Black parents pushed Portland Catholic school to improve racial equity. The principal called police on the parents and expelled the son
The principal at The Madeleine School, a private Catholic school in Northeast Portland, summoned Portland police to the campus in late March when the parents of a Black student demanded to know her plan of action after their fourth grade son reported being called a racist slur on the playground.
Just 72 hours later, the school expelled the boy, effective immediately, saying his parents — Moda Health executive Karis Stoudamire-Phillips and renowned jazz musician Mike Phillips, both prominent Black Portlanders with long histories of volunteering both citywide and in Portland’s tight-knit Catholic school community — had violated the school’s code of conduct for parents.
That one-two punch, coupled with what the family saw as a lack of empathy from the leaders of a community they had poured their hearts into for the last 10 years, prompted them to both hire a lawyer and speak publicly about their story.
“You’re calling the cops on me and kicking out my son because of what he heard?” Mike Phillips asked. “My family is the victim in this. There is no cross you can hide behind.”
Several families do not plan to re-enroll next year or have already pulled their children out, including the family of a child who also reported hearing the slur.
According to that child’s father, who did not want to be named to protect his child’s privacy, Principal Tresa Rast told him and his wife that she suspected that their son had made up the entire incident and recommended that the child see a therapist so he could be “deprogrammed” from the anti-racist training he’d received while previously attending public school in Portland.
Around 50 parents have since signed a letter to the parish priest who oversees the school, The Rev. Bonaventure Rummell, asking him to reinstate the Stoudamire-Phillips’ son and transparently overhaul internal policies and practices governing the school’s response to racist incidents.
Their letter stopped short of calling for Rast to resign. But it said she had committed “an act of violence and overt racism” by calling the police.
The family of one of the only other Black children at the school wrote a separate letter to Rummell, calling for Rast to resign and outlining what they said were other incidents of racism at the school, including “students being made fun of for their skin tone and hair texture and other slurs. Consistently, there was no schoolwide communication and no policies and procedures actioned.”
Rummell responded that the school was unable to discuss any actions administrators took or the reasons behind them, citing privacy concerns.
“You have to understand that a Black man having the cops called on him is a totally different implication,” Phillips said. “It’s a complete abuse of power, a ‘Look what I have over you.’”
By the time the police arrived, Phillips had excused himself to wait for them outside, wanting to clearly show that he was unarmed and calm with nothing to hide, he said. Rast told police that the matter was under control and that the officers were free to leave.
But the damage was done, Phillips said.
In the days that followed, the family said they waited for word that the parents of the students involved had been notified and that plans were underway for restorative conversations and disciplinary consequences.
But by Wednesday, Karis Stoudamire-Phillips got a call from the school during which she was told that all involved students had denied using the slur. The implication, she said, was that perhaps her son and his classmate had misheard them.
She responded with a blistering email to Rast and Rummell, defending her son and writing that Rast had fostered a culture in which “both overt and subtle racism are allowed and even encouraged due to there not being real, impactful and behavior changing consequences for racist action…[Rast] is completely inept…It is simply ludicrous to insinuate that one of the only Black boys in the entire Madeleine school would inflict such trauma on himself and lie [about the racist epithet].”
A day later, on April 3, the family received an email from Rummell with a terse subject line: “Termination of partnership.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/202...e-son.html
The principal at The Madeleine School, a private Catholic school in Northeast Portland, summoned Portland police to the campus in late March when the parents of a Black student demanded to know her plan of action after their fourth grade son reported being called a racist slur on the playground.
Just 72 hours later, the school expelled the boy, effective immediately, saying his parents — Moda Health executive Karis Stoudamire-Phillips and renowned jazz musician Mike Phillips, both prominent Black Portlanders with long histories of volunteering both citywide and in Portland’s tight-knit Catholic school community — had violated the school’s code of conduct for parents.
That one-two punch, coupled with what the family saw as a lack of empathy from the leaders of a community they had poured their hearts into for the last 10 years, prompted them to both hire a lawyer and speak publicly about their story.
“You’re calling the cops on me and kicking out my son because of what he heard?” Mike Phillips asked. “My family is the victim in this. There is no cross you can hide behind.”
Several families do not plan to re-enroll next year or have already pulled their children out, including the family of a child who also reported hearing the slur.
According to that child’s father, who did not want to be named to protect his child’s privacy, Principal Tresa Rast told him and his wife that she suspected that their son had made up the entire incident and recommended that the child see a therapist so he could be “deprogrammed” from the anti-racist training he’d received while previously attending public school in Portland.
Around 50 parents have since signed a letter to the parish priest who oversees the school, The Rev. Bonaventure Rummell, asking him to reinstate the Stoudamire-Phillips’ son and transparently overhaul internal policies and practices governing the school’s response to racist incidents.
Their letter stopped short of calling for Rast to resign. But it said she had committed “an act of violence and overt racism” by calling the police.
The family of one of the only other Black children at the school wrote a separate letter to Rummell, calling for Rast to resign and outlining what they said were other incidents of racism at the school, including “students being made fun of for their skin tone and hair texture and other slurs. Consistently, there was no schoolwide communication and no policies and procedures actioned.”
Rummell responded that the school was unable to discuss any actions administrators took or the reasons behind them, citing privacy concerns.
“You have to understand that a Black man having the cops called on him is a totally different implication,” Phillips said. “It’s a complete abuse of power, a ‘Look what I have over you.’”
By the time the police arrived, Phillips had excused himself to wait for them outside, wanting to clearly show that he was unarmed and calm with nothing to hide, he said. Rast told police that the matter was under control and that the officers were free to leave.
But the damage was done, Phillips said.
In the days that followed, the family said they waited for word that the parents of the students involved had been notified and that plans were underway for restorative conversations and disciplinary consequences.
But by Wednesday, Karis Stoudamire-Phillips got a call from the school during which she was told that all involved students had denied using the slur. The implication, she said, was that perhaps her son and his classmate had misheard them.
She responded with a blistering email to Rast and Rummell, defending her son and writing that Rast had fostered a culture in which “both overt and subtle racism are allowed and even encouraged due to there not being real, impactful and behavior changing consequences for racist action…[Rast] is completely inept…It is simply ludicrous to insinuate that one of the only Black boys in the entire Madeleine school would inflict such trauma on himself and lie [about the racist epithet].”
A day later, on April 3, the family received an email from Rummell with a terse subject line: “Termination of partnership.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/202...e-son.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
