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Little
Janitors
Portland Public Schools Defends
Student Discipline One Official Compares
to an Inmate Work Crew.
By BETH SLOVIC
bslovic@wweek.com
Domingo Martin spent three days in November and Decem-
ber at North Portland’s César Chávez K-8 School cleaning
the gym and collecting trash in the school’s foul-smelling
restrooms.
It wasn’t his job—it was punishment. School officials say
Domingo argued with another boy and threw a piece of kiwi
fruit in the cafeteria. He was sentenced to this janitorial
duty while other kids played at recess.
Domingo, a second-grader, is 7.
Parents at César Chávez say they only recently dis-
covered many students have been forced to pick up trash
on school grounds; scrub f loors, walls and desks; and
clean doorknobs.
The kids’ offenses have included goofing off in class,
christine dong
NEWS
RUBBISH: Fernando Aguilar, 9, says he had to clean César Chávez K-8 School in North Portland after he got in trouble
for playing four square too aggressively. A Portland Public Schools official says the play amounted to bullying.
rolling their eyes at a teacher, and playing four square
too aggressively.
Domingo was so humiliated he didn’t tell his mother
what the school was making him do.
“I was sad and angry,” says Domingo’s mother, Juana
Diego. “It’s not right to punish kids in this way.”
César Chávez Principal Lavert Robertson defends the
punishment, calling it “community service.”
Experts on school discipline—including an assistant
superintendent for the Portland Public Schools—call it
completely inappropriate.
“If they throw food, they should clean it up,” says Alicia
Roberts Frank, an assistant professor of teacher educa-
tion at Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and
Counseling. “Cleaning beyond that, or for a behavior that
is completely unrelated, like eye-rolling, is illogical.”
Five mothers have approached WW with stories of what
their children told them after César Chávez imposed
cleaning duties on them during recess and lunchtime.
All of the mothers, speaking in Spanish, say they
learned about the punishments after the fact, even though
some of them say they learned about their children’s mis-
behavior immediately from school officials. PPS’s more
established system of suspending or expelling students
requires parental notification.
PPS Superintendent Carole Smith has put increasing
pressure on schools to lower their discipline rates and
end disparities in punishment between white and minor-
ity students. Principals now face performance evaluations
that demand reductions in the number of students sus-
pended or expelled from school.
But principals are largely on their own to determine
how to fulfill Smith’s mandate. That’s in keeping with
Smith’s general approach of giving principals large discre-
tion over their schools’ operations.
A spokeswoman for PPS, Christine Miles, and a repre-
sentative of the district’s equity office in charge of school
discipline, Rick Kirschmann, defended the program on
behalf of Smith.
Asked why kids should clean their school as punish-
ment for disruptive or disrespectful behavior, Kirschmann
responded with a question: “Why do we see inmates picking
up trash on the side of the freeway as the result of the crimes
that they’ve done, which have nothing to do with littering?”
The parents’ stories suggest César Chávez—where 57
percent of students are Latino—has embarked on a discipline
strategy that goes way beyond anything in the district’s Stu-
dent Responsibilities, Rights and Discipline Handbook.
The handbook recommends timeouts and after-
school detention as consequences for minor misbehavior;
nowhere does it outline janitorial work as an acceptable
form of punishment.
Miles and Kirschmann say the cleaning falls under
“restitution,” which is allowed under PPS discipline policy.
But restitution is defined in the discipline handbook
as a response only to misbehavior that results in “damage,
destruction or loss of property.” It requires students and
parents to pay to repair the damage—not clean schools.
César Chávez’s three-page discipline plan—which it is
required to keep on file at district headquarters—lists “res-
titution” as an option but doesn’t define the term. The plan
lists “school community service” as an option and defines
that as either “behind-the-scenes lunch job” or “help cus-
todian.” (Principals aren’t required to get PPS approval for
their plans.)
César Chávez’s alternative approach to discipline risks
ruining kids’ relationship with school, says Marta Guemb-
es, a longtime education activist in Portland.
“They should be happy going to school, not frightened,”
cont. on page 9
Willamette Week MARCH 11, 2015 wweek.com
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