A Fitting
Choice
Diversity
grounds race
for state rep
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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