Teachers at Jefferson High School discovered a disquieting note in their mailboxes this morning from Cynthia Harris, Portland Public Schools’ area director overseeing Jeff’s administration.
It reads:
January 5, 2007
To: Jefferson Staff
From: Cynthia Harris, Area DirectorThere are NOT to be any reporters in the building or any interviews unless they have been approved by Mr. Dudley or Mrs. Harris. It will be documented if you do not follow this directive.
Sincerely,
Cynthia Harris, Area Director
So what gives?
Since August, Jeff’s new principal Leon Dudley has been the subject of numerous scathing news reports, culminating in a Dec. 15 article in The Portland Tribune that described a racial and sexual harassment complaint filed against the Texas transplant (we mean that in the nicest possible way). Reporters also questioned Dudley’s past spending practices with taxpayer dollars in Dallas, his sometimes stormy relationships with teachers at previous posts and his resume that includes five different jobs in a seven-year period.
The school district’s been playing ring-around-the-unrosiness for months with Jeff. Earlier in the school year, for example, the district approved paying a Beaverton woman $1,000 for public relations work she performed on behalf of Jeff.
But Superintendent Vicki Phillips may be paying more attention to the criticism now; she apparently held a private meeting with Dudley, whom she recruited last spring, in December.
Reporters haven’t been “banned” from Jefferson . . . nor from our other Portland Public schools. Cynthia Harris was putting in writing what has been a long-standing practice in PPS (sometimes honored more in the breach): Principals are in charge of their buildings and will be the judge of whether allowing reporters on campus during the school day is helpful or interferes with student learning.
At the PPS Communications Office, our policy is always to try to receive principal approval before sending a reporter to a school. In some cases — and I’m making no judgment about the situation that may have inspired this reminder — reporters and/or their sources go around the principal’s authority over his or her building and staff during the instructional day.
I personally think it’s tremendously helpful to reporters, the public and our schools for reporters to have appropriate access to our students, teachers, staff and classes . . . . but I defer to principals on how best to make that happen.
I would also note that beyond allowing principals to manage their schools, the generally unwritten policy also helps us to comply with strict federal laws governing student privacy.
Sarah Carlin Ames
PPS Communications
I think the tone of Harris’ memo speaks volumes – to me, it seems punative and even threatening. While the press has hardly been a friend of Jefferson High School, such a knee-jerk response bordering on a gag-order by the district administarion seems ridiculously out of proportion to any harm a reporter has on campus.
It seems to me that having members of the press actually IN the classrooms at Jefferson seeing first hand the professionalism and rigor Jefferson teachers bring every day, bearing witness to the hard work Jefferson students do would go far to address the misconceptions and misunderstandings that have so long plagued Jeff.
In response to Sarah Carlin Ames, the amount of interference a reporter would have on student learning by interviewing a public employee (such as a teacher, for example) confounds me.
I personally think it’s tremendously useful for representatives of the body public, such as reporters, to have unfettered access to public buildings. Jefferson is no Catlin Gabel.