it. It’s going to have impacts around their ability to maintain their health. Miss more school. They get behind in school. It just is a complex web of booby traps—a web of barriers and assaults and insults that, psychologically, is a cost.”
While student success can be due to a host of factors, graduation rates are one way educators can measure student outcomes. ODE data shows Hispanic/Latino students in BLPS had an on-time graduation rate of 57 percent last school year. Black/African American students’ on-time graduation rate was 54 percent. Among all students, the rate was 79 percent.
Direct support for students of color
While the RJ&E Group has longer-term goals of introducing culturally responsive and inclusive curricula, it’s more recently been focused on its first Town Hall, titled “Let’s Talk About Race,” modeled after events run by the Oregon Education Association in Salem and Eugene, and co-sponsored by the Latino Community Association, the Bend Education Association and Central Oregon Community College’s Latinx, Native American and Afrocentric Studies clubs.
The day-long event in October brought together 67 students of color from five Bend-La Pine high schools, with local “leaders of color” facilitating small, restorative justice circles for students to share experiences. BLPS Superintendent Shay Mikalson attended as an observer.
One student’s feedback was, “This is the first time I’ve been in an event that is mostly people of color. It makes me feel comfortable.”
Another stated, “This event made me feel that I’m not alone and that there are other people that have the same problems with racism/culture.”
Students also offered advice on “next steps,” including fostering the formation of multicultural clubs at more schools, beyond the big three high schools. Organizers have a second Town Hall scheduled this April, with at least 90 students slated to attend. While stopping short of organizing the event from inside the school district, Miller-Jones believes the district has been supportive of the work.
“They’re totally supporting this next one. They’ll pay the teachers for their release time. They pay for the buses—and I say that, because your commitment really shows when it’s working into the budget, right?”
Still, some want to see even more buy-in.
“I think one of the goals of the Restorative Justice Group is really to have the District pick up some of the work for the Town Halls, and to be there for support,” said LeeAnn O’Neill, a member of the RJ&E Group during the first Town Hall. “But I have a feeling that if you didn’t have this external group doing it, it’s not happening. These Town Halls would not continue, even after the success of the first one.”
BLPS’ Equity Cadre
Lora Nordquist is assistant superintendent for BLPS and leads the district’s Equity Cadre. Formed at the start of the 2017-18 school year, Nordquist says the group, currently with 17 district staff members, spent its first year creating the district’s equity policy. Nordquist says, “A policy is just a policy, but it’s nice to have kind of some guiding principles that say this is who we aspire to be, and we believe ourselves… accountable for being.”
Says Nordquist, “One of our points of focus this fall was to think about, how do you take principle into action?” This year, EC introduced six questions to administrators at each school, asking each to “think about one of the big decisions that you’re making in your building or in your department this spring, and walk that decision through an equity lens.”
In addition, both Boen, on the discipline side, along with Nordquist, mentioned new reporting processes around racial incidents, implemented this school year. Administrators can now record whether an incident had a racial component.
“If we’re not collecting that data specifically, we don’t know… so that is one concrete change that we have already instituted to say, we need to know where we are,” Nordquist said.
And while district officials believe strongly that each school’s administrative team is best equipped to manage that school’s particular issues and incidents, they’re also taking more steps to ensure administrators have cultural and equity training. Nordquist said about 35 administrators and teachers have attended a five-day residential training, titled Coaching for Educational Equity, centered around race, privilege and identity, with more scheduled to attend. Nordquist says the focus has been on training administrators first, so they’re equipped with tools to lead other staff.
The idea is to, “focus on getting more of your leaders through this intense training before you start thinking about broader rollouts, especially about requiring it.” She said another roughly 90 staff members, including classified, certified and administrative staff, have attended a two-day version. District leaders also shadowed students of color in December, aiming to understand their school experience.
The BLPS teacher who I spoke with—who attended the equity training—acknowledged the district’s work, but says it’s not enough, and not fast enough.
“The district has taken some steps to have teachers be involved,” they said, “but I think the district needs to really start talking to kids and teachers and parents so that they know really what’s happening. I’ve asked the higher ups to take a look at having that (equity training) be something that all teachers have to go through.”
Nordquist also pointed to individual schools taking action.
“One of our schools where there had been several incidents, the principal and the assistant principal themselves really designed lessons for students around language and the impact of words,” Nordquist said. “To hit every single student in the school, from the very leadership of the school talking, you know, with an intentionally designed lesson or series of lessons on that topic—I think that that’s great to hear.”
At Mountain View High, Principal Hicks underlined the proactive work its own equity team is doing inside the school—including leading a half-day workshop around equity the week this story went to press.
Sean Reinhart, executive director of special programs for BLPS, also pointed to the district’s recent efforts to develop a Culture of Care program, currently in 11 schools, centered around Trauma-Informed Care, which informs educators in how to best serve students who’ve encountered any type of trauma. Past Trauma Informed Schools Summits introduced tenets of restorative practices, and also included a panel discussion from LGBTQ students, but didn’t touch specifically on race.
Role models
Another pain point for parents and students: Having a staff population that mirrors the student one. ODE data shows that last year, 94 percent of BLPS teachers were white, along with 82 percent of students. Latinx students made up 12 percent of the population, while 4 percent of teachers were Latinx.
Nordquist sees that as a reflection of the wider community’s challenges.
“I also understand, when a Latina administrator looks at me across the table and says, ‘this is a hard place for me to bring my family,'” Nordquist reflected. “Let me look at the professionals. Let me look at St. Charles Hospital. Let me look at the police department. Let me look at the city staff. How many leaders do I see who look like me, and am I willing to be a pioneer?”
Calls to action
Regardless of the work done—or not—outside his own efforts, Miller-Jones says he’s pressing on. “If they want to join us in this, OK, but I am not waiting for their permission or their participation,” he said.
While the high school student I spoke with will soon be an alumnus of Bend-La Pine Schools, they too hope for more inclusivity and understanding.
“It’s more important now than ever for the school district to address these issues, because a division is never good, and having more of a connection between people would be preferable.”
This article appears in Mar 13-20, 2019.
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This is a very, very important article. Thanks for shedding more light on the issues and problems that students of color face in our community. If I could do a bit of KPOV promotion here: I will be re-broadcasting the two-hour radio show I did on the October 2018 student town hall on race on Friday, March 22, 10 am to noon, at 88.9 fm; streaming live and archived at http://kpov.org. It is also available on podcast at http://kpov.org. –Michael Funke
I agree. This IS a very important subject; however, the article is so poorly written that it shows disrespect to the subject itself. For example, the former PSU professor’s name, Dalton Miller-Jones, was, in at least one paragraph, incorrectly given as “Dalton-Miller.” This had me scrolling back through the article looking to see who that was.
Also, NEVER assume that the reader knows what “ODE” is. I finally figured out that it probably means the Oregon Department of Education, but it took me a while.
Additionally, the final paragraph has a ridiculous typo: “It’s more important now than never…”? I sure hope the writer wasn’t paid for this crap, because whoever paid didn’t get much for their money.
Now, to address the subject of the article, I am shocked and stunned that the school district seems so absolutely clueless about how to handle racist behavior, particularly when a student took his own life barely a year ago over bullying. This is unacceptable. Students MUST be taught to respect teachers and other students, period, end of story. Students must be told that they will be respected only if they respect others, and if they are not respectful, there should be serious consequences. This is an absolute minimum as a school district policy, and it’s not that difficult of a concept.
My final point: To have a “District Leader” “shadow” a student of color, “aiming to understand their school experience,” shows the ultimate in denial and naivete. Wake up, people! At least one student has already died because of the way they were treated at school. You need to focus on PREVENTION, and make sure your students are safe at school. I’m surprised you haven’t been sued yet.
Now, for a recommendation: Contact school districts that are full of a diverse group of students and see how they handle this. Research it. This is obviously a life-or-death issue, and it needs to be treated as such by the “district leaders.” Quit with the mamby-pamby kool-aid sucking and get busy doing your job.
Bravo to The Source for this story! Oregons sordid history of racial discrimination has put our state way behind on these issues. I have intervened with students to educate in incidents time and time. The bubble of Bend hasnt necessarily given the majority of kids an opportunity to encounter these issues on a large scale. Luckily, our students are starting to stand up for each other better than ever, as their generation is far more woke than ours.
The teachers union has been active in offering equity training in Oregon and BLPS has started some work of their own. Its time to ensure this important professional development is available to all staff! Its also time to hire faculty who reflect our growing diversity.
Bonita: Thanks for reading. FYI, it’s common practice for news organizations to use an acronym for agencies upon second reference. You’ll note that Oregon Department of Education is used in the very first paragraph, and then shortened to ODE in subsequent references. And while you’re correct in finding two typos in the story (which have now been corrected online), two typographical errors in a piece of this length, which required extensive research, fact-checking and interviewing, hardly warrant not paying a journalist for the work. If readers want stories that matter, they should recognize that the people who wrote them will get paid.
Michael: Thanks for the work you did to highlight the Town Hall, and I’m only sorry that we didn’t include info on that rebroadcast in our print edition.
Amy: The angle of the teacher’s union is one area we didn’t cover in this piece, but seems like a good follow up. Thanks for that info!
As a retired high school English teacher fortunate enough to work with “minority” populations from many different backgrounds in the schools of Los Angeles County, I find the issues mentioned in this article constant with those I faced over my 30 years of teaching. Sometimes conflicts became so explosive that whole days were dedicated to discussing what teachers, students, and administrators could do to reduce such incidents. Now that I have retired to Bend and have been working with the Oregon Battle of the Books on the High School Title Selection Committee, I see a better way to deal with such problems.
While I believe the history of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identificationfreshly documented in THESE TRUTHS, Jill Lepore’s well-documented history of the United Statescalls for a revision of our social studies curriculum, with a whole section dedicated to the history of Oregon, I think it would be just as useful to assign independent reading (and in-class reading) of Young Adult books, both fiction and non-fiction, that would allow students to explore these manners in a context less likely than public discussions to encourage confrontation and self-defense and more likely to encourage an objective and empathetic exploration of these issues.
This past year’s high school selection included THE HATE U GIVE about a black girl enrolled in a white school who has witnessed the killing of a close friend by a cop who stopped them both after a party, PIECING ME TOGETHER about a black girl in a Portland neighborhood who must accept mentored by a black businesswoman whose problems of her own are greater than her own, and BURN BABY BURN recounting the year 1979 when “Son of Sam” murdered young lovers in New York City, as it is experienced by a daughter of divorced Cuban parents and wonders whether to turn in her brother who sets fires and helps local drug dealers by stealing out-of-date drugs thrown out by a local pharmacy. The year before that, the OBOB list included JUST MERCY on how our justice system has perpetuated inequality up to the present day, OUTRUN THE MOON, set in 1906 San Francisco, where a Japanese girl, struggling for acceptance in a private school finds all their lives disrupted by an earthquake, SPARE PARTS, the true story of undocumented Latino students who beat MIT in an underwater robotics competition only to find themselves threatened with deportation, and THE STEEP AND THORNY WAY, a Hamlet-like tale set in 1920s Oregon where the a girl’s black father dies following an encounter with the Klan’s town leaders who might have been abetted by the white doctor her mother has recently married. Next year’s list includes AUDACITY, a true account of a Jewish immigrant in the textile industry who became a labor leader fighting for women’s suffrage, GIRL CODE, where two young women share their story of creating the viral-video game “Tampon Run” that turned their lives and the coding-world around, Jason Reynold’s LONG WAY DOWN, following a brother’s elevator descent after his brother is killed in which he is visited by ghosts who put his situation in a larger, deadly context, THE LOVE LETTERS OF ABELARD AND LILY, an exchange of letters between a girl with ADHD and the boy with Asperger’s who wins her heart, A NORTHERN LIGHT that recounts a famous 1905 drowning-murder of a young woman, a hotel guest meeting her lover in Upstate New York, and her connection with a maid in that hotel who she entrusts with her diary, and THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR, newly released as a film, which is a string-theory romance between science and poetry, embodied by a Jamaican-born pragmatist soon-to-be exiled and a son of Korean immigrants who are pushing conventional plans for his future.
Needless to say, these are complex books. I am not proposing that all students be assigned the full list of OBOB books as part of their curriculum. However, I believe most students would derive more pleasure and gain more personal insights from reading Young Adult books like these than they would out of reading Spark-Notes on MOBY-DICK or THE HEART OF DARKNESS or THE GREAT GATSBY to prove their worth on end-of-the-year exams. I believe students would do better to read books that help them relate their own lives to the complex history that governs how the world operates and leads them to question where they might find a place for themselves in such a world.
Gregg: Thanks for the commentary. I’m a big fan of Battle of the Books myself, for the very reasons you’ve mentioned; the books open up students’ worlds to perspectives and literature that they may not get in the required reading of their English classes. Bravo to the OBOB team for continuing to push the envelope!
Nicole: It is ironic that the Deschutes Public Library could only schedule its Young Adult Books event on the day when the OBOB State Finals were being held. Though there were huge crowds gathering at Summit High School to see authors whose books were among those read for the competition, Summit has failed to sponsor an OBOB team for some time now. This harkens back to your article about the need to support success for all students. Certain activities keep students engaged in continuing their education. As a retired teacher, I am offended when I hear people say that there are so many activities available for students at the high school level that it is hard to generate interest in something like OBOB. If students were all that engaged, our graduation rates would be much higher than they are for all groups of students. I believe if schools were to incentivize activities by paying teachers a stipend to provide these at their schools, teachers might be more willing to take on challenges that, otherwise, would increase their workload without offering proper remuneration.