In February, three white students at Lake Oswego Junior High School passed a note containing a racial slur to a black student.
It's far from the first racist incident at the suburban school district.
But something different happened this time. A few days later, hundreds of students, with the support of the school district, walked out of class and held their own rally for equity.
"Kids got up and spoke about inclusion and their own experiences including from racism, sexism and being bullied, and how they want things to change," said parent , who is multiracial. "This is junior high. I don't think the kids have been moved like that before. That's change."
Parents, students, administrators and community members I spoke to were hopeful that the schools and the community are ready for a reckoning.
Lake Oswego is now home to at least three community groups working to address equity and inclusion. In November 2016, Posadas and a group of fellow moms formed LO for Love. The women have hosted workshops, film screenings and partnered with other groups like LO Stronger Together, which held a bake sale to buy multicultural library books.
Respond to Racism has met monthly since July to discuss issues of race.
Their February meeting drew a crowd of close to 200 people. Their next gathering is 6 p.m. Monday, March 5, at Lake Oswego United Church of Christ, 1111 Country Club Road.
Attendees break up into groups focused on one of three areas -- dialogue, learning and action. I asked co-founder Willie Poinsette what action looks like, and whether part of seeing change was encouraging people of color to run for city council and school board seats.
"I would be happy to support someone, not just because it's a person of color but they need to be a person of color that can do the job," she said. "And that's me putting that requirement. I don't know that that's the requirement we put on white people, to be honest. I don't think a person of color would get that pass."
School board member Rob Wagner, who is white, decided to run for office last year after a high school newspaper article detailed the district's long history of racial incidents.
In 2005, an estimated 30 to 75 students chanted "You can't read" at an African-American player from a visiting team during a basketball game. In response, the district formed a temporary Respectful Culture Committee. The task force offered suggestions on teaching respectful behavior in its final report in 2008, but little else came from the group.
"There are these flashpoints that happen and there's an effort to draw some attention," Wagner said. But what I'm excited about is that for the first time ... I don't see people treatinglike it's an exercise of damage control."
Part of the 7,000-student district's effort to bring about permanent change is creating the position of The new hire will look at ways to bring diverse voices into school curriculum. The district reports a student population that is 75 percent white, 10 percent Asian, 7 percent multiracial and 6 percent Latino.
"This isn't something like a unit that you just do, it's a mindset of how do we incorporate that in our decision making and also the activities we do in class," said Mike Musick, who will be named interim superintendent this July.
It's going to take more training for teachers in cultural competence and the best ways to include students in discussions about diversity. Margo Sidline, a junior at Lake Oswego High School, recalls awkward moments during class discussions about Jewish history.
"Mostly in elementary school, junior high, a couple times in high school, anything kind of Jewish would come up in class and the teacher would be like, 'Hey can you help pronounce this?' or 'Can you give us some insight into this?' " she said. "In some ways I didn't mind because I've always been very proud of being Jewish, and that was always something I wanted to share. It just felt like I was being asked to share in a way that wasn't on my own terms."
Laura Jiang, an Asian American senior at Lake Oswego High School, said she was called a racial slur in middle school by someone she considered a friend. The high school has started mandatory seminars to discuss things like bullying and diversity, but so far, she hasn't found them effective.
"The way that our school has responded to events is a lot more reactionary rather than preventative or proactive," she said.
The other piece to culture change is discipline, and whether the district's response to racist acts will be seen as serious enough. Musick supports a "restorative practices" model that focuses less on mandatory punishments and more on educating the perpetrator and helping the victim.
"The downside of restorative practices is the victim doesn't always know exactly what happened to the other student and the parents don't know and we can't tell the victim exactly what happened," Musick said. "Sometimes that's a bit of a challenge, especially in harassment scenarios."
This kind of model takes trust in school administration -- and that's a challenge when some students still feel disenfranchised.
"We have created somehow this culture that says 'Yeah, you shouldn't do that, but if you do nothing is really going to happen,' " Sidline said. "That's why it keeps happening. Hopefully it will be changing now, but frankly I'm not going to hold my breath because it is really hard to change culture."
-- Samantha Swindler
@editorswindler / 503-294-4031
sswindler@oregonian.com