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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (May 4, 2016)
A Fitting Choice Diversity grounds race for state rep QR code for Portland Observer Online See Local News, page 3 ‘City of Roses’ Volume XLV Number 18 www.portlandobserver.com Wednesday • May 4, 2016 Cinco de Mayo Multicultural celebration begins Thursday See Metro, page 11 Established in 1970 Committed to Cultural Diversity Beaumont Middle School parent Mystique Pratcher and her daughter Emaujah outside the northeast Portland school. Mother feels Beaumont failed her daughter C ervante p ope t he p ortland o bserver Getting arrested isn’t an act any child should ever have to experi- ence, yet for a 12-year-old girl, that traumatically scarring experi- ence became a reality. An iteration of this story irst broke a few weeks ago when it was reported that the young fe- male was taken into custody for attacking another student and a substitute teacher at Beaumont Middle School. While the date regarding the ight and the arrest two weeks later was accurate, the full details behind the incident were missing or false, according to the girl’s by photo by Arrested at School mother Mystique Pratcher and discipline records from the north- east Portland school. Pratcher said she was shocked when Willamette Week published a story just two days after her daughter’s March 31 arrest. She calls foul on the school as the source for the media coverage be- cause a police report had not been iled. She says Beaumont has an is- sue of disciplining African Ameri- can and Latino students more than anyone else, and claims that in her daughter’s case, the infractions have been for minor things, like being too loud. C ervante p ope /t he p ortland o bserver “I’d already been having some issues with students being treated different because of their race at Beaumont,” she told the Portland Observer. “Emaujah had 10 refer- rals and all of them were for being loud in the hallway, during pass- ing times. Not being loud in the classroom, not being disrespectful to staff -- for talking too loud,” she said. Pratcher said her daughter and another student got into a mutual altercation on March 18. Each stu- dent was suspended for the spat, yet only Emaujah was taken into police custody. A school Disciplinary Action Form documenting the ight, drafted by Student Management Specialist Jennifer Bennett, has now been oficially amended. Emaujah was described as the aggressor in the original report, which did not mention the other student’s full level of involve- ment. Both the principal and vice principal of the school, Harriette Vimegnon and Ed Krankowski, wrote in follow-up correspon- dence feeling the irst report was a poor representation of the actual C ontinued on p age 2
