Black Village advisory group urges stronger response to racial slurs, asks district to simplify bias reporting

Members of the Black Village Family Advisory Committee told the Hillsboro School District Board of Directors on Tuesday that Black students continue to experience racial slurs and that the districtmust improve reporting, supports and accountability.

The committeepresenters described a year of growth for their group, including meetings that drew more than 60 people and at least one meeting with about 100 attendees, but said serious problems remain. "When people call you the n word, what happened? Well, in my school, nothing. They say 'sorry that happened to you' and brush it off," the group relayed as a quote collected from students, saying students and parents find current responses insufficient.

The committee asked the board to consider several concrete steps: create safe spaces for Black students; expand culturally responsive, trauma-informed student services and restorative practices; streamline the bias-incident reporting process; and make funding commitments that would preserve positions now supported by grants.

Francesca, a presenter for the Black Village Family Advisory Committee, told the board the committee was founded more than five years ago and credited district liaisons for helping the group's growth. "We now have two [Black liaisons]," Francesca said, and described one of those liaison positions as grant-funded. She said the liaisons and student leaders helped boost attendance and engagement and organized events including a Black History Month celebration planned for Feb. 20 and a March 16 screening of the film Black Girl in Suburbia.

Committee members and board members repeatedly raised the difficulty of reporting bias incidents. Board member Mark and others said the district's current process asks students or families to complete a long form and email principals; that procedural friction, they said, suppresses reporting and prevents accurate data collection.

District staff described existing reporting avenues and said the district has a webpage with a "reporting safety concern" link and building-level administrator contacts. Francesca and other staff acknowledged the navigation is not yet straightforward for students and families, and said the district has considered other tools used by neighboring districts, such as Google Forms or a hotline, but has not adopted them. "If it's harder to report incidents, they're not getting accurate data on how frequently incidents are happening," a board member said.

District leaders told the board they are convening a task force with a multi-phase plan. Andrea, identified as an executive director, said the task force launched this calendar year; phase 1 is engagement and partnership with students and parent groups, phase 2 focuses on community education, phase 3 on accountability and phase 4 on review and refinement. Andrea said the district plans to bring data and a proposal back to the board in March, including work toward a district-wide policy addressing the n-word and related hateful speech. "We are going to focus on one single word," Andrea said, adding that she hoped that attention would produce a broader reduction in hateful speech across schools.

Board members and parent volunteers stressed that reporting options must be easy for students and that schools should be expected to interrupt incidents immediately so students do not have to relive trauma by filling out lengthy forms. District staff said one goal of the plan is to make interruption and school-level reporting the first step so students are not required to file long reports themselves.

Committee members also asked for ongoing feedback loops: when the district marks an item as "complete," the committee wants follow-up checks to determine whether the change produced the intended results. Francesca said some items the group has requested in prior years show checkmarks on lists but lack measurable follow-up.

Board members thanked Black Village members for their presentation and asked district staff to return with specifics about what recommendations are feasible, which are in progress and what the timeline will be. No formal action or vote was taken at the meeting; staff were asked to report back with data and next steps in March.

Ending: The district acknowledged the concerns, described an ongoing multi-phase task force and committed to returning to the board with more precise data and recommended actions. The Black Village representatives reiterated invitations to upcoming events and urged the board to make community-centered feedback a routine part of evaluating initiatives.