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.