The Portland Public School Board will be considering changes to its multiple equity-related policies in order to avoid an appearance of racial discrimination in its hiring practices.
Portland Superintendent Ryan Scallon foreshadowed the revisions to the district’s equity policy at the board’s March 18 meeting, saying that the policies, initially approved in 2021, would need to be revised in light of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision “determining that race-conscious affirmative action in college admission is unconstitutional.”
“These revisions are not to roll back our commitment, but rather to reinforce it, and to ensure the [equity] policy is well positioned to assist us in continuing our work,” Scallon said.
According to the district’s current definition of equity, equity will only be achieved in the district when “there are no identifiable differences in outcomes and experiences for any population sub-group (race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, etc).”
The revised version of the policy, brought before the board’s curriculum and policy committee on Tuesday, would remove the list of population sub-groups in parentheses from the definition.
It would also remove a second part of the definition that specifically references racial equity as being achieved “when outcomes cannot be predicted or identified by race.”
Portland Public Schools’ Senior Executive Director of Strategy Sarah Warren explained that while the district’s broad definition of equity would not be changing, the district has “chosen to not call out specific sub-groups,” and that part B of the definition is “somewhat redundant and not necessary.”
The revised policy also seeks to make changes to the district’s hiring practices — specifically to a section that appeared to require the district hire a racially diverse staff.
As revised, the policy removes language about recruiting and hiring “staff who are racially diverse,” replacing it with a longer paragraph affirming Portland Public Schools’ compliance with non-discrimination laws.
“Hiring and recruitment — similarly, wanting to make sure that we reinforce that Portland Public Schools practices non-discrimination in line with state and federal law,” Warren said of the revision.
Warren said that the district will “have to be careful that the language we use to talk about that and our hiring process makes clear that we are not discriminating based on someone’s particular identity or background.”
The committee voted unanimously in support of advancing the revised policy to the full school board.
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