Courageous Conversations With Cowards
I just read that Diana Fernandez has filed a civil rights complaint against PPS. What’s one more? PPS administrators would rather spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting complaints than correcting their practices. Didn’t anyone tell Diana that she couldn’t have been discriminated against because staff has had Courageous Conversations trainings?
I spent four years working in the PPS Human Resources department witnessing the discrimination. There’s NO commitment to diversity….Just strong resistance! Show PPS HR administrators a strong candidate of color and they’ll find an excuse not to hire them.
So I was happy to hear that the district had hired someone to address the diversity issue.
In announcing the hire of Kurt Jun, Superintendent Carole Smith said: “All of our employees must be able to build strong relationships with our students and families, no matter who they are or where they come from. Kurt is skilled and experienced in helping large, public organizations become more diverse and culturally competent, and I look forward to working with him to achieve those goals here at Portland Public Schools.”
Jun comes to PPS from Salem Hospital and Regional Health Services, where he directed its diversity program. In that role, he worked closely with the hospital’s human resources department to promote the hiring and retention of a more diverse workforce. He also built strong ties to the local community and served as a member of the Salem Human Rights Commission.
Previously, Jun managed diversity, affirmative action and civil rights compliance programs for the Oregon Department of Transportation. In these positions, he monitored agency compliance with federal civil rights provisions and worked with state, local and community partners to promote affirmative action and environmental justice on major transportation-related projects.
Superintendent Smith gave Kurt a glowing introduction. It sounds like he had the skills and experience required to make a difference. Kurt lasted a little over a year. Someone give him an award. That must have been a year of hell.
Kurt left in February. Has the district posted the workforce diversity position? No.
If PPS administration really wants to have a courageous conversation, they should be honest and say they like things the way they are and they don’t want to hire people of color or improve education for all kids.
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For years I have tried to get PPS to get serious about a plan I have offered for improving their hiring practices, particularly teachers of color. No go. In fact, not too long ago I asked if they wanted the name of an outstanding African-American teacher who was substituting in my school district. She was top of the line. Bright, sharp, probably a terrific teacher. I told an HR person if they were interested to give me a call and I would pass along her name. They obviously weren’t interested since they didn’t call. Stand for Children did the big effort to improve the hiring practices of the school district and were quite proud of their accomplishment. They moved PPS from hiring last in the entire Portland area (17 districts I believe) to tied for last. And this is where we stay. Of course, we should be hiring a large number of our teachers and other personnel first.
Steve, I met with Vicki Phillips about my concerns of employment discrimination while I was at the district. I followed-up on that meeting by hand delivering a lengthy letter outlining the concerns we discussed. I never received a response.
Administrators continued to hire family members, allowed people to start working without ANY background checks (some didn’t even complete applications, they just turned in time documents), and limited term positions were used to “temporarily” hire friends and friends of friends. Once people were hired into the temporary positions, a permanent job would be posted and of course the incumbent got the job. Often, job titles changed shortly after the person was hired.
I applied for one HR promotion in the four years that I worked for PPS. There were 4 promotion positions open for the position I applied for. I never had any performance issues, never reprimanded, and my attendance was excellent. Data showed that I was the second highest producer in my classification and I received many cards from employees thanking me for my prompt service. I was the most senior employee at the time. According to my former supervisor, I didn’t get the promotion because I wore my eye make-up too dark. I must have looked at her incredulously because she added that they were also concerned that I might not be a positive leader. I quit.
Kurt Jun was told he was not a good fit when they basically gave him no choice but resigning. Even though he did not wear too dark eye make-up, he proposed too many ambitious plans that threatened the district’s whole being. He was too dangerous for many of them including his bosses, namely Carole, Hank and Jollee. He was hoping to leave a good legacy for Carole but he did not succeed. The district failed him. Even at the last minute, he was kind and noble enough to thank Carole for giving the opportunity to develop his equity plan, knowing fully well that she was behind his firing. But he did the right thing by resigning because he would not compromise his integrity and his convictions. If anyone ever talks badly about Kurt Jun and his equity work, that person would go down a war path with communities of color. SO BEWARE!!!
They will not let anyone do the work that they supposedly hired Kurt to do. They have ZERO interest in equity or equal opportunities.
To shut up communities of color and advocacy groups such as APANO and CEE, the district promised to replace Kurt but they already had someone in mind in HR. This lady will acquiesce and that is what they want. They DO NOT want another person like Kurt. We already know their plans and it is not going to happen without a fight. Hank Harris is on the wrong path with communities if he does not watch out. He might be on the out before he knows it. This guy does not get it AT ALL.
Show Me…who is supposed to be Kurt’s replacement?
Bonnie Gray.
FYI. CEE worked with Vicki Phillips for over 2 years to even get the Director For Diversity Workforce position approved. It took alot of pushing to get Carole Smith to hire Kurt. CEE and APANO members had to give up time and energy to work with Richard Clarke, former HR Director to come up with a job description and the hiring process. It took almost a year and two separate hiring procedures to find Kurt Jun. CEE is not about to give up their say in the hiring of the next Director. What is the point for all these efforts if Hank Harris decides who he wants for the next person?
Consider PPS student demographics in 1990 and 2010:
1990 2010
White 72% 54%
Black 15% 14%
Hispanic 3% 15%
Asian 8% 10%
An Ind 2% 1%
ODE has 2005-2006 ethnicity stats for PPS employees. About 88% of the teachers were White. But 16% of principals were Black, so were 15% of asst principals, and 14% of curriculum directors, whatever they are. The figures for Black administrators closely match the proportion of Black students. On the other hand, only 4% of teachers were Black, and Hispanics were 3% or less of principals, asst principals, and curriculum directors.
So, yes, there are mismatches between the demographic characteristics of the students and the workforce and the difference is particularly notable for Hispanics. Clearly PPS kids have changed faster than the PPS workforce, but what exactly is PPS supposed to do about that?
Art, maybe you missed my tagline…”the shit they’re not telling you about the public education system.” We’ve been hearing the district’s excuses for decades. This blog isn’t going to be a forum for making excuses for inept district leadership. Feel free to take your comments elsewhere.
Art: Let me give a different take on your question about what PPS should be doing about the discrepancy between teachers and students demographics. If the district really put the money where the mouth was twenty years ago, we would have a better reflections of the students demographics. Even now, the district sets up so many barriers for teachers that the district is losing out on the opportunity to hire teachers to reflect the students’ population. It is a shame. 33% of the teachers who went through the Portland Teachers’ program at PSU got hired by other districts. There are still 33% of these teachers who are not being hired as teachers. Some of them work as para-professionals with low pay but are teaching classes. I have many examples of these staff who are being used to teach Reading, ESL and Native Language Literacy. Just in January of this year, OCR found the district out of compliance for this very reason. So these issues can be fixed except the district is dragging its feet either out of ignorance or carelessness. These out-of-compliance situations have been alerted to deputy superintendents and ESL director recently and let’s hope they get their acts together and do something about them. Either pay people teachers’ salaries or quit making them teach. Some of these folks are totally scared of speaking up because they fear of getting fired for retalitation. The system grooms them to accept their fate even though they know that the treatment toward them is totally unfair.
look at the special education administrators. Not a diverse or person of color in the group. Yet they continue to overidentify students of color. They too are suppose to be cutting administrators-watch and see. She would rather cut para educator hours than any of her friends, oops I mean administrators.
Special Ed is really corrupt. They have such a plush budget that they have to spend it. I am glad Xavier is doing something about that by shaving their budgets by several million dollars. They need to cut more administrators, though. Why do they have to have 17 administrators who are not worth a dime? There is no diversity in the Special Ed department. They should hang a sign out in front of their door: “For whites only”.
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