July 20, 2016
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INSIDE
The
Week in Review
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L OCAL N EWS
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O PINION
Portland School District Superintendent Carole Smith announced Monday that she has moved up
her plans for retirement , stepping down now in wake of a lead crisis and a report about what went
wrong and why.
M ETRO
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Report Sinks Schools Chief
District put
off health and
safety issues
Citing the conclusion of an in-
vestigation of elevated levels of
lead in school buildings, Portland
Public School Superintendent
Carole Smith on Monday said she
will step down now rather than
wait a year to retire.
The 38-page report, conducted
by the Stoll Berne law firm at the
school board’s behest, concluded
Arts &
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8-15
ENTERTAINMENT
C ALENDAR
C LASSIFIEDS
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F OOD
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R ELIGION
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that the district’s efforts to test
water, fix problems and notify
the public have been woefully in-
adequate — if not nonexistent in
some cases — for 15 years.
“There has been no ‘top down’
management and no supervision
in this area,” the report states.
The investigation found that
because of budget restraints, Port-
land Public Schools made infra-
structure and maintenance a lower
priority than direct education ser-
vices for years, and that neither
the school board or administration
considered lead in water as a sig-
nificant issue.
Portland’s water system doesn’t
contain lead, but officials say the
water can leach lead from older
buildings and homes that used
lead-containing solder in fixtures
and fittings made of lead-contain-
ing brass.
Without federal mandates for
testing water systems in school
buildings and discoveries of lead
in other public school systems
in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown re-
cently called on Oregon’s 197
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Local Theater Director Profiled by Police
Long time Portland theater di-
rector Kevin Jones says he was
subject to racial profiling by Port-
land Police for just sitting in his
car.
The 63-year-old black
co-founder of the August Wilson
Red Door Project, an organiza-
tion committed to fostering the
racial diversity of young people
in the arts, wrote about an incident
he experienced Friday outside of
the Artists Repertory Theatre on
a PDX Backstage Yahoo group,
while parked outside the theater in
his 1976 BMW at the time.
“I was profiled last night in front
of ART sitting in my car,” Jones Kevin Jones
wrote. “I wasn’t manhandled. But
the hand was on the gun.”
Jones declined to have his story
shared on Facebook by his sup-
porters, though Portland actress
Michele Mariana wrote a letter to
Police Chief Mike Marshman and
Mayor Charlie Hales.
“I want someone, someone in
power – someone white, to get
mad and stop this,” his post con-
tinued. “This shit hurts.”
Jones is currently working on a
show influenced by what’s going
on with Black Lives Matter called
“Hands Up,” where seven play-
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