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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2018)
July 18, 2018 The Skanner Page 3 News cont’d from pg 1 building in the histor- ically Black neighbor- hood of Northeast Port- land. In its place would be ACCESS Academy, an al- ternative school for pre- dominately white gifted children, leaving the charter without a home. Met with fierce commu- nity backlash – including from both Mayor Ted PPS has been extremely si- lent in terms of responding to our questions about rene- gotiating our lease Wheeler and ACCESS itself, who claimed the building was too small for its needs – PPS re- versed its decision and it looked as though Kai- rosPDX would stay put. Now, the charter says Portland Public Schools is reneging on its com- mitment to let it keep its building. The district has granted KairosPDX a mere one-year exten- sion on its lease, after the charter asked for five years, creating a state of limbo for students and staff. “PPS has been ex- tremely silent in terms of responding to our questions about rene- gotiating our lease,” Lakeeyscia Griffin, Kai- rosPDX communications coordinator, told The Skanner. She added that the charter began reach- ing out to the district al- ready six months ago and has received little to no response. The Skanner reached out to PPS for a com- ment and it offered the following by email: “PPS appreciates the import- ant work Kairos does as a charter school for our community in educating students who historically have been underserved. Delta rent by 33 percent and gave the charter only 30 days notice. “The added burden of costs and the lack of re- sponse in this partner- ship is just really dis- appointing to us,” said Griffin. “The continuous need to renegotiate the lease each year just feels as if (PPS) is not in sup- port of our mission.” African American children remain under- served and the lowest performing demograph- ic in the district – a statis- tic KairosPDX has been trying to improve. The charter school was opened in 2013 by Kali Ladd with the goal of improving academic outcomes of young Black students. Throughout the dis- trict, KairosPDX has been solo in its approach by placing emphasis on Black history and teaching an Afro-centric curriculum. In its press release, the charter said that “KairosPDX’s stu- dents are outperforming children in the district.” It added that “PPS’s disruption of the Kai- rosPDX program speaks loudly to their detached and apathetic approach to Black student success.” Komen Begins Data Collection in Anticipation of Forming Initiative to Address Breast Cancer Disparities The team collecting data to inform a future multi-year project, spearheaded by Susan G. Komen Oregon & SW Washington, to address breast cancer disparities in Portland’s African American community includes Cindy Fletcher (Komen’s director of programs, left); Dr. Angela Owusu-Ansah (professor of Doctoral Studies at Concordia University); Bridget Jamieson (Komen’s community programs manager); D. Bora Harris (diversity consultant); and Kelvin Hall (doctoral candidate and community advocate). In the United States, African American women die more often and are often diagnosed younger with more aggressive forms of breast cancer than white women. Susan G. Komen Oregon and Southwest Washington would like to try to change this in the Portland-metro area’s African American community. As the first step in developing a multi-year initiative to address these breast cancer disparities, Komen has partnered with a team of independent contractors who are actively involved with the Portland-metro area’s African American community. The project is being funded, in part, by a grant that Komen received from the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute Community Partnership Program. DOJ cont’d from pg 1 dent/home/search.) The goal is to help local juris- dictions plan more effective pro- cedures around what officers -- from police to sheriffs and even FBI agents -- do on the streets. And it has; most law enforcement ju- risdictions around the state now have posted “deadly force plans.” But the law also required the Oregon DOJ to compile reports describing trends in use of force and periodically notify the public about them. Instead, as The Skanner report- ed in 2014, the DOJ, led by Attor- ney General Ellen Rosenblum, at first simply failed to follow the law, saying the department “for- got” it was passed; later, officials said they didn’t have the money to compile the data and so were sim- ply forwarding reports of death and injury by law enforcement to the health division. Last week The Skanner report- ed that now, the DOJ has collected the reports, but without checking them for accuracy. Errors uncovered online by nonprofit watchdog group Port- land Copwatch — which first brought the issue to light in May — included blank listings, wrong dates and a completely incorrect narrative regarding the Portland “ We are in the process of clean- ing up our cur- rent database, and changing some of our in- ternal protocols Police killing of Aaron Campbell in 2010. One of the most far-reaching and divisive events in modern Portland history, Campbell’s kill- ing by Portland Police Officer Ronald Frashour — and failed ef- forts by the City of Portland to fire him for the shooting -- led to years of ineffective policy, legal battles and bitter community protests. Campbell’s death resulted in a record $1.2 million wrongful death settlement with his family by the City of Portland, to avoid a federal civil trial in the case — in which City attorneys would have been expected to defend Frashour’s actions even though he had been fired by the City for those same actions. The DOJ last week said they are reviewing the errors on their website and making changes. “I wanted to let you know we are in the process of cleaning up our current database, and chang- ing some of our internal proto- cols,” wrote Oregon Department of Justice spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson in an email last week. “We also would like to do more than a cursory review of that data when we receive it.” IPR Site Error-Free By contrast, no such errors ap- pear within the interactive data- base on Portland Police uses of force hosted on the City of Port- land’s Independent Police Review See DOJ on page 11 cont’d from pg 1 landed in Portland. “If you didn’t have the same last name I wouldn’t allow you take your grand- son,” she said. The Butlers are concerned about the safety issues raised by the way the fam- ily was split up: they worry that the five-year-old would have flown totally unattended had his grandparents not been on the plane with him. More generally, they have been con- cerned about the way they were treated. “It just started when we got to the gate. It was mostly just Delta and the fact that these women — I’m sorry to say they were all women — there was no concern,” Michelle Butler said. “I mean, if she had been in a city where she didn’t know anybody, I don’t know what you’d do.” Dominique Butler said after the plane took off, a Delta staff member gave her a piece of paper with a phone number on it to book a new flight. She was un- able to book a direct flight leaving that day or one that, like the flight her fam- ily was on, routed through Atlanta, but was able to find a direct flight the “ I’m a firm believer this would not have happened if we were not Black, if we were not people of color following day. A relative drove to the airport to pick her up and she spent the night with family members. “I got no food voucher, no hotel vouch- er, nothing of that sort,” Butler said. She emailed a complaint that night and called Delta customer service the next day; they offered her a $75 gift card. “We regret that we unable to delay a flight while a customer retrieved an item left at the security checkpoint. However, the captain ultimately deter- mined that he could not further risk misconnecting the flight’s 100+ other customers to their final destination,” said Delta spokesperson Anthony Black in a written statement. “I’m a firm believer this would not have happened if we were not Black, if we were not people of color. If it had been a White person with White chil- dren, this would not have happened,” Michelle Butler said. Michelle Butler has since written a separate letter of complaint, and the family has contacted an attorney. What they want from Delta is an apology — and for their story to be heard. “I’m not seeking any benefit from this. I want my story to be heard. I’m raising two African American boys,” Dominique Butler said. “If I don’t stand for something, then what am I doing this for?” PHOTO COURTESY OF DOMINIQUE BUTLER “ We look forward to fi- nalizing a new one-year lease agreement in sup- port of this work as our district works to address a significant shortage of space to serve all of the students in our district.” It made no reference to offering KairosPDX more long-term support. Moreover, PPS has increased KairosPDX’s PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSAN G. KOMEN OREGON AND SW WASHINGTON Kairos Dominique Butler, pictured here with her sons Meyziah and Makai, was separated from Meyziah and the rest of her family last week on a flight to Portland from Baltimore.
