Portland policy committee weighs removing anonymous-reporting language from harassment policies
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Summary
The Portland Board of Public Education Policy Committee discussed whether to remove a paragraph that encourages anonymous reporting from proposed harassment and nondiscrimination policies during its Oct. 27 online meeting.
The Portland Board of Public Education Policy Committee discussed whether to remove a paragraph that encourages an informal anonymous reporting option from proposed harassment and nondiscrimination policies during its Oct. 27 online meeting.
Committee Chair Maya Lina convened the meeting and said the committee planned to finalize ACAA (harassment and sexual harassment of students), ACAB (harassment and sexual harassment of school employees) and AC (nondiscrimination/equal opportunity and affirmative action), followed by a second look at GBEB (staff conduct with students). Dr. Sarah Warren, the district chief of strategy and operations, said lawyers had recommended deleting the anonymous-reporting paragraph because anonymous complaints are harder to investigate.
Jennifer Slabink, executive director of human resources, presented informal-reporting data collected via a Google form that the district makes available to report discrimination and harassment. Slabink said the form includes a front-page notice that investigators "may not be able to investigate or respond to anonymous reports." She described fields on the form including incident type, whether the incident was discriminatory or harassment (including sexual harassment and assault), location (on- or off-campus), a free-text description, optional contact information, and demographic questions such as race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.
Slabink provided multiyear counts for reports submitted through that informal form: 33 total in 2021–22; 64 and 63 total in the following two years; for 2023–24, "a number of reports using the informal reporting tool" totaled 63 but only 11 complaints went on to formal complaint status districtwide. She said 2024–25 so far showed 29 reports with eight anonymous entries. Slabink emphasized that many matters are resolved at the school or site level and that the form does not capture reports made directly to school administrators or to HR in person.
Committee members asked whether the counts Slabink reported were student-only or included staff. Slabink offered to look for disaggregated student-versus-staff figures and said she could pull that information after the meeting.
Board member Youssra Ali asked whether removing the policy language would change the district's ability to offer the online anonymous form. Vice Chair Mickey Bondo said he was comfortable removing the anonymous-reporting language, saying he wants reports tied to identified people so investigations can proceed and responsible parties can be held accountable.
The transcript provided ends amid discussion; the committee did not record a formal vote on the policy language in the provided excerpt. The committee flagged additional review: Dr. Warren noted AC (nondiscrimination/affirmative action) had not yet been reviewed by the committee and GBEB (staff conduct with students) would receive a second look.
Next steps discussed on the record include HR supplying disaggregated data on whether reports came from students or staff, and further committee review of the redlined policy language before a recorded vote.
