Whitehurst Investigation

REPORT TO THE PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS
BOARD OF EDUCATION:
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

OF THE WHITEHURST INVESTIGATION TEAM
MAY 8, 2018
Robert C. Weaver, Jr., Garvey Schubert Barer

Joy Ellis, Garvey Schubert Barer
Norm Frink
INVESTIGATION REPORT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................................1

II. TERMINOLOGY IN THIS REPORT ......................................................................12
III. INVESTIGATION METHODOLOGY ....................................................................15
IV. WHITEHURST CHRONOLOGY ..........................................................................24
V. RESPONSES TO THE BOARD’S QUESTIONS: FINDINGS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS .....................................................................................59
What notice of possible concerns about Mr. Whitehurst did the District
receive? ...................................................................................................................................60
Who received those notices, from whom did they receive them, and when
did they receive them?...........................................................................................................60
What response did the District make to each notice it received and what
was the timeline for that response?......................................................................................60
Was each of the responses adequate and, if not, why not? ................................................60
What policies, directives and procedures were in place at that time that
would have been applicable to the complaints or concerns that were
raised? .....................................................................................................................................60
Were there system failures and/or employee performance failures and, if
so, what were those failures? ................................................................................................90
Were there performance failures by external agents or representatives of
PPS? .........................................................................................................................................90
Did any PPS employee(s) fail to comply with mandatory reporting
requirements or violate any policies, laws or ethics rules? If so, who and
when? ....................................................................................................................................116
Were there any consequences for those failures? .............................................................116
Did any of those failures have licensure implications? ......................................................116
Is there any evidence that any person or group of people protected
Mr. Whitehurst? ...................................................................................................................119
Who initiated and approved Mr. Whitehurst's transfers? .................................................119
Is there any indication that District personnel used transfers as a way to
avoid taking disciplinary action? ..........................................................................................119
Was there any follow up by the administration following settlement of the
Rory Thompson matter as directed by the Board and, if not, why not? ...........................123
INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page i

What complaint and investigation procedures should the District adopt to
ensure that complaints regarding personnel and agents working on behalf
of PPS are received and acted upon promptly and appropriately? ...................................130
Do the District's recordkeeping or other procedures allow for
consideration of all prior complaints related to employee misconduct
involving students such that the District can identify any patterns of
related issues? ......................................................................................................................130
If not, what should be done to change that?......................................................................130
Are there provisions in the union contract that impact the District's ability
to adequately address complaints? .....................................................................................143
Are there other complaints about sexual misconduct by other employees
or agents of the District that have not been adequately addressed? ...............................155
Do PPS employees receive adequate training in recognizing possible
predatory behavior and how to respond appropriately? ...................................................156
VI. FORMER PPS EMPLOYEE NORMAN SCOTT ...................................................168
VII. ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS...............................................................181
VIII. SUMMARY OF ALL RECOMMENDATIONS .....................................................197
IX. ISSUES BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THE INVESTIGATION....................................199
INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page ii

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Mitchell “Mitch” Whitehurst was an educator at Portland Public Schools
(referred to in our report as PPS or the District) from 1982-2015, when he resigned
during an investigation into allegations of coworker sexual harassment. During his
career, Mr. Whitehurst allegedly engaged in sexual conduct with PPS students. He
left behind little documentation of his past conduct – in part because the conduct
was not detected by administrators in the first place, in part because the conduct
that was brought to administrators’ attention was not documented, and in part
because it was documented but then purged from Mr. Whitehurst’s files over time,
per union contract requirements. As he moved from school to school, very little
institutional knowledge of his inappropriate behavior followed him. His pattern of
sexual conduct with students went mostly undetected. And when incidents were
reported, the District gave Mr. Whitehurst the benefit of the doubt.
During this investigation, we interviewed former students who described
sexual conduct by Mr. Whitehurst that took place at varying points in his 32-year
career. We have no reason to disbelieve what any student told us; the students
came across as honest and their recollections were credible. We received multiple
INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page 1

accounts of similar behavior. We note that any time Mr. Whitehurst was ever
interviewed about his alleged sexual conduct with students, he denied it.
The most egregious allegations of misconduct involved
. This conduct was not reported to any adult
at the time. In 2008, after learning that Mr. Whitehurst was still employed by the
District, one former student (Caprice1) came forward to report the sexual conduct
that she had experienced 24 years earlier, while
at Franklin. The Human Resources (HR) Department at PPS received
notice of that complaint but failed to investigate it adequately and did not report it
to the Teacher Standards & Practices Commission (TSPC).
In 2012, after learning that Mr. Whitehurst remained employed by PPS
notwithstanding her report in 2008, the same former student again reported the
1984 incident of sexual conduct, this time to the principal of the school where Mr.
Whitehurst was a And again, PPS responded
with an inadequate investigation and no referral to the TSPC. At no time was Mr.
Whitehurst disciplined for this conduct, and it is even in dispute whether he has
ever been questioned about it.

1
Caprice gave us permission to use her first name, which is also how she is identified in
Oregonian articles. We have withheld her last name upon her request.

In 2001, a student from Marshall High School reported
unwanted sexual attention from Mr. Whitehurst
This complaint went through the proper
channels but due to an inadequate internal investigation, it was treated as a
“he-said/she-said” first-time offense in which faced with two conflicting accounts
both deemed credible, the investigator accepted Mr. Whitehurst’s explanation
that his conduct had been simply misconstrued by the student.
The behavior reported by many female students in the Faubion
in 2013 – that Mr. Whitehurst was staring at their chests and butts,
commenting on a student’s attractive figure, calling them “babe” or “baby,” and
other inappropriate behavior – was brought to the attention of the Faubion
administrators as well as the HR Department and in-house general counsel.
Inexplicably, an investigation that started out with multi-day student interviews
and typed notes reflecting first-hand accounts of students unwilling to participate
because of the way Mr. Whitehurst looked at and acted around the girls
resulted in no discipline, no documentation of the conduct in Mr. Whitehurst’s
files, and no report to the TSPC. The current and former PPS employees involved
in the investigation have pointed fingers at each other to explain why Mr.
Whitehurst was not disciplined or terminated for the conduct.

The student complaints made by Caprice,
have been thoroughly covered by the media. Our investigation
unearthed additional complaints about Mr. Whitehurst’s sexual conduct that were
also investigated by PPS – specifically, by the PPS police force that disbanded in
2001. Apparently no discipline came as a result of these investigations, either.
Although the reports were documented, when the PPS police force disbanded the
relevant records were archived and not incorporated into Mr. Whitehurst’s HR or
personnel files.
Another student complaint of ogling lodged early in Mr. Whitehurst’s career
while he was teaching PE at Sellwood Middle School was handled by the principal,
who was unaware of any past issues and attended to it with verbal counseling. The
incident was not documented.
In addition to these reports of sexual conduct, we heard from female
students at various schools where Mr. Whitehurst taught that he would “check
them out” in the school hallways and make comments about their appearance as
they went to their lockers or to class. His inappropriately flirtatious behavior made
students uncomfortable and many described him as “creepy.” School
administrators who supervised Mr. Whitehurst denied witnessing this type of
behavior. The harassing conduct was not reported, except for one time when Mr.

Whitehurst made an offensive sexual comment to a Jefferson student. The student
told her mother, who in turn confronted Mr. Whitehurst and insisted the Jefferson
administrators address it. Mr. Whitehurst was verbally counseled but the incident
was not documented.
Mr. Whitehurst resigned from PPS in the spring of 2015 during an
investigation into alleged sexual harassment of an adult male coworker at Faubion.
Through his union’s attorneys, he negotiated a resignation agreement that entitled
him to early retirement benefits and restricted the District’s ability to disclose
information regarding his employment other than basic employment information
(dates of employment, position, level of compensation, resignation).
Over the course of his three-decade career, there was very little formal or
written documentation of Mr. Whitehurst’s inappropriate conduct. What little
documentation existed did not follow him as he moved from school to school.
Central files were similarly siloed. PPS police files were stored as of 2001, when the
District hired its first HR legal counsel. She, in turn, kept her own separate paper
files on Mr. Whitehurst, apparently unaware of any existing files other than his
personnel file. The District lacked any centralized system to track an educator’s
conduct, such that Mr. Whitehurst succeeded in denying his conduct and
administrators repeatedly treated his inappropriate conduct as a one-time lapse in

judgment.
The decentralized systems at PPS, coupled with a lack of any viable
document management system or misconduct tracking system, contributed to Mr.
Whitehurst’s ability to evade discipline. Our investigation found that PPS
administrators were reluctant to issue formal discipline because it could be
challenged by the teachers’ union, Portland Association of Teachers (PAT). To
avoid the challenge by the union, administrators appeared to favor taking action
that was short of formal discipline – such as delivering a verbal warning in
response to complaint or taking the remedial step of placing a
Concordia student teacher in Mr. Whitehurst’s at Faubion. These lesser
actions did not trigger union involvement. They also did not create a record of
disciplinary action such that repeat behavior of the same or similar inappropriate
conduct would ever result in termination of the offending educator.
The decentralized system also led to a collective failure by employees who
were involved in investigations of allegations regarding sexual conduct by
Mr. Whitehurst. Complaints were inadequately addressed in part because each
person involved assumed the other persons involved would handle the issue and
see it through to completion. Accountability for these investigations and their
outcome was lacking throughout Mr. Whitehurst’s career.

The same reliance on other employees to carry out a proper investigation
appears to have permeated the request from the 2016-17 PPS Board to its
high-level administrators to conduct a “lessons learned” internal review for the
Board of how the District failed to address Mr. Whitehurst’s misconduct. Our
investigation found that the Board’s directive went unheeded, but for the interim
superintendent Bob McKean conducting an internal audit of existing policies and
training materials regarding prevention and reporting of sexual conduct. The
numerous transitions among high-level administrators during and shortly after the
2016-17 school year appear to be a significant factor in that work not being done.
Our investigation did not reveal that employees protected Mr. Whitehurst
throughout his employment or that he was moved from school to school to avoid
discipline for sexual conduct or to placate concerns thereof. Although Mr.
Whitehurst was unassigned numerous times during his career at PPS, based on the
school records and our interviews with the administrators involved in the transfers
his moves appeared to be for legitimate reasons (e.g., budget cuts or staffing
needs).
Our report includes a separate section on Norman “Norm” Scott, a former
PPS educator whose 30-plus year employment was checkered with performance
issues and allegations of sexual conduct. We found commonalities between Mr.

Scott and Mr. Whitehurst. Like Mr. Whitehurst, Mr. Scott had a reputation among
female students for being “creepy” and gave certain attractive female students
unwanted attention. Some female students complained that they were
uncomfortable around him and did not like the unwanted attention. Like Mr.
Whitehurst, many of the complaints about Mr. Scott’s inappropriate conduct were
handled with non-disciplinary verbal coaching rather than formal written discipline
that could follow him from one school to another during his lengthy teaching
career. The verbal coaching, while perhaps immediately effective, did not change
the educator’s long-term behavior.
And like Mr. Whitehurst, Mr. Scott left PPS with a resignation agreement
that restricted the District’s ability to disclose information regarding his
employment, even when contacted by other education providers pursuant to a
statute that requires a school district to disclose any substantiated reports of
sexual conduct by a former employee to an educational provider requesting this
information.
Contrary to the agreement, the District did disclose to a few educational
providers that Mr. Scott had been the subject of a substantiated report of sexual
conduct. When he learned of one such disclosure, Mr. Scott threatened to sue PPS
for breaching his resignation agreement. The District quickly entered into a second

agreement with him retracting its previous disclosure to that education provider.
Our investigation of Mr. Scott focused primarily on these post-employment
agreements.
In addition to investigating Mr. Whitehurst’s employment history, we were
tasked with making recommendations to the District. Our recommendations
attempt to address all of the shortcomings that led to the District’s failure to
recognize an educator’s sexual conduct with students, failure to investigate it
thoroughly, and failure to take action to ensure a safe educational environment by
removing the offending educator. The recommendations address complaint
procedures, investigation procedures, training, the PAT union contract, document
management, and transparency in resignation agreements.
Specifically, we make the following recommendations:
 Adopt the following procedures to investigate sexual conduct complaints

(see pages 130-142):
1. Train and require building administrators and HR Department staff

who receive complaints to document every complaint or concern of
sexual conduct and report them all to the Title IX coordinator or a
similar designee.
2. Have a specialized trained investigator with expertise in investigating

employee/student sexual conduct complaints investigate each
complaint thoroughly and fairly.

3. Have a core group of multi-disciplinary administrators (the employee’s
supervisor, HR legal counsel, Title IX coordinator, and investigator if
different from the Title IX coordinator) make credibility decisions and
agree regarding what level of discipline to impose, if any.
4. Implement a centralized tracking mechanism to document all

complaints, including their outcome.
 Work with PAT to change certain contract provisions in the District’s union
contract to adequately address sexual conduct complaints and ensure the
protection of students. Specific provisions of the PAT contract include Article
22 (Personnel Files), Article 19 (Professional Educator Rights and Just Cause),
and Article 21 (Complaint Procedure). (See pages 143-153.)
 Review and change the District’s other union contracts, as appropriate, to

adequately address sexual conduct complaints and to ensure the protection
of students. (See pages 153-154.)
 Improve the District’s sexual conduct training in the following ways (see
pages 160-167):
1. Improve the sexual conduct prevention and identification training

provided to PPS employees.
2. Require sexual conduct prevention and identification training for PPS

volunteers and contractors.

provided to PPS students.
4. Correct and update the materials regarding sexual conduct on the PPS
website.

 Exercise transparency with employee separations and do not enter into
resignation agreements that restrict the disclosure of possible sexual
conduct (see pages 182-188).
 Implement an adult/student boundaries policy (see pages 188-190).
 Lobby for changes outside the District to make Oregon safer for students
(see pages 190-193).
 Revise the administrative directive entitled “Prohibition Against Employee

Child Abuse and Sexual Conduct With Students” to clarify that the District
has cause to issue corrective action even if all four statutory elements of
sexual conduct are not met (see pages 194-195).
 Require PPS employees to check with the HR Department before providing a

reference for a former PPS employee (see page 195).
 Designate a liaison between the PPB and the District to monitor cases
involving allegations of sexual conduct by a PPS employee (see page 196).

II. TERMINOLOGY IN THIS REPORT
“Sexual conduct” as defined by the TSPC is any conduct with a student which
includes but is not limited to:
(a) The intentional touching of the breast or sexual or other

intimate parts of a student;
(b) Causing, encouraging, or permitting a student to touch the

breasts or sexual or other intimate parts of a student;
(c) Sexual advances or requests for sexual favors directed towards

a student;
(d) Verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when directed

toward a student or when such conduct has the effect of
unreasonably interfering with a student’s educational
performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive
educational environment; or
(e) Verbal or physical conduct which has the effect of unreasonably

interfering with a student’s educational performance or creates
an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational environment.
OAR 584-020-0005(5). The TSPC deems any sexual conduct with a student by an
educator to be evidence of gross neglect of duty and grounds for TSPC disciplinary
action, including suspension or revocation of the educator’s license. See OAR 584-
020-0040(4)(f). The TSPC’s standards apply to any licensed, registered or certified
person who is authorized to engage in an instructional program including teaching,

counseling, school psychology, administering, and supervising. See OAR 584-020-
0005(3).
The meaning of “sexual conduct” as defined by ORS 339.370-.400, a
statutory scheme that triggers an obligation of disclosure among education
providers, became effective in 2010 and requires a higher threshold of damaging
conduct than the TSPC standard before the statute is triggered. ORS 339.370(9)
defines “sexual conduct” as any verbal or physical or other conduct by a school
employee that is sexual in nature; directed toward a kindergarten through grade
12 student; has the effect of unreasonably interfering with a student’s educational
performance; and creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational
environment. All four elements must be met. The statutory definition for sexual
conduct does not include behavior that would be considered child abuse (and
hence, immediately reportable to local law enforcement).
The District has an administrative directive that tracks the requirements of
the statutory scheme. See AD 5.10.063-AD, “Prohibition Against Employee Child
Abuse and Sexual Conduct with Students.” This AD uses the same four-part
definition that is contained in the statute.
The District also has a policy prohibiting staff-to-student sexual harassment.
The term “sexual harassment” includes conduct, verbal or nonverbal, which

denigrates or shows hostility to a student or students by reason of their gender.
The term also includes “any attempt by action or words to establish with a student
an amorous, sexual, lascivious or lewd relationship, knowingly use lascivious or
lewd language or gestures in the presence of a student, or permitting a student to
continue acts or statements which can be reasonably perceived as attempting to
establish an amorous or sexual relationship with the staff member or volunteer.”
See PPS Board Policy 5.10.062-P.
In our report, we use the term “sexual conduct” to encompass a broad set
of comments and/or behaviors that are inappropriately sexual in nature, usually
direct toward a student by an employee. Our use of the term follows the TSPC’s
broad definition of inappropriately sexual behavior. We do not use the term as it is
defined in ORS 339.370, with all four requisite elements, except when we refer to
the statute in our report. The term “sexual conduct” is synonymous with “sexual
misconduct” for purposes of our report.

III. INVESTIGATION METHODOLOGY
On September 19, 2017, at a Special Meeting, the Portland Public School
Board of Education (the Board) defined and approved the scope of this
independent investigation and subsequently formalized it in a letter to its counsel,
Amy Joseph Pedersen. The letter called on the investigation team to answer 21
precise questions focused on why Mr. Whitehurst’s conduct had not been
adequately dealt with by PPS, the specific facts attendant to the conduct, and
recommendations for policy and procedural changes to prevent its recurrence by
another educator.
On February 2, 2018, the Board expanded the scope of the investigation to
be informed by PPS’s response to allegations raised about inappropriate conduct
by former educator Norm Scott, including post-employment actions by the District.
The investigation took over six months to complete. It consisted of over 100
witness interviews and the review of thousands of documents.
WITNESSES:
We found almost all of the past and current PPS employees that we
contacted to be cooperative and willing to participate in the investigation. The vast
majority of witnesses not only agreed to speak with us, they were entirely candid

and offered thoughtful insights into the issues under investigation. Only a handful
of witnesses declined to speak with us. In addition to live and telephonic
interviews, we received and reviewed communications sent to a dedicated email
address and confidential phone line.
Below are the individuals who were contacted or interviewed for the
investigation, as well as the witnesses who were relevant to a particular time
period but not interviewed for the reasons described:
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL, 1982-83:

Vince “Pesky” Paveskovich, vice principal (through a family member)
Larry Linne, school police officer
Did not interview:

Gust Kanas, principal (deceased)
Judith Lachenmeier (Valjean), vice principal (deceased)
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT FRANKLIN HIGH SCHOOL, 1983-84:

George Guthrie, principal
Audrey Hanes, vice principal
Cathy Schar, vice principal
Joyce Gago, front desk employee and cheerleader advisor
Larry Dashiell, teacher and speech coach
Anonymous
Anonymous
Caprice, former student (allegation of sexual conduct)
former student
former student
former student

Larry Linne, school police officer
Holly Vaughn-Edmunds, Beaumont Middle School counselor
Tammy Jackson, supervisor to Vaughn-Edmonds
Did not interview:

Frank Frangiapani, vice principal (deceased)
Jill Schroeder, direct supervisor to Whitehurst (deceased)
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT SELLWOOD MIDDLE SCHOOL, 1984-86:

John “Bill” Beck, Jr., principal
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL, 1986-1997:

Carol Matarazzo, principal
Toni Hunter, vice principal
Sandra Page, vice principal
Bruce Richards, vice principal
Bruce Plato, vice principal
John Cover, vice principal
Larry Dashiell, interim vice principal
Lowell Slick, athletic director
Anonymous
former student
former student
Did not interview:

Velma Johnson, principal (did not respond to multiple requests for interviews)
Judith Lachenmeier (Valjean), principal (deceased)
Chet Moran, vice principal (deceased)
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT SITTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, 1991-92:

James Brannon, principal

RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL, 1997-2007:
Greg Wolleck, principal
Stevie Newcomer, vice principal
John Wilhelmi, vice principal
Fred Locke, principal of Renaissance Academy of the Arts
former student
David Thoman, PPB police officer
Tom Perkins, PPB sergeant
Frank Klejmont, PPB lieutenant (2001), PPS Head of Security
Maureen Sloane, HR legal counsel
Did not interview:
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT EVENING SCHOLARS PROGRAM, 2002-06, 2008-13:

Greg Neuman, Principal
Eryn Berg, administrator
Macarre Traynahm, administrator
Kristyn Westphal, administrator
Ginger Taylor, administrator
Lynn Buedefeldt, administrator
Did not interview:

Gary Earle, administrator (could not locate)
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL, 2007-2012:

John Wilhelmi, principal
Cynthia Harris, principal
Margaret Calvert, principal
Ricky Allen, vice principal
Sheri Kammerzell, secretary to Cynthia Harris
Shannon Misner, secretary to Mitch Whitehurst
Aznegashe Yelma, coach

Ivona Whittmayer, employee in Nutritional Services Department
Cindy Shepard, employee in Custodial Department
Dennis Tune, PPS security services
Bobbie Regan, PPS Board member
Anonymous
Parent of anonymous former student #4
Loretta Benjamin-Samuels, HR performance management director
Maureen Sloane, HR legal counsel
Richard Clarke, director of HR
RELATED TO TIME PERIOD AT FAUBION SCHOOL, 2012-2015:

Jen McCalley, vice principal
Andrea Martin, counselor
Antonio Lopez, regional administrator, Jefferson and Franklin Clusters
Caprice, substitute teacher (last name withheld per her request as a former
student with allegation of sexual conduct)
former student
Frank Scotto, HR regional director
Jollee Patterson, general counsel
Jeff Fish, HR legal counsel
Siobhan Murphy, Legal Department staff
Sean Murray, chief HR officer
Stephanie Harper, HR legal counsel and interim general counsel (2016-17)
Jeanne Windham, Legal Department paralegal
Mary Elizabeth Harper, HR senior manager
DeShawn Williams, PPB school resources officer
Mike Weinstein, PPB detective
Christina Mascal, Deputy District Attorney
Did not interview:

LaShawn Lee, principal (declined to be interviewed but did provide a written
statement through her attorney)
Harriet Adair, regional administrator (declined to be interviewed)

Ken Berry, teacher (declined to be interviewed)
Rory Thompson, student management specialist (declined to be interviewed)
John Berkey, PAT Uniserv Consultant (Whitehurst’s union representative)
(declined to be interviewed but provided written input)
NOT RELATED TO A PARTICULAR SCHOOL:

Vicki Phillips, superintendent (2004-07)
Carole Smith, superintendent (2007-16)
Bob McKean, interim superintendent (2016-17)
John Payne, manager of Security Operations
Amanda Whalen, chief of staff
Sascha Perrins, interim chief of staff
Various current PPS employees (not directly related to Whitehurst
employment but interviewed for purpose of making recommendations)
Mike Rosen, PPS Board member
Pam Knowles, PPS Board member
Amy Kohnstamm, PPS Board member
Scott Bailey, PPS Board member
Tom Koehler, PPS Board member and 2016-17 chair
Julia Brim-Edwards, PPS Board member and 2017-18 chair
Kim Sordyl, parent of current PPS students
Michael Porter, Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP attorney

Naomi Haslitt, Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP attorney
Christina Edgar, TSPC investigator

Trent Danowski, TSPC deputy director
Raul Ramirez, DOJ counsel (representing TSPC)
San Francisco Unified School District HR and Legal Department staff
Did not interview:

Mitchell “Mitch” Whitehurst (declined to be interviewed)
Suzanne Cohen, PAT president (declined to be interviewed)

RELATED TO NORM SCOTT:
Frank Scotto, Sellwood principal and HR regional director
Jeff Fish, HR legal counsel
Curtis Wilson, Grant High School vice principal

Michael Porter, Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP attorney
Clackamas Education Service District staff
Oregon City School District HR Department staff
DOCUMENTS:
The District provided or attempted to provide all documents requested. We
made successful public records requests for documents from the Teacher
Standards & Practices Commission (TSPC) and the Portland Police Bureau (PPB).
The District’s outside law firm, Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP (“Miller Nash”),
also provided all the documents we requested.
Altogether we received and reviewed the following materials:
• PPS emails and attachments: 367.42 GB (378,008 files) (strategically

searched and reviewed);
• PPS documents, not including the email searches: 459 MB (49 files);
• Documents from Miller Nash: 2 GB (2,635 files);
• Other: over 850 MB (231 files) – including documents responsive to

public records requests to the TSPC, PPB, and Clackamas County DA’s
Office; documents provided by interested members of the
community; and other miscellaneously sourced documents.

LIMITATIONS TO OUR INVESTIGATION:
This investigation was not without its challenges. We attempted to look back
36 years and investigate Mr. Whitehurst’s employment at PPS starting in 1982.
Given the length of time that has passed, some witnesses had passed away. Some
witnesses’ memories of specific events had faded. Other witnesses expressed the
possibility of memory fallibility and were not sure about what they actually recalled
and what they had recently read in the media about the Whitehurst matter.
We did not have the power to compel any witnesses to speak with us (through a
subpoena, grand jury, or other mechanism). Thus, we did not have the opportunity
to interview any witnesses who told us they did not want to be interviewed or who
did not respond to our requests for an interview.
The District’s document management system (or lack thereof) made it
difficult to gather all of the documents we would have wanted to review. For
example, PPS did not have a database that could access emails created prior to
mid-2011. The only pre-mid-2011 emails that we reviewed were those that had
been printed out in hard copy and saved by the recipient. We also were
unsuccessful finding other relevant documents that had been archived in a manner
that they could not be found, such as the PPS police files that were presumably
archived in November 2001, when the PPS police force was disbanded and the PPB

took over policing the schools. Documents maintained in the Blanchard Education
Service Center (BESC) did not reside in one centralized location or in a centralized
electronic database and our requests often required extensive searching by District
personnel.
Lastly, the District’s contracts with the teacher’s union, Portland Association
of Teachers (PAT), over the years from 1982-2016 contained terms that required
the District to remove materials from Mr. Whitehurst’s personnel file and building
files. This routine practice of purging documents made it impossible to access
some critical evidence of inappropriate conduct by Mr. Whitehurst that most likely
had been placed in these files contemporaneously with the behavior. We could not
ascertain what documentation, if any, was ever placed in Mr. Whitehurst’s files.
When we received a copy of Mr. Whitehurst’s 360-page personnel record, it was
void of any discipline or other documentation of inappropriate behavior.

administrators who loosely supervise Whitehurst.
2009 Sloane retires. Jeff Fish becomes HR legal counsel.
2009 House Bill 2062 (HB 2062) passes. Oregon law (ORS 339.400,
effective July 1, 2010) requires training on identification and
prevention of sexual conduct, as well as reporting obligations, for all
school district employees. The law includes a four-part definition of
“sexual conduct.”
10/07/10
PPB investigates and concludes that the person texting the

student is not Mitch Whitehurst.
EXHIBIT 6: POLICE REPORTS
[We have no reason to dispute the outcome of the PPB’s

investigation.]
12/29/10 - Someone puts up flyers outside of Jefferson High School with a

1/2/11 photo of Whitehurst’s face and the words “Alleged Molester!”
above it. The flyer contains a phone number for the Portland Police
Bureau and alleges Whitehurst “has been violating young girls for
over 20 years in his many positions as a teacher, coach, [and]
administrator for Portland Schools. Please don’t let it continue.”
Whitehurst is notified by the custodial department of the situation.
He files a report with the PPB and insists the flyers were created
and posted by a disgruntled parent (whom he identifies by name).
Whitehurst claims that the parent was dating his former girlfriend
and was motivated to harm Whitehurst’s reputation.
EXHIBIT 7: “ALLEGED MOLESTER!” FLYER
EXHIBIT 8: POLICE REPORT

that is not identified. The notice cc’s Loretta Benjamin-Samuels,
Frank Scotto, and the Building File.
EXHIBIT 15: INVESTIGATORY NOTICE TO WHITEHURST
1/10/13 McCalley makes notes in her personal notebook for follow-up steps
(note this precedes any investigatory interview with Whitehurst):
• 6-week student teacher – female

•
• resolving rumors
1/11/13 Lee and McCalley provide written notice to Whitehurst and his
union representative, John Berkey, of an investigatory meeting
scheduled to take place on 1/15.
EXHIBIT 16: MEETING NOTICE TO WHITEHURST
1/14/13 Berkey informs Lee and McCalley that he is unavailable 1/15-18 and
requests that they reschedule the investigatory meeting the
following week, 1/22-25.
1/15/13 McCalley emails Scotto:

“Hi Frank, Since there wasn’t a huge finding on Mitch, do I still need
to make a matrix? I have all the answers from the kids. Thanks, Jen”
Scotto responds to McCalley: “No need for matrix, Frank”
McCalley replies to Scotto: “Great!”
EXHIBIT 17: EMAIL EXCHANGE BETWEEN McCALLEY AND SCOTTO

A “matrix” refers to a chart that HR recommended for multi-student
interviews; the matrix could show a pattern (if any) of the students’
answers to the same questions.
Scotto’s and McCalley’s respective recollections of their involvement
in the investigation conflict. Lee and McCalley both contend that HR
(meaning Scotto) made the determination that there was not

Faubion’s dumpster, it is theft of services and it is illegal. Lee
appears reticent to follow up with Whitehurst.
3/5/14 Whitehurst attends an investigatory meeting regarding the

dumpsters with his union rep (Berkey), Scotto and Lee.
8/6/14 Whitehurst contacts the vice principal of Roosevelt High School

regarding an open position for the Dean of Students and Athletic
Director. He expresses a desire to interview for the position.
Apparently he is not offered the job.
8/26/14 First day back at school for Faubion staff. Whitehurst hits a
coworker on his bottom and is verbally reprimanded by Lee. Lee
reports this incident to HR senior manager Mary Elizabeth Harper,
but Lee does not discipline Whitehurst or document the incident in
his file with a non-disciplinary letter of expectation or other
documentation.
9/25/14 Whitehurst strikes Faubion coworker Rory Thompson on the seat of

his pants, possibly penetrating the area of his anus.
9/26/14 Thompson complains to principal Lee and vice principal McCalley

that Whitehurst made unwelcome physical contact. Whitehurst is
put on paid administrative leave.
9/27/14 PPB detective Weinstein interviews McCalley and is told of past

allegations of sexual conduct (Faubion-based and her second-hand
understanding of events that pre-date Whitehurst’s employment at
Faubion). Weinstein also interviews Lee, who mentions Caprice’s
report to her in 2012 about Whitehurst’s sexual conduct in 1984

conduct with students as a PPS employee.

V. RESPONSES TO THE BOARD’S QUESTIONS:
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

What notice of possible concerns about Mr. Whitehurst did the District receive?
Who received those notices, from whom did they receive them, and when did they
receive them?
What response did the District make to each notice it received and what was the
timeline for that response?
Was each of the responses adequate and, if not, why not?
What policies, directives and procedures were in place at that time that would have
been applicable to the complaints or concerns that were raised?
The District received notice of concerns about Mitch Whitehurst’s
inappropriate behavior with female students on at least eight separate occasions:
1. 1983-84: POSSIBLE COMPLAINT FROM PARENT TO FRANKLIN VICE

PRINCIPAL2
During the 1983-84 school year, Franklin High School vice principal Frank
Frangiapani fielded a complaint from a . Specifically, a
informed Mr. Frangiapani
Mr. Frangiapani notified the PPS police, which was the correct procedure at
the time (the PPS police conducted the District’s personnel investigations until
2
Note that this concern was recalled by former PPS Officer Larry Linne and we have not been
able to find additional evidence to corroborate it. Mr. Frangiapani is deceased. The PPS police
records have either been destroyed or archived in such a manner that they cannot be located,
despite repeated attempts.

November 2001). PPS police officer Larry Linne interviewed Mr. Whitehurst with a
union rep present. Mr. Whitehurst denied having any students at his residence.
Officer Linne wrote up his report and placed it in the PPS police record system.
There is no evidence that any disciplinary action was taken, and there is no
record of this concern in Whitehurst’s existing personnel records. Without more
evidence, we cannot assess the timeline for the response or assess whether the
response was adequate.
2. 1984-86: COMPLAINT FROM STUDENT TO SELLWOOD PRINCIPAL
During either the 1984-85 or 1985-86 school year, three students came to
Sellwood Middle School principal John “Bill” Beck Jr. to complain that
Mr. Whitehurst was looking at girls’ chests during PE class.
Mr. Beck directed the Sellwood Middle School student management
specialist (Dale Smith) to interview the three girls. Mr. Smith determined that one
girl in particular felt uncomfortable that Whitehurst was looking at girls’ chests and
told the other two.
Mr. Beck verbally counseled Mr. Whitehurst not to look at girls’ chests in PE
class. Mr. Whitehurst was very professional when he was counseled. He offered an
explanation along the lines of having looked at something on a girl’s t-shirt and did

not deny the conduct. Mr. Beck did not think this one complaint was serious
enough to document or to report to the TSPC or the District. After this complaint,
Mr. Beck did not receive any other complaints about Mr. Whitehurst’s behavior.
At the time, this response appeared to be adequate. In hindsight, it would
have been better had Mr. Beck documented the concern and reported it to the
PPS police (which conducted personnel investigations at the time) or to the HR
Department so the District had a record of the concern. We are unaware of any
policy, directive or procedure that obligated Mr. Beck to report the concern up the
chain – and out of the building – rather than handle it internally. Administrators
were free to exercise their own discretion regarding concerns of this kind.
3. 1997-2000: POSSIBLE COMPLAINT FROM MARSHALL STUDENT
Sometime between school years 1997-98 and 1999-2000, PPS officer
George Weatheroy responded to a complaint from a Marshall student about
inappropriate comments by Mr. Whitehurst.
Officer Weatheroy took the initial complaint, wrote up his report and placed it in
the PPS police record system. 3
3
Officer Weatheroy does not believe he interviewed Mr. Whitehurst, although another officer
may have, and he now cannot recall the outcome of the investigation. We have not been able to

There is no evidence that any disciplinary action was taken, and there is no
record of this concern in Whitehurst’s existing personnel records. Without more
evidence, we cannot assess the timeline for the response or assess whether the
response was adequate.
4. NOVEMBER 2001: COMPLAINT FROM STUDENT TO MARSHALL

ADMINISTRATORS
In November 2001,
The PPB had very recently replaced the PPS police force and, unlike
their predecessors, did not have the responsibility of conducting personnel
find additional evidence to corroborate Officer Weatheroy’s recollection or learn additional

details of the incident. The PPS police records have either been destroyed or archived in such a
manner that they cannot be located, despite repeated attempts.

investigations. PPB Officers and
determined that the complaint should be handled as a personnel matter because it
did not constitute criminal behavior. Ms. Newcomer provided
to principal Greg Wolleck and HR legal counsel Maureen Sloane for
further investigation.
Ms. Sloane interviewed Mr. Whitehurst, who denied the allegations. He
offered various explanations for his conduct, explaining to her
. Ms. Sloane reviewed Mr. Whitehurst’s personnel
file, which had no documentation of any past inappropriate conduct.
Mr. Wolleck recalls being told by Ms. Sloane that the most they could do is
put a memo in the file describing the situation since
Mr. Whitehurst’s record was clean of past misconduct and
Mr. Wolleck wanted
something in writing in the file, lest this conduct ever re-occur.
Ms. Sloane and Mr. Wolleck delivered a memo to Whitehurst. The memo
stated, in part:
Both and your denial are credible. The District

has interviewed and reviewed your entire
employment record at [PPS]. Other than the complaint itself, there
was no additional evidence that you engaged in any inappropriate
behavior toward . . . . l know that the

complaint disturbed you greatly and believe that in the future you will
be extremely cautious and will try to avoid any similar situations. If I
can be of any additional assistance, please let me know.
but this is not reflected in the memo.
.4 This is also not reflected in the memo.
Ms. Sloane reported the possible inappropriate behavior to the TSPC on
December 7, some 30 days after Mr. Whitehurst’s interview. The TSPC closed the
case five months later without taking action.
This investigation from start to finish was completed in seven calendar days.
on
November 1, and Mr. Whitehurst was more or less cleared and returned to work
on November 8.
The response to complaint was not adequate. Ms. Sloane
apparently did not review the school police records on Mr. Whitehurst. Ms. Sloane
did not conduct or
Mr. Whitehurst’s explanations that contradicted her written statement. Ms. Sloane
did not consult Ms. Newcomer, who was left out of the investigation after
4
This is Ms. Newcomer’s recollection. We were not able to corroborate this with additional
evidence.

the police. Ms. Newcomer could have refuted some of
Mr. Whitehurst’s explanations and could have vouched for
. There is no evidence anyone interviewed
Mr. Whitehurst’s , though it is possible that did happen.
Ms. Sloane is certain she did not, and Mr. Wolleck and Ms. Newcomer have no
memory of doing so; however, Ms. Sloane does not believe this would be included
in the memo unless interviews had taken place.5 No one interviewed the
counseling secretary whose desk faced Mr. Whitehurst’s office to see if she had
any information or could confirm or refute Mr. Whitehurst’s explanations. In short,
it appears the investigation ended after Ms. Sloane’s interview of Mr. Whitehurst
and her review of his personnel file.
Additionally,
As Ms. Sloane acknowledged during our investigation, she could have done
more to investigate this complaint and, provided she found more evidence,
document the concerns as formal discipline that would have gone into and
remained in the personnel file. When interviewed, she could not remember this
5
Had anyone interviewed

complaint in any detail, and she had no explanation for not diligently investigating
it. To her credit, in our interview Ms. Sloane took full responsibility for the
shortcomings of the investigation and was quite candid and apologetic about her
role.
The District followed the correct process for a complaint when the Marshall
administrators notified the police as well as HR legal counsel about the concerns
brought to their attention by a student. Board Policy 5.10.062-P, “Sexual
Harassment – Staff to Student,” in place since 1994, states in part:
Staff or volunteers becoming aware of a violation of this section shall

report the information to the principal. Principals shall immediately
report to the school police for investigation [sic] every such incident,
which comes to their attention. If staff or volunteers by action or
words have attempted to establish with a student an amorous, sexual,
lascivious or lewd relationship or permitted a student to continue to
pursue such a relationship, it shall be clear grounds for dismissal, and
a copy of the school police report documenting the circumstances shall
be referred to the [TSPC] and the Personnel Office for appropriate
action.
Unfortunately, after the PPB determined that the complaint did not rise to
the level of criminal behavior (incorrectly, we believe; see pages 110-12) and
passed it on as a personnel matter, the complaint was not pursued in a manner
that ferreted out enough evidence to find that misconduct had occurred.
Ms. Sloane determined that she did not have sufficient evidence to proceed with

formal discipline beyond writing a memorandum putting Mr. Whitehurst on notice
that his explanation had been credible and that it was possible that the student
had misconstrued his intent. Had the investigation established additional evidence
of misconduct, there may have been clear grounds to dismiss Mr. Whitehurst in
2001.
5. JANUARY 2008: BELATED COMPLAINT FROM FRANKLIN ’84 STUDENT TO

HR/LEGAL DEPARTMENTS
In January 2008, a Franklin graduate of the Class of ’84 named Caprice (last
name withheld upon her request) was surprised to learn that Mr. Whitehurst was
still employed by PPS and working at Jefferson. She thought he had been
terminated in the 1980’s for inappropriate behavior with female students. She
consulted a couple of PPS employees (counselor Holly Vaughn-Edmunds and
Franklin cheerleader advisor Joyce Gago) about her offensive and frightening
experience with Mr. Whitehurst. Ms. Gago told her it was not too late to report the
conduct and encouraged her to contact the District. Ms. Vaughn-Edmunds relayed
the report to her supervisor (Tammy Jackson), who took the report and shortly

afterwards told Ms. Vaughn-Edmunds that the matter was being handled by
HR/Legal.6
Caprice went to the District HR Office, where she first spoke briefly to
Loretta Benjamin-Samuels, the HR performance manager for the Jefferson cluster.
Ms. Benjamin-Samuels referred her to HR legal counsel Maureen Sloane. Caprice
told Ms. Sloane that Mr. Whitehurst
. Ms. Sloane took notes of her
interview with Caprice.
Ms. Sloane then confirmed that Caprice was a student at Franklin High
School in 1983-84, the school year Mr. Whitehurst worked there. She also checked
her files and found that Mr. Whitehurst had been accused in 2001 of
Ms. Sloane wrote a memo to her own file which documented her meeting
with Caprice, her limited research, and the decision that she would take no further
6
Ms. Jackson did not recall her involvement in Caprice’s report in 2008, but she has no reason to
dispute Ms. Vaughn-Edmunds’s recollection.

action. At the bottom of the typed memo, in handwriting, she noted, “[HR
Director] Richard Clarke agreed.”
This response was not adequate. At the time she learned of this complaint,
Ms. Sloane was aware of the
Ms. Sloane did not contact
and she did not do any additional fact-finding. She did not contact any prior
administrators at Franklin or any current administrators at Jefferson, or even
interview Mr. Whitehurst to see if he denied the allegations and if so, whether he
was credible. Ms. Sloane did not report the conduct to the TSPC, and did not
follow up with Caprice to apprise her of her investigation. By her own admission in
our interview, Ms. Sloane could have done more to respond to this complaint.
Skeptical that Ms. Sloane would take any action, Caprice also spoke to
Cynthia Harris, the principal at Jefferson. She was allegedly rebuffed by Dr. Harris,
who told her that if the HR Department was already informed of the issue, then
the school did not need to do anything more about it. Dr. Harris denies that she
ever had a conversation with Caprice. However, she does recall that her secretary
once took a call from someone who said they had “information regarding Mitch
Whitehurst.” Dr. Harris directed the secretary to tell that caller to contact the

District’s Legal Department, and did not ever learn the substance of the caller’s
information.
If Caprice did speak with Dr. Harris, Dr. Harris’s response was also
inadequate. She may have followed proper procedure to ensure that the matter
was reported to the HR/Legal Department, but she was not receptive and
supportive of the complaint that was brought to her attention and she too did not
follow up with Caprice.
6. 2008-09: COMPLAINT BY PARENT TO JEFFERSON ADMINISTRATOR
Sometime during the 2008-09 school year, a Jefferson High School parent
complained that Mr. Whitehurst had said something inappropriate to her daughter
that was sexual in nature. The student had been eating grapes outside
Mr. Whitehurst’s office, and he made a lewd comment about how she was eating
them. The parent first confronted Mr. Whitehurst and then reported him to the
Jefferson administration, possibly principal Cynthia Harris.
Vice principal Ricky Allen verbally counseled Mr. Whitehurst about the
harassing conduct. Mr. Allen did not think this complaint was serious enough to

document or report to the District. 7 He did not field any complaints regarding
Mr. Whitehurst’s behavior with female students other than this one complaint.
Without more information, we cannot assess the timeline of the response.
At the time, this response appeared to be adequate. In hindsight, it would
have been better had Mr. Allen documented the concern and reported it to the HR
Department so the District had a record of the concern and had enough
information to discern a pattern of inappropriate behavior. We are unaware of any
policy, directive or procedure that obligated Mr. Allen to report the concern up the
chain – and out of the building – rather than handle it internally. Administrators
were free to exercise their own discretion regarding concerns of this kind.
7. DECEMBER 2012: RENEWED COMPLAINT BY FRANKLIN ’84 STUDENT
On December 12, 2012, Caprice (the Franklin ’84 graduate) worked as a
substitute teacher at the Faubion School. Upon learning that Mr. Whitehurst was
teaching there, she went immediately to principal LaShawn Lee to tell her of his
inappropriate sexual conduct when she in
1984. She also told Ms. Lee that certain Faubion education assistants (EAs) felt they
were being sexually harassed by Whitehurst. Ms. Lee conferred with her former
7
Mr. Allen’s recollection is that Mr. Whitehurst’s comment related to something the student
was wearing.

supervisor and regional administrator, Harriet Adair, who then contacted HR legal
counsel Jeff Fish and asked him to speak with Ms. Lee.
Mr. Fish called Ms. Lee.
Officer Williams contacted Caprice, and they spoke for 15 minutes. She was upset
by their conversation and became concerned about retaliation by Whitehurst if he
learned she had spoken up about him. 8 She followed up with Ms. Lee shortly
thereafter about this concern.
Mr. Fish also
8
Officer Williams does not recall the substance of his conversation with Caprice but believes he
would have followed his normal protocols. He did not document the substance of the call or
engage in any official follow-up that he now recalls.

Winter break was just starting and
Ms. Patterson was about to take a pre-planned vacation; she offered to call into a
meeting the following day or to meet in person as soon as she returned in January.
The issue was dormant over the break. In early January, however, a different
complaint about Mr. Whitehurst —reports of him ogling Faubion girls and
engaging in other inappropriate behavior – appeared to stall a
thorough response by HR/Legal to the December concerns raised by Caprice.
The initial response to this complaint was prompt and started as an effective
response to a serious complaint. Contacting the SRO fulfilled the District’s
reporting obligations, if any. Because
, the District did not have an obligation to contact
Child Protective Services (CPS) and make a mandatory report. Apprising the chief
HR officer and general counsel of the concerns in a detailed email was appropriate
for the HR legal counsel who was leaving PPS and would not be able to investigate
the concerns himself. Ms. Murphy’s response to dig into Mr. Whitehurst’s past and
pull up files from off-site storage was also a step towards handling this complaint
in a responsible manner.

But after the winter break, apparently nothing happened; the District’s
response simply stopped. We could not determine why the complaint was not
pursued, and surmise it was because of the new information that the Faubion
administration brought to HR/Legal’s attention the first week of January that took
any investigation of Mr. Whitehurst’s conduct in a new direction.
Whatever the reason, the response was not adequate. No one contacted the
TSPC to report the allegations from 1984. It is possible that either principal Lee or
vice principal McCalley spoke to Mr. Whitehurst about using the terms “Baby” and
“Girl” when speaking to the EAs (at various points in time, they have each claimed
to have spoken to him about this issue), but neither administrator documented
this conversation. There is no evidence that anyone ever questioned
Mr. Whitehurst in 2012 or 2013 about his past conduct in 1984, although it is
possible that Ms. Lee had an undocumented conversation in which she asked him
about the allegations and he denied them.9 And there is no evidence that the HR
or Legal Departments followed up to confirm that the concerns raised in December

9
When interviewed by Miller Nash attorneys in September 2015,
In a statement written in late 2017,

however, Ms. Lee makes no mention of any such conversation and states, “In regards to the
investigation of Mr. Whitehurst about the substitute teacher and the pedophile posters, I do not
have any information from the district on how these matters were resolved.” Ms. Lee also notes
in her statement that she contacted CPS, though she does not say what she reported. CPS would
not confirm or deny this contact due to confidentiality rules.

2012 had been adequately addressed.
Finally, no one followed up with Caprice, formally or informally, to let her
know the outcome of the investigation, as one was never completed. By this time,
the District had an administrative directive (5.10.063-AD) entitled, “Prohibition
Against Employee Child Abuse and Sexual Conduct With Students.” This AD fulfills
the policy requirements of HB 2062, the educator sexual conduct statutory scheme
passed in 2009. The AD provides, “The Human Resources’ Legal counsel must
provide notification to the person who made the report about the actions taken by
the district based on the report.” As of December 15, 2012, there was no HR legal
counsel at the District who could follow up with Caprice and provide notification
about the actions taken – or more accurately, not taken – by the District. The HR
legal counsel position was vacant from December 15, 2012 until March 2013. It
appears during the vacancy the District did not have a stopgap in place to provide
notice to a reporter of sexual conduct, per the AD.
8. JANUARY 2013: COMPLAINTS BY FEMALE STUDENTS IN FAUBION
In early January 2013, spoke to Faubion counselor Andrea

Martin about Mr. Whitehurst’s conduct . 10 Ms. Martin informed
vice principal Jen McCalley and principal LaShawn Lee. Ms. McCalley and Ms. Lee in
turn contacted general counsel Jollee Patterson and HR regional director Frank
Scotto, who had not been involved in the December 2012 complaint from Caprice
regarding Mr. Whitehurst. The Faubion administrators sent Ms. Patterson and
Mr. Scotto the
Ms. Patterson and Mr. Scotto, and perhaps other HR/Legal staff,
10
In our interviews with Ms. McCalley, she recalled Mr. Whitehurst brought the issue
to her attention, and this was what kicked off the interviews. She did not
mention the complaint brought to her attention . Based
on notes of Ms. McCalley’s interview with Miller Nash attorneys in 2015, however,

,11
. Mr. Scotto assisted the Faubion administrators with
preparing the interview questions, but everyone agreed that given the sensitive
nature of the questions, the girls should be interviewed by Ms. McCalley, not
Mr. Scotto, with Ms. Martin also in attendance. The interviews were conducted
within one week of receiving the initial concerns.
What happened next in the investigation is not clear. The witnesses have
given conflicting accounts:
Frank Scotto’s account:
Mr. Scotto told us that after the initial consultation with HR and general
counsel, he deferred to Ms. McCalley and Ms. Lee to conduct the investigation and
11
The Penn State scandal refers to a child sex abuse scandal in which Jerry Sandusky, an
assistant coach for the Penn State football team, engaged in sexual abuse of children over a
period of at least 15 years between 1994 and 2009. Sandusky had located and groomed victims
through his charity organization. Sandusky was convicted of sex abuse. High-level administrators
at Penn State pled guilty to endangering the welfare of children by covering up for Mr. Sandusky
and failing to notify law enforcement after learning of some of the incidents.

consult with him as needed. He received a general account
interviews via email with Ms. McCalley, who asked him by email on January 15
whether she still had to create a matrix since there was “no huge finding” from her
interviews. (A matrix was a chart of the students’ answers that would have shown
the information in a graphical form, making it easy to compare the students’
various responses to the allegations and detect a pattern.) Relying on
Ms. McCalley’s characterization of the interviews, he told her there was no need
for a matrix. 12
He expected to be involved in the upcoming investigatory interview of
Mr. Whitehurst. The interview was scheduled for January 15 but then cancelled on
January 14 because the union rep could not attend.
Mr. Scotto emailed Ms. Lee on January 18 to ask if the meeting had been
rescheduled. On January 20, Ms. Lee emailed Mr. Scotto and told him she and
Ms. McCalley had met with Mr. Whitehurst on January 18 and based on the
information they had gathered, “this was probably a middle school rumor.” 13
12
Mr. Scotto reviewed Ms. McCalley’s typed interview notes at our interview, denied ever seeing
them before, and indicated that a matrix would have been helpful and appropriate.
13

Mr. Scotto deferred to Ms. Lee’s judgment and assumed the investigation was over
and there was no need for him to do anything further. Mr. Scotto considered
Ms. McCalley and Ms. Lee capable administrators who knew how to conduct an
investigation, and he had no reason to question their judgment. He did not follow
up and ask for the notes of the meeting mentioned in Ms. Lee’s January 20 email.
Nor did he review the typed responses Ms. McCalley prepared from her interviews
of students .
Jen McCalley’s account:
Ms. McCalley gave us inconsistent accounts about the investigation. We
interviewed Ms. McCalley early on in our investigation, before we had the benefit
of reviewing any PPS emails. (She had been eager to meet with us, and we
explained that we might need to re-interview her later after we reviewed relevant
documents.)14 At this early interview, she told us that she and Ms. Lee had wanted
to get Mr. Whitehurst out of Faubion but
14
On September 21, 2017, two days after the Board voted to commission the investigation,
Ms. McCalley emailed, “I would like to be interviewed regarding this case as soon as possible.”
We therefore accommodated her request.

She recalled for us an investigatory interview she attended with Ms. Lee,
Mr. Scotto, Mr. Whitehurst, and Mr. Whitehurst’s union representative, John
Berkey. She recalled that she and Ms. Lee were frustrated during that meeting that
the union representative characterized the complaints as rumors. Because of this,
they could not move forward with discipline or get Mr. Whitehurst out of the
building. She told us they were disappointed that the most they could do at that
meeting was tell Mr. Whitehurst to keep his eyes above the girls’ shoulders, which
seemed ridiculous to Ms. McCalley given the seriousness of the complaints.
We received and reviewed PPS emails a short time after Ms. McCalley’s
interview. We found her story to be inconsistent with multiple email
communications sent or received by Ms. McCalley and Ms. Lee at the time of the
investigation. These emails were not included in the large binder of documents
that Ms. McCalley brought to her first interview. We therefore requested that she
return for another interview. 15
At the second interview, we presented Ms. McCalley with the emails that
contradicted her previous account – specifically, the January 15 “matrix” email
exchange with Mr. Scotto and the January 20 email from Ms. Lee to Mr. Scotto
15
Were it not for Ms. McCalley’s representations in her first half-day interview, we would not
have needed to re-interview her. However, we wanted to give Ms. McCalley an opportunity to
read the emails that plainly contradicted her original account and see if the emails affected her
recollection, which they did.

informing him she and Ms. McCalley had met with Mr. Whitehurst (without
Mr. Scotto or the union rep) and characterizing the complaints as “probably a
middle school rumor.”
Ms. McCalley acknowledged she must have been mistaken about her
previous recollections and acknowledged that the conclusion that the complaints
were based on a “rumor” must have come from Ms. Lee, not HR/Legal. (We did
not find any email communication from Mr. Scotto or Ms. Patterson that ever
characterized the complaints as “rumors.”) Furthermore, she acknowledged there
must not have been an investigatory meeting with Mr. Scotto or Mr. Whitehurst’s
union representative in attendance. One had only been scheduled and then
cancelled. When shown Ms. Lee’s January 20 email about the meeting with
Mr. Whitehurst which Ms. McCalley purportedly attended with her, Ms. McCalley
could not recall attending any meeting on January 18 with Ms. Lee and
Mr. Whitehurst, nor did she recall taking notes at any such meeting. At and after
our interview, she searched her laptop and notebooks and did not find any notes
of the meeting. Ms. McCalley’s consistent practice is to take notes if she attends a
meeting such as this one.
By the end of her second interview, Ms. McCalley was confident that she
had not been in any such meeting, but she could not explain why Ms. Lee had

incorrectly informed Mr. Scotto that she attended the meeting and took notes if
this had not actually happened. She maintained that she still had a recollection of
Ms. Lee telling Mr. Whitehurst to keep his eyes above the girls’ shoulders.
However, she was no longer sure where or when Ms. Lee gave that directive.
LaShawn Lee’s account:
Ms. Lee declined to be interviewed for this investigation. Through her
attorney, we received a written statement she created in November or December
2017. In this statement, Ms. Lee criticized HR/Legal for not putting Mr. Whitehurst
on paid leave during the investigation and for not authorizing her to discipline
Mr. Whitehurst. She contended that HR/Legal told her that
16
She also contended that her brief meeting with
Mr. Whitehurst on January 18, 2013, was not intended to be an investigatory
interview and was merely a side conversation about one student in particular with
whom she was concerned of grooming behavior by Mr. Whitehurst.
16

She did not mention to the Miller Nash attorneys, however, that the District
ever prevented her from disciplining Mr. Whitehurst.
. 17
17
Mr. Whitehurst also did not agree to be interviewed

or answer written questions about this time period at Faubion, so we were unable to get his
account of .

contradict the
email she sent to Mr. Scotto on January 20, 2013, letting him know that she and
Ms. McCalley had already met with Mr. Whitehurst (implying there was no need to
reschedule a meeting with Mr. Scotto in attendance) and it was “probably a middle
school rumor” but they would “keep a sharp eye on him.”
Because Ms. Lee would not speak with us, we were unable to ask her about
the inconsistencies in her various statements about her meeting with
Mr. Whitehurst.
Regardless of the inconsistent versions of the meeting between Ms. Lee,
Mr. Whitehurst, and possibly Ms. McCalley on January 18, and regardless of
Mr. Scotto’s involvement or lack thereof, one thing is clear: the investigation
ended on or about January 18. No one took formal action and nothing was ever
documented in Mr. Whitehurst’s files.
Ms. Lee and Ms. McCalley recall that they took non-disciplinary steps at
Faubion to prevent harm to the female students, including hiring a student teacher
from Concordia , 18
18
We were unable to confirm that a Concordia University student teacher was placed
PPS records did not disclose one way or the other whether there
was a student teacher in the class and if so for how long, so we could not confirm this remedial
action occurred. We did not seek records from Concordia University.

away from Mr. Whitehurst’s office, and dropping in on his classes on
random occasions. They also asked Ms. Martin and Mr. Thompson to keep an eye
on Mr. Whitehurst and let them know if they saw anything inappropriate. These
steps may have been helpful to stop further inappropriate behavior. Faubion did
not receive any additional complaints about Mr. Whitehurst’s inappropriate
conduct with students.
Overall, the response to the complaints was inadequate. To the extent
Caprice’s allegations were going to be wrapped into an investigatory interview with
the allegations , this never happened. In fact, according to
Ms. Lee’s recent written statement, no investigatory interview ever happened, and
she expected one to be re-set (although her email to Mr. Scotto on January 20,
2013, implied that the matter had been handled and there was no need for any
follow-up with Mr. Whitehurst). At no time did Ms. Lee or Ms. McCalley follow-up
with Mr. Scotto to re-set the investigatory interview.
Meanwhile, Mr. Scotto did not follow-up to ask why he had not received the
notes Ms. Lee told him Ms. McCalley would send him in her January 20 email; he
simply considered the matter closed.
Ms. Patterson never checked back in with Ms. Lee or Ms. McCalley, although
she told them on January 7 that

Instead, Ms. Patterson deferred to Mr. Scotto to offer any
support the Faubion administrators needed. She believed it was her function as
general counsel to see the matter was handled by the HR Department, not to
attempt to manage it herself. The District’s Legal Department did not have an HR
legal counsel in January 2013, and Ms. Patterson did not assume that role during
the vacancy. In fact, she had very little labor and employment law experience.
Ms. Patterson believed these administrators were capable of investigating
the conduct, and Mr. Scotto was on deck to help them. It was not unusual for
building administrators to run their own investigation and check in with HR/Legal
on an as-needed basis. Both Ms. McCalley and Ms. Lee had excellent reputations
as capable administrators who advocated for their school and who were adept at
doing their own investigations. In hindsight, the deference given them by the HR
and Legal Departments was a poor decision, and both departments should have
done more to stay involved in the investigation.
The investigation fell short in large part because Mr. Whitehurst was not
interviewed fully and comprehensively about the various allegations of
inappropriate behavior. Consequently, he did not have an opportunity to be
confronted with the evidence and given a chance to respond. And the District, in
turn, did not follow through and issue the discipline that the evidence appeared to

warrant.
Ms. McCalley’s typed interview notes of the 23 separate interviews is a
voluminous stack of responses with first-hand accounts of inappropriate behavior
by Mr. Whitehurst. This information was apparently not shared with the HR or
Legal Departments. 19 Ms. McCalley believes she did share it with Mr. Scotto,
perhaps in person when he visited Faubion. However, Mr. Scotto is confident he
never saw the responses. The email exchange between Ms. McCalley and
Mr. Scotto about whether she has to do a matrix (“I have all the answers from the
kids”) supports Mr. Scotto’s recollection that he never saw the responses.20
Without giving Mr. Whitehurst an opportunity to respond to specific
allegations, there was little chance to formally reprimand him. Had a proper
investigatory interview been conducted, in which Mr. Whitehurst was questioned
in detail about the allegations, preferably with Mr. Scotto and Mr. Whitehurst’s
union representative present, then formal discipline would have been an option,
presuming the evidence continued to support a formal reprimand.
19
Ms. Patterson reviewed Ms. McCalley’s typed interview notes at our interview and credibly
denied ever seeing them before.
20
Three other employees from the HR/Legal Departments –

Alternatively, if there was not enough evidence for a formal reprimand, Ms.
Lee or Ms. McCalley could have written a non-disciplinary letter of expectation
setting forth the District’s standards for appropriate behavior. In either case, there
would have been documentation of the issue in Mr. Whitehurst’s file. No such
documentation was ever prepared. The response was additionally inadequate in
that apparently no one followed up with the students who had complained to let
them know the outcome of the investigation.

Were there system failures and/or employee performance failures and, if so, what
were those failures?
Were there performance failures by external agents or representatives of PPS?
System failures and employee performance failures alike occurred in the
history of Mr. Whitehurst’s employment. System failures contributed to the
perpetuation of Mr. Whitehurst’s employment far more than any one employee’s
performance failure. Multiple systemic factors also most likely contributed to the
employees’ performance failures. The failures appear to be intertwined.
SYSTEM FAILURES:
1. Incomplete documentation of all allegations of sexual conduct
PPS is a relatively decentralized school system. One witness compared PPS
to a fleet of some 80 ships, one for each school: in September, they all head out to
sea and in June, they return home to dry dock. This image is helpful to point out a
weakness in any decentralized system like this one; when the administrators at
each school are expected to exercise their professional judgment regarding
personnel issues involving the educators in their building, there is no way for the
District to track an educator’s inappropriate behavior. The District cannot detect a
pattern, especially when the educator moves from school to school over the

course of that educator’s career, as Mr. Whitehurst did. In other words, the District
cannot connect all the dots.
During Mr. Whitehurst’s employment, school administrators were relatively
free to handle issues brought to their attention in the manner they deemed
appropriate, with a few caveats. If an administrator wanted to put the employee
on leave, they needed HR approval. If an administrator wanted to pursue a formal
reprimand, they typically partnered with HR to do that. But if an administrator
believed a matter was not worthy of formal reprimand and could be handled
internally, they simply went ahead and handled it. This is not necessarily a flawed
process.
However, this process results in significantly less discipline and less
documentation than is warranted – especially for a school district seeking to
prevent harm to students and remove educators who engage in sexual conduct.
The only documentation of an incident handled internally, if any, is often in the
building file, which is currently a transient file that does not get passed on to
subsequent supervisors. When building administrators repeatedly assume that a
harassing comment or inappropriate ogling of students’ bodies is a first-time
offense and hence does not warrant written documentation or formal discipline,
the District is unable to track prior inappropriate behavior and detect a pattern of

repeated sexual conduct. In short, the District misses an opportunity to protect its
students from future harm.
2. Under-reporting of misconduct, chiefly to avoid union involvement
A related systemic failure is the chronic under-reporting of sexual conduct.
Many witnesses shared with us that there is a clear discomfort by many building
administrators when it comes to managing any type of misconduct, but especially
sexual conduct. This discomfort leads to avoidance or lack of follow-through.
Specifically, the administrators try to manage the behavior in a way that does not
result in a formal reprimand, which would require them to “go the union route,” as
one administrator put it. Not wanting to deal with the union (PAT) appears to be a
major factor in the under-reporting of misconduct.
Administrators appear to be wary of engaging in formal discipline when it
means facing down the teachers’ union. Some administrators expressed a fear of
retaliation by the union and its members. Other administrators voiced fatigue
from trying to manage an educator using the formal disciplinary process only
historically to have HR, in-house legal counsel, or the Board push back on the
reprimand and contend the offending behavior should not result in discipline or
termination. Building administrators also expressed the feeling they were

disheartened to see the discipline grieved and reversed in a settlement or
arbitration decision.
Meanwhile, individuals in the HR Department voiced concern that building
administrators were not always willing to go through with discipline from the
beginning to the end (usually involving a hearing) and they get worn down and give
up the fight part-way through the grievance process due to the drain on their time
and resources. In order to avoid union grievances in their resource-strained
environment, administrators may simply be avoiding the formal discipline process.
Mr. Whitehurst’s rights as a union member, and the anticipation that the
union would fight any discipline, may have influenced the response to concerns
about Mr. Whitehurst’s conduct. Repeatedly, we found evidence of the District
approaching an issue with Mr. Whitehurst from the view of what they couldn’t do
with Mr. Whitehurst rather than what they could do to prevent him from
continuing to engage in inappropriate conduct that put the safety and well-being
of students at risk.
We understand that the union has an important responsibility to protect
teachers from false or baseless accusations, exercise the rights that teachers have,
and otherwise ensure that the District follows the terms of the union contract.
Likewise, the building administrators have important responsibilities as well –

among them, to protect students from educator misconduct, exercise
management rights, and otherwise ensure that the District has qualified educators
helping children learn in a safe educational environment. These are not mutually
exclusive roles, especially in this new era of cooperation heralded by the District’s
administration and the PAT. Keeping schools safe for children is a shared
commitment. We recognize that the vast majority of educators in the District are
ethical, act appropriately around students, and want to see unethical educators
who engage in sexual conduct removed from the system. The District and the
teachers’ union should be able to work together to keep schools safe and eliminate
any obstacles to promptly removing the unethical educators.
3. Decentralized response to sexual conduct complaints, with no accountability
Another system failure detected by this investigation is the manner in which
reports of sexual conduct went to various different PPS resources, all of which
were appropriate avenues to report sexual conduct at the time of the complaints,
but none of which consistently coordinated its information. The end result was the
PPS police knew of some allegations regarding Mr. Whitehurst, the HR/Legal
Departments knew of other allegations, certain school administrators who had
managed Mr. Whitehurst’s behavior on their own knew of still other allegations,

and the PPB knew of yet more allegations.
The District’s decentralized system makes it too easy for an investigation to
fall short of a comprehensive examination of the evidence because no one is held
accountable for ensuring the process is followed to a full and fair resolution. We
heard from building administrators that the HR and Legal Departments are in
charge of complaints, investigations and discipline decisions, and the building
administrators are powerless to get bad educators out of their schools. At the
same time, we heard from the staff of the HR and Legal Departments that building
administrators have a healthy amount of autonomy and are responsible for
following through on investigations and making the decision about an appropriate
level of discipline. HR is there for support if the building administrators need them.
While PPS employees fell short of finger pointing, they demonstrated the problem
at hand: during Mr. Whitehurst’s employment, there was no clearly designated
position or department responsible and accountable for an investigation into an
employee’s sexual conduct.
In the high-volume, high-traffic world that is PPS, it is too easy for a
complaint to be inadequately addressed because everyone involved believes the
other persons involved are in charge. And when a complaint is not responded to
appropriately, it is not always evident where the failure occurred, since no

department or position is clearly designated to manage the complaint through its
life cycle. There is either a general confusion about who is in charge of disciplinary
decisions or a disowning of responsibility. What we never heard from anyone –
other than perhaps former HR Legal Counsel Maureen Sloane, loosely
paraphrasing – was “this was my fault and I take responsibility for it.”
4. No viable document management system
For most of the years in which Mr. Whitehurst was employed, the District
lacked an electronic database or other means to track an individual employee’s
behavior issues over time. The lack of technological infrastructure resulted in a
reliance on paper files and manual processes to track issues attendant to
Mr. Whitehurst’s 32-year career.
The hard-copy documentation that existed for Mr. Whitehurst was not
maintained in a central location. Depending on who created the documentation, it
found its way to different repositories. The paper PPS police files were archived
(we think); Maureen Sloane maintained her own paper files in a file cabinet in her
office, and after she left these were moved and eventually put into storage; and
the building files were maintained in the school that Mr. Whitehurst was working
in at the time, until they were purged due to his transfer or that of his supervisor.

This decentralized system created gaps in knowledge about Mr. Whitehurst’s
employment history and led various PPS employees to believe his record was clean
when in fact, he had been counseled or investigated repeatedly about
inappropriate behavior with female students.
When the PPS police force was disbanded in late 2001, the hand-off
apparently led to the PPS police records being archived rather than incorporating
documentation of personnel investigations into HR files.
The current transience of building files (as required under the terms of the
PAT union contract) contributes to yet another gap in information, leaving each
subsequent administrator to believe that Mr. Whitehurst’s record was cleaner than
it actually was.
Similarly, to the extent Mr. Whitehurst’s personnel file was purged of
documentation (such as the 2001 memo, if it was placed in the personnel file), this
too worked in favor of Mr. Whitehurst. Each time he faced a reprimand, he could
deny all allegations knowing there was no permanent record of past misconduct
that would render his denials less credible.
Spotty record-keeping contributed to Mr. Whitehurst avoiding formal
reprimand on multiple occasions:

• Marshall administrators and Maureen Sloane did not review the PPS
police records when they gave Mr. Whitehurst the benefit of the doubt
.
There is a reference in the memo he received of the District’s review of
his “entire employment record” and there being no additional evidence
of inappropriate behavior.
• Jefferson administrators did not know of the 2001 memo

when Ricky Allen verbally counseled Mr. Whitehurst in
2008-09 about his harassing comment to the student eating grapes.
• Maureen Sloane did not have the benefit of the PPS police report in the
1983-84 school year regarding Mr. Whitehurst’s inappropriate conduct
. She and Richard Clarke decided to take no action

to pursue the belated complaint. She references his employment record
in her memo, noting that the only pertinent record is the 2001
complaint: “There are no indications of any inappropriate behavior since
then.”
• Faubion administrators did not know of the 2001 memo regarding

when they attempted to address Caprice’s complaint
and the concerns about Mr. Whitehurst’s behavior in PE class.
• The HR and Legal Departments were unaware of the extent of the

concerns noted in the Faubion interviews at the time Mr. Scotto
deferred to the Faubion administrators’ judgment that the issue “was
probably a middle school rumor.”
Better record-keeping could have led to shared knowledge about Mr. Whitehurst’s
career, and perhaps a different outcome.

5. Lack of accountability of executive-level leadership due to lack of systems to
address sexual conduct issues
Decentralization coupled with a lack of systems led to a lack of
accountability at the top. Historically, the District’s executive leadership took a
hands-off approach and let the school administrators have significant autonomy.
Without systems in place to ensure that policies were being followed and
investigations were being conducted fully and fairly, this autonomy created a silo
effect whereby employees focused on their own duties in isolation. Without
proper systems in place to elevate sexual conduct complaints to a central tracking
system or otherwise ensure that such concerns were being adequately addressed,
the District failed to keep the schools safe, while Mr. Whitehurst was repeatedly
given the benefit of the doubt.
There was no top-down involvement to ensure systems accountability. No
one ensured that everyone else was doing their job, no one ensured that this
decentralized process achieved the expected results. Apparently no upper-level
leadership has been held accountable for system failures or the lack of adequate
systems.
The District needs to have accountability all the way to the top. When the
internal investigation process repeatedly failed to hold Mr. Whitehurst

accountable for sexual conduct with students, no one above the Legal Department
was apparently aware of it. The superintendent, for example, was not apprised of
any issues regarding Mr. Whitehurst, nor was there an expectation that she would
be briefed on any employment issue that did not rise to a level of potential
dismissal, non-renewal or litigation.
At the very top of the District, the Board must be accountable. First, the
Board should hold the superintendent accountable for the staff and operations of
the District. The Board also has the power to approve involuntary terminations of
educators. When the evidence supports removing an educator from the District
due to his or her unethical sexual conduct with students, the Board should support
the recommendation to terminate.
PERFORMANCE FAILURES BY EMPLOYEES:
As discussed in earlier sections of this report, we found that HR legal counsel
Maureen Sloane conducted insufficient investigations in 2001
and 2008 (Caprice’s complaint). She also did not report the 2008
complaint to the TSPC, which we believe would have been an appropriate
response.

As discussed in earlier sections of this report, Jefferson principal Cynthia
Harris may have failed to take appropriate action in 2008 if indeed she was put on
notice by Caprice of inappropriate sexual behavior by Mr. Whitehurst (something
she denies).
As discussed in earlier sections of this report, Faubion principal LaShawn Lee
appears to have failed to take appropriate action in late 2012 and early 2013 to
respond to the complaint from Caprice and the complaints .
According to Caprice, she spent over an hour in Ms. Lee’s office in December
2012 attempting to convince her that Mr. Whitehurst had engaged in sexual
misconduct when she was a high school senior and that the students at Faubion
may not be safe. Ms. Lee expressed disbelief and told Caprice that “everyone loves
him!” She was incredulous that he would ever harm a Faubion student. It was clear
to Caprice that Ms. Lee did not want to recognize that there was a problem. 21 If
Ms. Lee spoke to Mr. Whitehurst about Caprice’s complaint or the EAs’ concerns, it
was not documented.
In early January 2013, for no apparent work-related purpose, Mr.
Whitehurst emailed Ms. Lee a photo album with pictures of his son
. This
21
Because no one else at the District interviewed Caprice in 2012-13, Ms. Lee’s possible bias did
not come to light.

suggests a close personal history with Mr. Whitehurst which, if true, should have
required Ms. Lee to recuse herself or at a minimum to disclose that issue to the HR
and Legal Departments.
Ms. Lee apparently did not interview Mr. Whitehurst about the specific
allegations arising from the She did not conduct a standard
investigatory interview with Mr. Whitehurst on January 18, 2013, and instead had
a brief conversation with him which did not apprise him of all of her concerns. This
was a meeting for which there are no notes and no documented follow-up with
Mr. Whitehurst (e.g., a memorandum of the discussion placed in the building or
personnel files). Ms. Lee also failed to document the basis for her conclusion that
“this was probably a middle school rumor” such that anyone else involved in the
investigation could review and challenge or confirm her findings.
As discussed in earlier sections of this report, Faubion vice principal Jen
McCalley appears to have also failed to take appropriate action to respond to the
complaints . We do not know why Ms. McCalley concluded there
was “no huge finding” after interviewing almost two dozen students and hearing
first-hand about
. As a
first-year vice principal at Faubion, where the community strongly supported its

principal, Ms. McCalley may have felt pressured to follow Ms. Lee’s lead in taking
remedial measures without conducting a satisfactory investigatory interview and
pursuing formal discipline.
Lastly, we have concerns that the District’s long-time general counsel, Jollee
Patterson, did not do enough when she became involved in the Faubion issues in
December 2012 and January 2013. By the time she was contacted by Faubion’s
administrators regarding concerns voiced by female students in Mr. Whitehurst’s
, Ms. Patterson was already on notice of the 2001 complaint of
, plus the 2008 complaint by Caprice
of egregious sexual conduct in 1984
Neither of these reports
concluded that the student was not credible or that the complaint was unfounded.
To this Ms. Lee added reports of her conversations with Mr. Whitehurst’s previous
supervisor who described his behavior as overly friendly and told her about the
flyers that had been posted at Jefferson.
Although Ms. Patterson defends her decision to rely on HR as the proper
channel for the PE class investigation, it is regrettable that the District’s general
counsel was satisfied with the follow-up she received from Mr. Scotto, who she
was aware had not attended the interviews or any investigatory meeting.

She did not ask Mr. Scotto (who was not included on the December emails
about Caprice’s complaint and the HR files found by Ms. Murphy, and who may
have been unaware of the other complaints of sexual conduct) to report the facts
upon which the Faubion administrators suddenly dismissed the as
probable rumors. Nor did she insist on an investigation of Caprice’s complaint.
We appreciate that Ms. Patterson is not an employment attorney and did
not step into the shoes of HR legal counsel during that position’s vacancy. Before
Stephanie Harper’s arrival in the District in March 2013, the HR legal counsel did
not even report to the general counsel; she or he reported to the head of the HR
Department.
However, we note that during the same time period that Ms. Patterson was
involved in the Faubion matters, she sought advice from Miller Nash regarding
Ms. Patterson did
not consult Miller Nash about Mr. Whitehurst’s employment issues. Given her
leadership role at the District, coupled with her knowledge of repeated allegations
of sexual conduct by Mr. Whitehurst, Ms. Patterson should have done more to
ensure that the District thoroughly investigated the Faubion allegations or

requested outside counsel with expertise in this area to do that work or support
those who were doing it.
Of these employees, only Jen McCalley, now the principal of Faubion,
remains at PPS.
There are other employees not named here who may have contributed to
the failure to detect, report, investigate, and discipline Mr. Whitehurst. His history
appears to be a collective failure rather than the failure of any one individual or
group of individuals. We note that although students reported his overly flirtatious,
harassing behavior as a common sight in the halls, where he would sometimes
comment about their appearance when he was standing with a group of other
male adults, no other staff or educators reported that conduct to the District.
Mr. Whitehurst had a reputation as a smooth talker and a ladies’ man with female
staff and students alike, yet apparently no employee felt it was their job to report
this behavior.
In our interviews, we heard from many, many witnesses that they felt they
had followed all of the District’s policies, done that part of the process that was
their responsibility, and then relied on others involved in the process to do their
jobs. We did not find District employees went beyond their job responsibilities or
assigned roles to make sure the investigation into Mr. Whitehurst’s conduct had

been robust and complete, and that everyone had, in fact, done their jobs in a
comprehensive manner.
As a case study, take the Faubion complaints:
• General counsel Jollee Patterson contends that her function as general

counsel was to get concerns about Mr. Whitehurst to the proper
department to support the Faubion building administrators. She made
sure chief HR officer Sean Murray and HR regional director Frank Scotto
were involved, and asserts that by doing so, she completed her job
function. As general counsel, she had little expertise in employment or
labor law and believed that handing this over to HR to manage was
appropriate in her role as general counsel. She expected HR and the
building administrators to investigate and, if warranted, formally
reprimand or terminate Mr. Whitehurst. She recalls that she later learned
from Mr. Scotto that Ms. Lee had dismissed the complaints as rumors, and
she did not believe further review was necessary.
• Chief HR officer Sean Murray, cc’d on correspondence from HR legal

counsel Jeff Fish in December 2012 as well as correspondence
acknowledged only as an “FYI” from Jollee Patterson in January 2013,
recalled that the Legal Department was involved in these complaints. He
thought that department was taking the lead. He also saw that Frank
Scotto was involved on behalf of the HR Department, so he did not believe
he needed to take a lead role on this particular matter. (Note that Mr.
Murray had just joined the District in November 2012.)
• HR regional director Frank Scotto insists that he gave support to the

building administrators in the form of helping them draft the investigatory
meeting notice and the interview questions for Ms. McCalley to use in her
interviews. He would have reviewed a matrix showing any pattern of
allegations in preparation for the investigatory interview, but Ms. McCalley
indicated there was no “huge finding” and implied one was not necessary.

He was also prepared to attend an investigatory meeting had one been
rescheduled, but Ms. Lee told him she had already met with Mr.
Whitehurst and that the issue was “probably a middle school rumor.” In
reliance on the judgment of these two administrators whom Mr. Scotto
considered capable of conducting investigations, he did not follow up
further.
• Regional administrator Antonio Lopez was one of the individuals who

received
He did not take any action other than emailing back to thank
Ms. Lee for “doing the hard work.” He believed the matter was in others’
capable hand and his involvement was not required.
• Paralegal Siobhan Murphy also
• The two Faubion building administrators, LaShawn Lee and Jen McCalley,
contend that the HR and Legal Departments
.
They took some non-disciplinary remedial steps in an effort to protect the
Faubion students.
In hindsight, it is easy to criticize each of these individuals in some way or
another. At the time, most apparently believed their efforts were satisfactory to
address that portion of the process that required their attention. Had other
individuals been more diligent, this assumption might have been correct.

EXTERNAL AGENTS:
Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP. The only external agent or representative
of PPS that we consider to be involved in Mr. Whitehurst’s employment is the law
firm of Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP, and we did not find any performance
failures by this firm in regard to the allegations of student sexual conduct by
Mr. Whitehurst. Miller Nash was not asked for employment advice specifically
pertaining to Mr. Whitehurst’s conduct at any time he was employed by PPS.
Michael Porter, the attorney in charge of PPS matters, recalls having no knowledge
of Mr. Whitehurst up until the time he learned that a new lawsuit had been filed
against PPS. This was the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former employee Rory
Thompson in August 2015, which Miller Nash defended on behalf of PPS. By the
time of the lawsuit, Mr. Whitehurst had resigned. The District negotiated his
resignation agreement in January and February 2015 without assistance from
outside counsel.
Miller Nash provided copious documents in response to our requests. We
found no evidence that the firm was ever involved in Whitehurst-related legal
matters until the Thompson lawsuit was filed, at which point Mr. Whitehurst was
no longer employed by PPS.

As for other third parties that were not PPS agents but that may have
affected Mr. Whitehurst’s trajectory as a PPS employee, we make the following
observations:
Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission (TSPC). The one time
the TSPC received notice from PPS of possible sexual conduct with students by Mr.
Whitehurst was in 2001, when Maureen Sloane reported . 22
The TSPC received written statement, Mr. Wolleck’s memo, and Ms.
Sloane’s notes of her interview of Mr. Whitehurst, as well as other documents
(whatever was in Mr. Whitehurst’s personnel file, the school building file, and Ms.
Sloane’s working file). The TSPC closed its investigation five months later without
taking any action against Mr. Whitehurst. Closed cases are confidential, so we do
not know whether the TSPC relied on Ms. Sloane’s investigation or conducted a
thorough and independent investigation of the student’s complaint). 23
22
On December 29, 2010, the TSPC received a letter of complaint from an anonymous patron in
the Portland School District regarding Mr. Whitehurst. Someone apparently sent the TSPC a copy
of the flyer that was posted at Jefferson. PPS responded to a TSPC subpoena for documents
related to the flyer. The TSPC found insufficient cause to justify a hearing and took no action
against Mr. Whitehurst.
23
We are unaware of any interviews conducted by the TSPC in response to this report.

Law Enforcement Agencies. Special comment deserves to be made about
two instances in which Mr. Whitehurst’s conduct came to the attention of outside
law enforcement agencies. In both instances opportunities to put an end to his
behavior and remove him from employment by PPS were missed. On each
occasion, the reasons for this failure were multiple. We discuss each incident
separately below.
First in 2001, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) was informed of
. Unfortunately this occurred during a very short
transition period when the school police were being absorbed into the PPB. During
that transition (we were told it was two or three weeks), individual school police
officers were paired with individual incoming PPB officers who were unfamiliar
with school police duties and history. After the transition period, all former school
police officers were immediately reassigned to other parts of the PPB unrelated to
PPS. The consequence of this transition was that most institutional knowledge of
the first line law enforcement agents at PPS disappeared from the district.
Prior to this restructuring, the school police had conducted at least one and
probably two investigations of Whitehurst regarding allegations of sexual conduct
with female students. We were unable to locate written reports for any such
investigations. It is unclear if there was ever a system in place to make such

reports available to incoming members of the PPB who became responsible for
school policing duties. What is clear is that the officers who ultimately responded
to had no knowledge of the prior investigations.
Moreover, the former school police had had responsibility for conducting
both personnel and criminal investigations for PPS. At the time of the transition
period in approximately November 2001, no provision had been made for what
entity would conduct future personnel investigations. What was clear was that the
PPB was not going to do it and its members were resistant to participating in
anything that seemed to be a personnel investigation. This resistance and the
failure to designate any entity to conduct personnel investigations may have been
factors in the failed response to .
A team consisting of one PPB officer and one school police officer responded
to . The officers involved and the sergeant
who reviewed the case felt that were not criminal in nature. Our
investigation determined they were mistaken. However, it would have taken a
person who specialized in child abuse investigations to have discerned that
potential criminal charges existed. To be fair to the officers involved, they had no
such training and they did take the step of coding in a manner
they thought would compel them to be forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office

for more specialized review of their perception that no criminal charges existed
and no further criminal investigation was warranted.
Our investigation disclosed that for unknown reasons the reports were
either not forwarded (there is no record of them being received by the District
Attorney’s Office) or, if they were forwarded, proper records were not made and
the reports were never reviewed by the appropriate deputy district attorney.
We spoke with the deputy district attorney responsible for these reviews at
the time. Had he reviewed the reports the potential for criminal charges would
have been noted and, at the very least, a criminal investigation would have taken
place. As it was, no further criminal investigation occurred and Mr. Whitehurst
was not even interviewed by criminal investigators regarding the allegations. The
message PPS received from the PPB was that did not
constitute a crime.
Last October, when our investigation of the case revealed there may have
been a basis for further criminal investigation and possible criminal charges, we
immediately brought the matter to the attention of the Multnomah County District
Attorney's Office. The case was reviewed by the DA's Office and a determination
made that any potential criminal charges would, at this time, be barred by the
statute of limitations.

The second encounter with outside law enforcement agencies occurred 13
years later in 2014. By that time Mr. Whitehurst had moved to Faubion School.
This second case involved allegations that Mr. Whitehurst had struck another
teacher on the buttocks apparently with a foreign object penetrating the teacher’s
anus through his clothing. There had been other similar although less serious
incidents in the past by Mr. Whitehurst against this teacher and one other.
The case was investigated by a member of the PPB’s Sex Crimes Unit. For
reasons we were unable to determine with certainty, the detective did not
discover the 2001 PPB reports regarding , nor the other
school police investigations from years prior, when checking into Mr. Whitehurst’s
background. When he interviewed Faubion administrators, however, the detective
did learn second-hand of the details of more recent PPS internal allegations against
Mr. Whitehurst, including the allegations by Caprice of sexual conduct in 1984.
The detective produced a 62-page report highlighting many concerns about
misconduct by Mr. Whitehurst stretching back over decades. The detective did not
suspend his investigation, but sent the report to the sex crime unit of the
Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office for prosecutorial consideration.
Unfortunately the deputy district attorney assigned to the case appears to
have treated the allegations almost dismissively. In her description of the case on a

CRIMES Fact Sheet, she characterized the incident as one in which Mr. Whitehurst
“likes to smack co-workers on the butt” and the victim teacher was “fed up” the
third time this happened and now wants the case prosecuted.
District Attorney’s Office policy at the time required that the highest levels
of the office be notified when a case was presented against a member of a
profession or occupation that is licensed by a state regulatory agency, including a
licensed educator like Mr. Whitehurst. The deputy district attorney’s standard
practice was to follow this policy. However, it appears not only did this not occur,
but the deputy district attorney’s immediate supervisor was in all probability not
notified. Had such notifications occurred our investigation concluded that the
matter would have been handled in a much more serious fashion.
As it was, the detective was informed by the deputy district attorney that
the case was going to be resolved on pre-indictment basis and he ended his
investigation into Mr. Whitehurst’s history of misconduct allegations. The case was
handled without being presented to a grand jury with a plea to a Class B
misdemeanor charge of harassment. The result was a probationary sentence that
did not require Mr. Whitehurst to surrender his license.
Each of these two incidents where accusations against a PPS educator were
presented to law enforcement agencies, though widely separated in time,

convinced us that a change is necessary to ensure that organization policies are
followed, that information is more fully shared between PPS and law enforcement
agencies, and that best practices are followed.

Did any PPS employee(s) fail to comply with mandatory reporting requirements or
violate any policies, laws or ethics rules? If so, who and when?
Were there any consequences for those failures?
Did any of those failures have licensure implications?
Our investigation did not reveal any failure to comply with mandatory
reporting obligations. The sexual abuse reported to the District – specifically,
Caprice’s report of sexual conduct when she and
– allegedly involved 18 year old students. Oregon’s mandatory
child abuse reporting laws and the District’s policy require PPS employees to report
suspected abuse or neglect of a child, meaning a person under 18 years of age. See
ORS 419B.005(2), -.010, and -.015. Therefore, no report to Child Protective
Services (CPS) was required, nor would the agency have taken the report.
In 2012, principal LaShawn Lee reported Caprice’s allegations to the PPB –
specifically, Officer Williams, the Faubion school resource officer (SRO).
The failure to report Caprice’s allegations to the TSPC in 2008 and again in
2012 was not a failure to comply with mandatory reporting requirements, per se,
but arguably ran afoul of OAR 584-020-0041(3), a TSPC standard that provides:

A chief administrator will report to the Executive Director [of the TSPC]
within thirty (30) days the name of any [licensed educator], when the
chief administrator reasonably believes the person may have
committed any act which may constitute any of the designated acts of
gross neglect of duty under OAR 584-020-0040(4) . . . .
OAR 584-020-0040(4) includes sexual conduct with a student. Thus, if a chief
administrator at the District reasonably believed at any time that Mr. Whitehurst
may have engaged in sexual conduct with one in 1984, this
concern should have been reported to the TSPC. It was not.
The TSPC only became aware of the allegations of sexual conduct when it
investigated the District’s report to the TSPC of Mr. Whitehurst’s adult-to-adult
unwanted physical contact with Mr. Thompson in the fall of 2014. During that
investigation, the TSPC investigator learned from the PPB report written by
Detective Weinstein about second-hand accounts of Mr. Whitehurst’s sexual
conduct with students. The TSPC opened up a second investigation into this
conduct on its own initiative in 2015.
The TSPC recommends that a school district conduct at least a preliminary
investigation into an allegation prior to reporting it in order to substantiate a
reasonable belief that an educator has engaged in sexual conduct. Because
Caprice’s complaint was never investigated adequately by the District, we believe
the issue never developed to the stage where it would typically be brought to the

attention of the TSPC (such as after discipline is imposed or a thorough
investigation has been conducted). The TSPC standards state that failure of a chief
administrator to report a violation of TSPC standards is itself possibly grounds for
“gross neglect of duty,” but we have no reason to find the then-chief administrator
(meaning Carole Smith, the superintendent) was even aware of any allegations
about Mr. Whitehurst. Ms. Smith does not recall ever being informed of any
allegations of student sexual abuse by Mr. Whitehurst. The allegations of sexual
conduct were apparently not brought to the superintendent’s attention or to that
of any designee whose job duty was to report to the TSPC on behalf of the District.
PPS records show that the District’s HR legal counsel was the person who
typically made a report to the TSPC when there was a reasonable belief of a
violation of the TSPC standards. From mid-December 2012 until March 2013, a
critical period in the chronology, the District did not have anyone in that role. The
general counsel (Ms. Patterson) had never before made a report to the TSPC and
did not consider this duty to fall to her during the three-month vacancy. We were
unable to determine who would have been responsible for reporting to the TSPC
during this HR legal counsel vacancy.

Is there any evidence that any person or group of people protected Mr. Whitehurst?
Who initiated and approved Mr. Whitehurst's transfers?
Is there any indication that District personnel used transfers as a way to avoid taking
disciplinary action?
Our investigation did not uncover evidence that any person or group of
people protected Mr. Whitehurst, beyond what we have already presented in the
earlier discussion of employee performance failures. We did not find evidence of
an intent to protect Mr. Whitehurst, though we did find there were employees
(e.g., the administrators at Faubion) who appeared unwilling to confront
Mr. Whitehurst about his inappropriate behavior and document the issue for
reasons that are not clear.24
We did not find evidence that District employees used transfers as a way of
avoiding disciplinary action against Mr. Whitehurst. Many of the principals and vice
principals interviewed indicated that they saw nothing inappropriate about
Mr. Whitehurst’s behavior and received no complaints about him. These
administrators trusted him, believed he was a good person, and were shocked and
disturbed to learn of the allegations of sexual conduct detailed in The Oregonian.
24
Of the handful of witnesses who declined to be interviewed for this investigation, almost all of
them were involved in the 2012-13 issues involving Mr. Whitehurst at Faubion: LaShawn Lee,
Rory Thompson, Harriet Adair, and Ken Berry.

As detailed in the chronology at the beginning of this report, Mr. Whitehurst
transferred six times during his 32-year career at PPS (not including his brief stint
as a .5 FTE at Sitton Elementary School):
From Marshall in 1983: Mr. Whitehurst was unassigned because his original
assignment was a one-year temporary position. From Marshall, he moved to
Franklin High School.
From Franklin in 1984: Mr. Whitehurst was unassigned because his
assignment was a one-year temporary position filling in for an educator on
sabbatical. From Franklin, he moved to Sellwood Middle School.
From Sellwood in 1986: Mr. Whitehurst was an administrative transfer to
Lincoln High School, where he could coach and teach at the same school. He left
Sellwood with an excellent review from principal John “Bill” Beck, who supported
the move because of Mr. Whitehurst’s interest in coaching at a high school level.
From Lincoln in 1997: Mr. Whitehurst was unassigned in July 1997 by
principal Velma Johnson, who did not respond to numerous attempts to contact
her during our investigation. There is no evidence that the unassignment was due
to inappropriate conduct with female students and not due to budget cuts.
Mr. Whitehurst was put on a plan for improvement at the start of the 1996-97
school year. During our investigation, we were told of unreported sexual abuse and

sexual harassment by Mr. Whitehurst while he was working at Lincoln, so it is
certainly possible that his unassignment was used as a way to pass on a problem
employee and avoid taking disciplinary action, but we have no evidence of this.
From Lincoln, Mr. Whitehurst moved to Marshall.
From Marshall in 2006: Mr. Whitehurst was unassigned during a period of
flux and upheaval at Marshall. Records indicate the unassignment by Renaissance
Academy principal Fred Locke was due to budget cuts. From Marshall, Mr.
Whitehurst moved to Jefferson.
From Jefferson in 2012: Mr. Whitehurst was an administrative transfer to
Faubion. He lost his extended responsibility as athletic director at the end of the
2011-2012 school year for performance reasons unrelated to sexual conduct, but
was offered a 1.0 position as a PE teacher at Jefferson such that he could have
stayed on at Jefferson had he wanted to. Rather than accept the position, he
contacted principal LaShawn Lee at Faubion and indicated his interest in a 1.0 FTE
position at Faubion. She and Jefferson principal Margaret Calvert
agreed to the transfer.
Based on our review of Mr. Whitehurst’s personnel files and other PPS
records, as well as our interviews with almost all of Mr. Whitehurst’s
administrators, we found no evidence he was unassigned or transferred from

school to school to avoid being reprimanded for his sexual conduct with female
students. We further found no evidence that he was ever transferred to a school
like Sellwood or Faubion to get him away from high school girls, as has been
suggested by the media. In conclusion, we did not find evidence that any school
intentionally allowed or encouraged Mr. Whitehurst to move to another school in
the District in order to conceal an ongoing concern regarding his inappropriate
behavior.

Was there any follow up by the administration following settlement of the Rory
Thompson matter as directed by the Board and, if not, why not?
We found there was some follow-up by high-level District administrators,
but not to the extent the 2016-17 Board expected. The 2016-17 board consisted
of Chair Tom Koehler, Vice Chair Amy Carlsen Kohnstamm, and Directors Mike
Rosen, Pam Knowles, Paul Anthony, Steve Buel and Julie Esparza Brown.
At a special PPS Board meeting held on September 19, 2016, the Board
approved settlement of Rory Thompson v. PPS by a 4 to 3 vote. During the Board’s
discussion before the vote, Director Anthony expressed his disapproval of the
settlement because he believed it placed the small financial risk and the risk to
reputations over the risk to children. Director Kohnstamm countered by noting
that there were two issues: (1) resolution of the Thompson matter, and (2) the
District’s own process of assessing how the District allowed Mr. Whitehurst’s
conduct to persist throughout the period of his employment, and what the District
needed to do now to be sure it had a process that first and foremost protected the
District’s students and staff. Directors Koehler and Esparza Brown agreed with
Director Kohnstamm’s comments. Director Buel pointed out that this was one of
the things that had come under the Board’s purview and noted for the record that
the Board had asked the interim superintendent, Bob McKean, to “take a look at all

of these procedures having to do with complaints with children, with employees
and so forth” and this would also be spearheaded by the Board’s Audit
Committee.25 Chair Koehler then thanked Mr. McKean, who attended the meeting,
“for taking this on” and also thanked Director Rosen (chair of the Audit Committee)
“for taking this on.”
Following this meeting, Mr. McKean met with chief HR officer Sean Murray
to discuss the District’s policies and procedures regarding student sexual conduct.
He confirmed there was annual training given to all employees at the start of the
school year regarding child abuse, including educator sexual conduct and abuse.
There was also sexual harassment training (this was relatively new). Mr. McKean
and Mr. Murray reviewed the investigatory process for complaints. They found the
investigatory methods to be thorough.
Mr. McKean concluded that the systems in place offered effective methods
to prevent, identify and report future sexual conduct or abuse. Mr. McKean did not
think he needed to report back to the Board on his efforts, since he found the
systems in place to be satisfactory. He does not recall anyone on the Board ever
asking him about what he did in response to their request.
25
Director Buel went on to note that he personally thought the Board should investigate “how
this whole thing came down,” but that appeared to be his own view and not the Board’s official
directive to the interim superintendent.

During his year as interim superintendent, Mr. McKean also worked with his
chief of staff Amanda Whalen on a review of the complaint policy and how the
complaint process worked. The complaint process review was much broader than
a Whitehurst-focused review, but included reviewing the complaint process
regarding sexual harassment and educator sexual conduct or abuse.
The next time the Whitehurst matter was broached by the 2016-17 Board
was at the Board’s Business and Operations (B&O) Committee meeting on April 10,
2017. The informal minutes of the Board’s reflect the following discussion:
Jeff Fish presented a revision to the District’s Anti-Harassment policy

and shared there would be one version for students and one version
for staff. . . . Chair Knowles asked how this policy would relate to the
child abuse reporting requirements. Jeff Fish stated they go hand in
hand and provided an overview of the policy. Director Rosen asked
who would investigate complaints raised and what does the District do
until an investigation is complete. Jeff Fish stated it would be the Title
IX coordinator and shared various scenarios. …
Director Kohnstamm asked if the Whitehurst situation was a result of

the policy or how it was implemented. Director Tom Koehler stated
that he would like to see a lessons learned from the Whitehurst
situation. Yousef Awwad stated that these were things the Title IX
coordinator could look at. The committee thought it should go to the
Board for a first reading. Director Koehler stated he wanted to make
sure there was lessons learned on Whitehurst before this goes to the
Board. He then moved and Director Rosen seconded to recommend
the policy go to the full Board for a first reading. The committee

unanimously agreed to move the policy to the full Board for a first
reading.
This committee meeting was attended by the following District staff: Jeff Fish (HR
legal counsel),26 Yousef Awwad (chief executive officer), Sascha Perrins (interim
chief of staff), and Rosanne Powell (Board manager).
On May 23, 2017, Ms. Powell followed up with an email to interim general
counsel Stephanie Harper and Mr. Perrins, cc to Mr. McKean and Mr. Awwad:
Dear Stephanie and Sascha,
I was reviewing the B&O notes where the committee heard Jeff’s
overview of the revised Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment
policy. The committee requested a “lessons learned” from the
Whitehurst case before going to the Board. Since the second reading
and vote will be happening on June 13th, this will need to happen
before then.
Stephanie, I’m not sure if this would be something that would be done
best in a memo or if it even qualifies for an executive session?
Thanks.
Ms. Harper promptly responded to Ms. Powell and Mr. Perrins, cc to Mr. McKean
and Mr. Awwad:
Well, Jeff and I talked about Whitehurst and he worked to incorporate

that into the work he already did, and answered questions individually
from board members. I can do a short “lessons learned” in writing (I
26
Jeff Fish left the District in mid-December 2012 and then returned in May 2016.

don’t have time to do a full scale analysis of the case) or talk with the
board in executive session. . . .
As far as we can tell, there was no written follow-up. Board members do not
recall Ms. Harper addressing them about this issue in executive session.
During the spring and summer of 2017, there were many changes among
the District’s high-level administrative personnel:27
• Chief of staff Amanda Whalen resigned February 10, 2017.

• HR legal counsel Jeff Fish resigned May 11, 2017.
• Chief HR officer Sean Murray resigned June 3, 2017.
• Jim Harris was hired as general counsel June 15, 2017.
• Interim general counsel Stephanie Harper became senior legal counsel on
June 16, 2017.
• Interim superintendent Bob McKean ended his one-year contract July 1,
2017.
• CEO Yousef Awwad was promoted to interim superintendent July 1, 2017.
• Interim chief of staff Sascha Perrins resigned on or about August 31, 2017.
This was a time of immense change among the District’s high-level personnel, and
the volatility may explain why the presentation of “lessons learned” from the
Whitehurst case was never fully delivered to the Board. Of the three
administrators present for the April B&O committee meeting (Mr. Awwad, Mr.
27
In addition to changes in District personnel, three newly-elected Board members joined the
Board in July 2017.

Perrins, and Mr. Fish), one (Mr. Fish) had resigned before Ms. Powell sent her May
23rd reminder email. The four administrators who received her May 23rd email
were either in the process of leaving the District or moving to different positions at
the time of the June committee meeting. As it happened, the June meeting did not
result in a second reading of the anti-harassment policy, nor was there one read in
subsequent meetings.
After The Oregonian ran its Whitehurst exposé in August 2017, newly-
elected 2017-18 PPS Board Chair Brim-Edwards notified the rest of the 2017-18
Board that she and the superintendent, as well as she and Vice Chairs Esparza
Brown and Moore, had discussed hiring an outside firm to investigate the matter
and provide recommendations. The new board was composed of Chair Julia
Brim-Edwards, Vice Chairs Julie Esparza Brown and Rita Moore, Scott Bailey, Amy
Carlsen Kohnstamm, Mike Rosen and Paul Anthony.
Board leadership and outside counsel identified the investigation team and
the Board unanimously approved the hiring of the team at a Special Board Meeting
on September 19, 2017. Brim-Edwards notified then-interim superintendent
Yousef Awwad of the Board’s plan to hire an outside firm to investigate the
Whitehurst matter to “provide [him] with visibility to this.” Mr. Awwad responded
in an email to Director Brim-Edwards: “I appreciate the visibility on this. I was

planning to assign staff to do this work but it is my understanding that you have
already reached out to staff and started the work on this. Thank you.”
It is not clear what work the interim superintendent had planned to assign
to staff, or why he did not take action earlier. Mr. Awwad had attended the B&O
committee meeting in April 2017, at which Chair Koehler requested a “lessons
learned” briefing in the near future, and he had been on an email exchange
regarding this topic in late May 2017, in which Ms. Powell stated that the “lessons
learned” would need to be delivered to the committee by mid-June.
We note that the Title IX coordinator position – the person Mr. Awwad had
originally indicated could do the “lessons learned” analysis – was vacant during the
period of his leadership. A job description for the Title IX coordinator was finally
posted after the District hired a new superintendent in the fall of 2017. The lack of
a Title IX coordinator in 2016-17 may partially explain the lack of follow-through.

What complaint and investigation procedures should the District adopt to ensure
that complaints regarding personnel and agents working on behalf of PPS are
received and acted upon promptly and appropriately?
Do the District's recordkeeping or other procedures allow for consideration of all
prior complaints related to employee misconduct involving students such that the
District can identify any patterns of related issues?
If not, what should be done to change that?
The District’s current record-keeping procedures do not allow for
consideration of all prior complaints related to employee misconduct involving
students. Consequently, the District is hampered in its ability to identify patterns of
related issues. To change that, the District will need to negotiate to change the
PAT union contract (see the next section), as well as any other union contracts that
require document destruction or removal from employee files. The District will also
need to modify its procedures for tracking sexual conduct complaints.
We limit our recommendations to complaints and investigation procedures
specific to employee sexual conduct with students. We recommend the District
adopt the following procedures:

similar designee.

2. Have a specialized, trained investigator with expertise in
employee/student sexual conduct investigate each complaint
thoroughly and fairly.

supervisor, in-house legal counsel, Title IX coordinator, and
investigator, if different from the Title IX coordinator) make core
credibility decisions and agree regarding what level of discipline to
impose, if any.

We explain our recommendations in more detail below.
1. RECOMMENDATION: REQUIRE EMPLOYEES TO DOCUMENT ALL

ALLEGATIONS, CONCERNS AND COMPLAINTS AND REPORT THEM TO THE
TITLE IX COORDINATOR OR A SIMILAR DESIGNEE.
As a preliminary matter, we heard from many witnesses that there is no
clear protocol for reporting a sexual conduct complaint. The District should
publicize clear protocols conveying the simple directive that anyone with a
complaint or concern or a reasonable suspicion that an employee is engaged in
sexual conduct should immediately report it to either the principal of their building
or to the Title IX coordinator.
Building administrators and relevant central office staff should be trained to
document sexual conduct concerns brought to their attention. Then they should

report those concerns immediately to the Title IX coordinator,28 a position that
must be clearly tasked with the job responsibility of receiving and handling all
sexual conduct complaints in the District, and one that is held accountable for
doing so properly.
If the District deems it more appropriate to assign these duties to a position
other than the Title IX coordinator, we defer to the District. The Title IX coordinator
is not a “magic” title. Any other position with authority and expertise could receive
and handle all sexual conduct complaints in the District. What is important is that
this role be clearly designated and publicized to the schools, and that this position
be held accountable for properly handling all sexual conduct complaints.
To track complaints and concerns, the District could create a Confidential
Staff-to-Student Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Reporting Form for building
administrators to use when reporting complaints or concerns to the Title IX
coordinator or other designee. The form should identify the school’s name, the
name of the person who received the report, the date, and the allegations or a
summary of the incident. It should require a narrative of events as reported by the
student/witness, including the student’s exact words, phrases or descriptions to
28
If the District prefers to establish an HR intake process that requires administrators to contact
HR, and HR in turn then routes sexual conduct complaints to the Title IX coordinator, we defer to
the District. The important thing is that everyone in the chain is held accountable and there are
not so many parts in the chain that it breaks down.

the building administrator. The log should be treated as confidential and shared
only with appropriate school personnel (e.g., the Title IX coordinator, HR legal
counsel, any PPS investigator), law enforcement authorities, and as otherwise
required by law.
2. RECOMMENDATION: USE A SPECIALIZED, TRAINED INVESTIGATOR WHO HAS

EXPERTISE IN EMPLOYEE/STUDENT SEXUAL CONDUCT AND CAN INVESTIGATE
EACH COMPLAINT THOROUGHLY AND FAIRLY.
Currently, building administrators may and often do conduct the
investigations of sexual conduct complaints. We do not recommend that building
administrators lead these investigations. Building administrators are highly skilled,
hard-working, dedicated educational leaders but few are trained in or have
extensive experience in investigating sexual conduct. Moreover, building
administrators should not be expected to investigate sexual conduct complaints
given the complexities and the seriousness of the allegations if proven (e.g.,
termination, revocation of teaching license, criminal liability, placement on sexual
offender list).
There is also the possibility of administrator bias toward the educator being
accused of misconduct, who could be a colleague and may have a close working
relationship with the administrator. Building administrators may face a complaint
of sexual conduct about a beloved educator with a sense of disbelief, avoidance,

and reluctance to confront the educator, or a reticence to follow-up with a formal
investigation or grieve-able reprimand. Furthermore, it is possible that the
administrator’s conduct could be called into question in the event the
administrator has covered up or ignored past inappropriate behavior.
We recommend that the District remove all sexual conduct investigations
from the purview of the building administrators and have them conducted by a
qualified, experienced investigator trained to identify employee/student sexual
conduct (including obviously inappropriate behavior as well as grooming behavior
and adult/student boundary violations). The process should be centralized and
assigned to a dedicated individual who will be expected to do a full and fair
investigation. Consultation with the building administrator may be appropriate,
but we recommend that the administrator not be in charge of the investigation.
The investigator should approach the complaint as one that warrants
heightened scrutiny, not as a low-level disciplinary matter. The investigation of
sexual conduct needs to be a thorough, detailed inquiry into the factual allegations
of a report of suspected sexual conduct that is based on interviews with the
complainant, witnesses and school employee who is the subject of the report. The

investigation must meet any negotiated standards of any applicable union
contract.29
A thorough investigation will include any or all of the following steps:
 Identification of the allegation or complaint (who, what, when, where,

frequency, plus any context to the comment or conduct).
 Identification of standards of behavior (policies, ADs, job description,

TSPC standards, union contract, statutes).
 Identification of the issues.
 Notification up the chain and to outside parties, as appropriate –

HR/Legal, PPB, CPS, TSPC.
 Placement of the educator on leave, if appropriate (in consultation with

HR, review the union contract and educator sexual conduct statute).
 Interview of the complainant. Include exact words, phrases or details

used by the student. (A student reporting an incident of sexual violence
or other traumatic sexual conduct should not necessarily be asked to
submit a written report detailing the incident, as this may re-traumatize
the student.)
 Notification to the parent(s) or legal guardian(s) of the student making

the complaint, unless notification will create a substantial risk to the
student’s health, safety or welfare.
 Collection and review of documents or other evidence.
29
This heightened investigation is expected to have taken place before a district reports
substantiated conduct to another district seeking information about a former PPS employee. See
ORS 339.370(4) and (10). Therefore, it should be the standard for all investigations of reports of
sexual conduct.

 Interview of all witnesses, one at a time. For students, use prepared
scripts with open-ended questions that do not suggest the answer
(consider recording or transcribing responses).
 Interview of the employee accused of inappropriate behavior.
 Re-interview of witnesses or collection of additional evidence when facts

are in dispute.
To determine whether the inappropriate conduct rises to the statutory
definition of “substantiated sexual conduct,” as prescribed by Oregon law (which
could trigger the District’s obligation to provide additional procedures to the
employee per ORS 339.388 and to disclose the conduct to other education
providers per ORS 339.378), the District needs to determine whether the student’s
educational performance was impacted in any way. This is probably not a question
that is routinely asked in the interview process, but it is part of the showing of
“substantiated sexual conduct” under the reporting statute, so the District may
want to ask questions relating to the effect of the conduct on the student’s
educational performance. The District should try to determine whether the
conduct unreasonably interfered with the student’s educational performance, and
if so, how. The District should also attempt to ascertain whether the conduct
created an intimidating or hostile or offensive environment for the student, and

again, if so, how. When these questions are asked, they should not be leading
questions that suggest the answer.
The District’s Guidelines for Internal Personnel Complaint Investigations
should be incorporated, as appropriate, with these recommendations.
3. RECOMMENDATION: HAVE A CORE GROUP OF MULTI-DISCIPLINARY

ADMINISTRATORS MAKE CREDIBILITY DECISIONS AND AGREE REGARDING
WHAT LEVEL OF DISCIPLINE TO IMPOSE, IF ANY.
After the investigation has been completed, a multi-disciplinary team that
includes but does not have to be limited to the employee’s supervisor, the Title IX
coordinator, in-house legal counsel, and the investigator (if the investigator is not
the Title IX coordinator) should review the investigation’s findings and the
employee’s employment history, including the full history of concerns relating to
the subject of the complaint, to decide what level of discipline, if any, is
appropriate. 30 This centralized approach is important for consistent responses at
schools across the District. It is also advisable that the District have a team of
accountable employees led by the Title IX coordinator make the determination
30
It is not unprecedented for a school district to review the full history of concerns. In the San
Francisco Unified School District, for example, whenever that district receives a report
concerning a possible boundary violation, the site supervisor and assigned talent management
director conduct an investigation that includes a review of the full history of concerns
(substantiated and unsubstantiated) relating to the educator who is the subject of the
concern/complaint. See SFUSD Professional Adult/Student Boundaries Policy 4019.1.

about whether to believe a student’s version of an incident of sexual conduct or
abuse over a teacher’s account of the incident. The individual who interviewed the
student should be part of the team that makes any credibility decisions. The team
should document its reasoning in support of its credibility determinations.
For purposes of substantiated sexual conduct, investigations must also
determine whether the conduct has met all four elements of the statutory
definition of “sexual conduct” under ORS 339.370(9). ORS 339.370(9) defines
“sexual conduct” as “any verbal or physical conduct by a school employee that
(A) Is sexual in nature; (B) Is directed towards a kindergarten through grade 12
student; (C) Has the effect of unreasonably interfering with a student’s education
performance; and (D) Creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational
environment.” All four parts of the definition must be met before this law’s
procedural requirements for disclosing the conduct to other education providers
are triggered.
However, finding that an employee did not engage in “substantiated sexual
conduct” under the Oregon statute does not excuse the employee’s inappropriate
conduct and breach of professionalism. If the team concludes that the evidence
does not support all four elements of the definition of “sexual conduct” under ORS
339.370(9), the team should assess whether the evidence demonstrates that there

was inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature directed towards a student. If so, it
should be reported to the TSPC if the employee is a licensed educator.
The TSPC definition does not require all four elements of the state statute to
be met to establish sexual conduct that is reportable to the TSPC. See OAR 584-
020-0005(5)(d) (definition of “sexual conduct” includes, inter alia … “Verbal or
physical conduct of a sexual nature when directed towards a student or when such
conduct has the effect of unreasonably interfering with a student’s educational
performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational
environment. . . .”) (emphasis added). Note that the TSPC has an expanded
definition of “sexual conduct” that also includes “verbal or physical conduct which
has the effect of unreasonably interfering with a student’s educational
performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational
environment.” OAR 584-020-0005(5)(e). The conduct does not need to be directed
at a student to be considered sexual conduct under the TSPC’s definition; it is
enough for it merely to have a deleterious effect on the student.
Thus, even when the District’s proof does not meet the four-part statutory
definition of sexual conduct, the District may still find that an educator has
engaged in sexual conduct that should result in discipline or dismissal and a report

to the TSPC. 31 In-house legal counsel should notify TSPC of a possible violation of
standards within 30 days of the complaint, as appropriate. If in doubt whether to
report to the TSPC, in-house legal counsel should contact the TSPC to discuss the
concern.
But even when the conduct does not meet the statutory four-part test for
“sexual conduct” or the TSPC’s definition of “sexual conduct,” verbal or physical or
other inappropriate conduct by a school employee that is sexual in nature or
inappropriately personal or boundary-crossing with students can be sufficient
cause to warrant disciplinary action.
Any discipline arising from the complaint or concern should be documented
in the building file and the personnel file. Any concern that is well-founded, even
when it does not rise to formal discipline, should always be documented in the
building file.
Regardless of the investigation’s outcome, all information relating to the
complaint should be logged by the Title IX coordinator or its designee (see section
4, below) and saved in a database.
31
The Beaverton School District’s policy entitled “Reporting Requirements Regarding Sexual
Conduct With Students” clearly states in its second sentence: “The first two elements of the
following definition will be considered sufficient cause for taking disciplinary action.” PPS should
consider adding this line to its policies, as well.

Finally, either the Title IX coordinator or its designee should notify the
complainant about the outcome of the investigation.
4. RECOMMENDATION: IMPLEMENT A CENTRALIZED TRACKING MECHANISM

TO DOCUMENT ALL COMPLAINTS, INCLUDING THEIR OUTCOME.
After the investigation concludes, the Title IX coordinator or its designee
should document the outcome of the investigation and the follow-up that
occurred with the employee (e.g., no action, verbal counseling by supervisor,
non-disciplinary letter of expectation, formal reprimand, dismissal).
Maintaining a record of all reported incidents of sexual conduct will enable
the District to monitor, address, and prevent repetitive inappropriate behavior that
may otherwise go undetected. To identify a pattern of sexual conduct, the District
should maintain a full history of all concerns, whether they are (a) substantiated
per the Oregon statute, (b) well-founded but not meeting the four-part test of the
statute, (c) unsubstantiated because the evidence was inconclusive, or
(d) unfounded (meaning there was no basis for the concern)32 – for each employee
who is the subject of any sexual conduct complaint.
32
A complaint that is found to be meritless is still worth tracking because it may reveal a pattern
of some other issue that the District might want to address. Tracking unfounded complaints will
also assist the District is showing that its investigations are fair and result in varied outcomes.

The complaint, investigatory files, and any discipline or other follow-up with
the employee should all be maintained in a confidential database so the
employee’s full history of concerns is accessible to in-house legal counsel, the Title
IX coordinator, the designee, and anyone else with an authorized need to know.
Given that the District will inevitably have a different slate of employees working in
the Legal and HR Departments over the course of an investigated employee’s
career with the District, it is critical that the information be documented and
maintained on a database to ensure there is a written record of all institutional
knowledge about an employee.

Are there provisions in the union contract that impact the District's ability to
adequately address complaints?
Yes. We assume the “union contract” this question refers to is the recently
ratified 2016-2019 collective bargaining agreement between School District No. 1,
Multnomah County, Oregon, and the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT).
1. ARTICLE 22.B, PERSONNEL FILES:
“With the exception of items which are duplicates of those in the

District [personnel] file, evaluation materials. . .and other official
records, materials in the supervisor’s building file, including Letters of
Expectation, shall be removed when the supervisor or the professional
educator is transferred. “
This provision protects educators, not students. If an issue is worth
documenting in the building file, it is relevant to the educator’s employment and a
change of supervisors or a change of teaching assignment does not mitigate its
relevance. The issue being documented (e.g., the behavior of the educator, or the
educator’s response to being counseled for inappropriate behavior) remains a
historical fact for that educator. It does not logically follow that a transfer of either
the supervisor or the educator abruptly erases it, and at least as it bears on sexual
conduct, it certainly does not protect students. It prevents the District from
discovering a pattern of inappropriate behavior that may only become visible over
time after multiple incidents, perhaps each one too minor to rise to a level of

grieve-able discipline, but in the aggregate become worthy of discipline. This
includes behavior such as sexual harassment, boundary violations and grooming
behavior. Similarly, a letter of expectation33 which documents that the educator
was made aware of certain District policies, directives or procedures should not be
discarded and allow that educator to escape discipline the next time that educator
engages in behavior similar to what led to the initial letter of expectation.
The District has many educators who make a life-long career of teaching at
Portland Public Schools. Due to promotions, budget cuts, unassignments, transfers,
seniority, residential neighborhood moves and other personal decisions, they often
– and, in some cases, frequently – move from one school to another. Many do not
remain at one building during their career, nor is there any expectation they will do
so. Supervisors similarly move among the schools for numerous reasons. Properly
documented building files contain valuable information that should be passed on
to all future supervisors who are required to manage the educator’s performance,
whether it occurs in the same or a different building.
Retaining or removing materials from the building files should be the
District’s choice (assuming what the District seeks to remove is not prohibited by
33
According to the District’s contract with PAT, a letter of expectation “is a written notice of an
expectation, standard, policy or procedure. It is not a finding of fault or misconduct and is not a
disciplinary action.” See Article 19.H.1.

law), and not a contractual requirement that prioritizes an educator’s employment
over the students’ safety and well-being. The building file should always follow the
educator and remain intact when a new supervisor takes over.
2. ARTICLE 22.G, PERSONNEL FILES:
“A professional educator may request and have granted that any

materials in the District personnel file (excluding evaluations and letter
stating final disciplinary action) be removed from his/her file if after
three (3) years of being written no subsequent similar entries have been
made into the professional educator’s personnel file.”
“Letters of Expectation shall be removed from a professional educator’s

building file three (3) years after the date of the Letter of Expectation.”
For most of the same reasons, this provision protects educators, not
students. Similar to removing materials from the building files, Article 22.G cleans
the slate for an educator who may, over time, exhibit a pattern of inappropriate
conduct with students. Conduct that is perhaps considered by an administrator as
not serious enough to rise to the level of discipline for one occurrence but is
nevertheless documented should remain in the educator’s files so that if that
educator engages in similar conduct in the future, a pattern can be detected and
appropriate disciplinary action can be taken. Materials relating to allegations of an
educator’s sexual conduct with students should not ever be removed from any
files.

In the case of Mr. Whitehurst’s employment, PPS employees who reviewed
his personnel file found it void of any references to inappropriate conduct with
students. The employees who made recommendations and decisions regarding his
employment took his clean file into consideration when determining that there
was not enough evidence to formally discipline him
. Had the PPS police reports regarding Mr. Whitehurst from the
1980’s and 1990’s been in his personnel file, Maureen Sloane would have seen a
persistent pattern of sexual conduct and had sufficient evidence to justify
discipline or termination in 2001 and again in 2008.
3. ARTICLE 19.H, PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR RIGHTS AND JUST CAUSE:
Letter of Expectation
1. * * *
2. “… Letters of expectation may be placed in the building

file. … Letters in the Letter of Expectation file shall be
organized District-wide by school year and shall be
removed from the file after three (3) years.”
This provision also protects educators, not students. First, letters of
expectation in the building file will, for most of the same reasons, have a short
shelf life of three years or less. The letter is removed sooner than three years if the
supervisor or educator transfers, a common scenario. Second, letters of

expectation are maintained at the District office not by name of educator but
rather, by school year so that they may be expeditiously purged. This further
impairs the District’s ability to detect any pattern of behavior for any particular
educator. A system that tracked letters of expectation by individual employee and
did not remove these notices would improve the District’s ability to adequately
address complaints of educator sexual conduct.
4. ARTICLE 21, COMPLAINT PROCEDURE:
The complaint procedure presumes that the educator’s supervisor will
conduct the investigation of a complaint. For the reasons set forth in the
preceding section in our report, all investigations into sexual conduct complaints
should be led by a qualified, experienced investigator trained to identify
employee/student sexual conduct (including obviously inappropriate behavior as
well as grooming behavior and adult/student boundary violations), and not led by
the school administrators. Consultation with the educator’s supervisor may be
appropriate, and certainly the educator’s supervisor should be consulted in any
investigation, but that administrator should not be in charge of the investigation.

5. ARTICLE 21.C, COMPLAINT PROCEDURE:
“If the supervisor decides to proceed further with the written complaint,
it shall be processed within ten (10) workdays of receipt under the
following circumstances…”
The process outlined in the complaint procedure has the potential to be
rushed by the supervisor in order to meet this deadline. In cases of sexual conduct,
the District may not have a sufficient amount of time to process a complaint within
ten days. We understand this provision to mean that the supervisor will notify the
educator of a complaint in detail within 10 days, not that the complaint itself will
be investigated within 10 days.
Being fully prepared for this meeting and having specific detailed examples
of the actions complained of may from time to time require more than ten
workdays. PAT should not be permitted to argue that the District has lost its
opportunity to proceed further with a complaint of educator sexual conduct – and
has therefore lost its ability to make a record of the complaint or investigate and
possible discipline or dismiss a badly-behaved educator – because of the contract’s
ten-day complaint processing deadline. At a minimum, the parties should agree
that this deadline is aspirational and not enforceable for a complaint of educator
sexual conduct, and agree that the District does not waive its ability to proceed
with a complaint of educator sexual conduct after the ten-day deadline, provided

the District is diligently pursuing the complaint and provides a detailed description
of the complaint within a reasonable time period.
6. ARTICLE 21.D, COMPLAINT PROCEDURE:
If the complaint is used in any manner to support actual or

recommended discipline, administrative transfer, nonrenewal or
dismissal, such record shall be placed in the personnel file and the
complainant’s name shall be disclosed if the unit member so requests.
Some parents who participated in the investigation expressed concerns that
the requirement that a complainant’s name be disclosed upon the educator’s
request leads to under-reporting of complaints and fear of retaliation by the
educator accused of misconduct. A few parent witnesses voiced criticism of the
District after they were cautioned about coming forward with a bullying complaint
against an educator because their identities would be revealed, “and did they
really want that.” They interpreted this caution as a warning, and believed there
could be retaliation once the parents’ – and by extension, their students’ –
identities were disclosed. Whether intended or not, this message was not
well-received and made these parents feel unsupported by the District even when
they were prepared to offer examples of behavior that could have (and in their
minds, should have) resulted in discipline of an educator. Some chose not to
proceed with their complaint as a result.

Per the current contract, if the District intends to formally reprimand the
educator based on a confidential complaint, the complainant’s identity must be
revealed upon request. Given this limitation to confidential complaints, it would be
beneficial for the District to train on and strictly enforce the non-retaliation
provisions of its complaint policies, so that complaints are not under-reported due
to concerns of retaliation.
Some parents also criticized the District for not encouraging anonymous
complaints. Anonymous complaints can have the effect of obstructing a thorough
investigation and/or infringing on an educator’s due process rights. We note that
ORS 339.356(2) requires each school district to adopt a policy prohibiting
harassment and include in that policy a procedure that allows a student or
volunteer to report an act of harassment anonymously to the appropriate
administrator. However, the statute expressly cautions that this requirement does
not “permit remedial action solely on the basis of an anonymous report.” See ORS
339.356(2)(f)(D). In other words, more evidence is needed than merely the
anonymous report before corrective action may be taken by the District.

7. MULTIPLE FILES FOR MISCONDUCT:
The union contract sets forth five separate files that could house documents
pertaining to misconduct by an educator:
1. Investigation File: Article 19.G.8 states, “The written notice of [a

meeting that could result in disciplinary action or termination] shall
not be placed in the professional educator’s building file or personnel
file but may be kept in an investigation file.” Article 19.I.4 states, “The
District shall place paid administrative leave letters in the investigation
file, not in the professional educator’s personnel file.”
2. Letter of Expectation File: Article 19.H.2 states, “Letters of

Expectation may be placed in the building file. Letters of Expectation
shall be placed in a District ‘Letter of Expectation’ file maintained by
the Human Resources Department.”
3. Building File: Articles 21 and 22 refer to the supervisor’s building file

and the constraints currently put upon maintaining documents in that
file for any length of time.
4. Personnel File: Article 22.A states, “There shall be one official District
personnel file, which shall be maintained by the Human Resources
Department.”
5. Grievance File: Article 26.C.8 states, “All documents, communications

and records dealing with the processing of a grievance shall be filed in
a separate grievance file which shall constitute a ‘personnel file,’
within the meaning of the confidentiality provisions of ORS 342.850.
Access to those files shall be limited to those with a valid business
interest in the case.”
The multiple files, even if vigilantly maintained, make it difficult to track a
complaint or concern from start to finish. They also give rise to the possibility that

some relevant documents will be overlooked. The District apparently did not
provide all documents in a timely manner pursuant to one or more public records
requests for documents regarding allegations of Mr. Whitehurst’s sexual conduct.
This was due in part to the manner in which documents regarding Mr. Whitehurst
were maintained (or not) by PPS.
We are concerned that a file scheme requiring portions of related
documents regarding a complaint of sexual conduct to go to five separate locations
will make it challenging for the District to “connect the dots” because no file will
have all the necessary information or put the educator’s current and subsequent
supervisors on notice of the educator’s history. Moreover, in the event of future
budget cuts that result in significant layoffs, transitions and turnover in the HR
Department, the District could once again face the systemic issue of poor
document management, which could lead again to an inadequate response to a
complaint of educator sexual conduct.
Lastly, but no less important, maintaining documents in five separate
locations will make it more difficult for the public to gain access to files they may
be entitled to see.

RECOMMENDATION: CHANGE THE DISTRICT’S UNION CONTRACT WITH PAT TO
ENSURE THE PROTECTION OF STUDENTS, AS DETAILED IN THIS SECTION.
We recommend that the District and PAT agree to move forward to change
the provisions in the PAT-PPS contract to better protect students. We understand
that the current three-year contract (2016-2019) has been ratified and cannot be
re-opened except in exigent economic circumstances. The District is essentially
locked in to the current provisions until it negotiates the next three-year contract.
We advise the District and PAT to negotiate and implement changes to the
contract at its earliest opportunity.
RECOMMENDATION: REVIEW AND CHANGE THE DISTRICT’S OTHER UNION

CONTRACTS, AS APPROPRIATE, TO SIMILARLY ENSURE THE PROTECTION OF
STUDENTS.
We note that the union contract analyzed above is not the only union
contract that may have provisions that impact the District’s ability to adequately
address complaints. The District has a total of five unions:
• PAT, Portland Association of Teachers: teachers, counselors, school

psychologists, librarians and substitutes;
• PFSP, Portland Federation of School Professionals: secretaries,
educational assistants, paraeducators and clerks;
• SEIU, Service Employees International Union: custodians and nutrition
services workers;

• DCU, District Council of Unions: maintenance and construction crafts
workers; and
• ATU, Amalgamated Transit Union: bus drivers.
We did not review any union contracts other than the current PAT agreement. To
the extent any other contracts have similar provisions that protect employees over
students, require the removal of documents from files, present unrealistic time
frames for investigating complaints, or make document management of
complaints difficult, we recommend the District make similar changes in its other
contracts.

Are there other complaints about sexual misconduct by other employees or agents
of the District that have not been adequately addressed?
During our investigation, we did not learn of any complaints about sexual
conduct or abuse by any current PPS employees or agents of the District that had
not been or were not being adequately addressed.

Do PPS employees receive adequate training in recognizing possible predatory
behavior and how to respond appropriately?
It is a challenge to assess whether the training PPS employees receive is
“adequate,” as there is no clear way to determine the extent to which employees
have (or have not) applied what they have learned. Educators and other school
staff who worked with Mr. Whitehurst did not report him for inappropriate
conduct, although high school students found him to be inappropriately flirtatious
at their schools in an obvious way, and rumors abounded about him dating and
trying to hit on students. We do not know whether the failure to report was due to
a failure to recognize possible predatory behavior, a cultural failure of PPS
employees not viewing it as their responsibility to report another educator for
misconduct, or some other failure.
The current training could certainly be improved.
CURRENT PPS TRAINING:
As of 2009, PPS employees have received training that meets the legal
requirements of ORS 339.400, which requires annual training “on the prevention
and identification of abuse and sexual conduct and on the obligations of school
employees under [Oregon law] and under policies adopted by the school board to

report abuse and sexual conduct.” PPS employees are required to take this annual
online training, and they do so.
While that training may be legally compliant, it is not robust. The online
mandatory training provided by the District could be greatly improved.34 Currently,
PPS employees are required to watch a still-slide, reading-based presentation that
has no sound. Until a few years ago, there was a quiz at the end; this
comprehension component has been removed. The less-than-10-minute, silent
training on educator sexual conduct prevention comes after the child abuse
prevention training slides. While we cannot assess the level of engagement of a
PPS educator who has already watched 34 minutes of silent slides regarding their
mandatory child abuse reporting requirements, and who now has to sit through 10
more minutes of slides displaying text and irrelevant stock photos in a rudimentary
PowerPoint presentation, we imagine the level of enthusiasm for watching this
second segment of the module is low. In sum, this 44-minute experience is not
engaging, and it may not be effective.
The training may send a message that prevention and identification of
sexual conduct and abuse of students by PPS employees is not a priority; rather, it
34
Note that for purposes of the investigation, we watched the online training available to
parents and guardians: https://www.pps.net/Page/1957. We were advised by multiple District
employees that the employee training was identical.

is merely a statutory requirement and an afterthought.
In addition to not being particularly engaging, the current PPS employee
sexual conduct training misses multiple opportunities to educate its employees
about this important subject. For example, the training opens with a slide intended
to illustrate real-life examples of sexual conduct. Unfortunately, the examples only
identify educators in other school districts in Oregon and the training does not
acknowledge that sexual conduct is an issue for this district, as well. All of the
examples involve arrests for illegal behavior and none involve examples of
common inappropriate behavior, such as boundary violations. Boundary violations
are significant issues worth emphasizing.
The introduction acknowledges that sexual conduct and abuse can be
perpetrated by adults in all job categories within schools, and then calls out
teachers (the most common category of suspects) and other specific job
categories, but does not mention coaches – the second most common category.
The slides later set forth the four-part statutory definition of “sexual
conduct” in an ambiguous manner that does not make it clear that all four
elements must be met for the conduct to meet the statutory definition of “sexual
conduct,” or that violation of only the first two elements could result in formal

discipline up to and including termination but would not trigger the obligations of
the educator sexual conduct statute.
The training also does not adequately emphasize the role of social media in
grooming and boundary violations, though this is a growing issue that needs to be
addressed.
A STUDY IN CONTRAST – SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
In stark contrast to the current training provided to PPS employees, Seattle
Public Schools provides an engaging online training that the District should
consider emulating. The training can be found here:
https://www.seattleschools.org/cms/one.aspx?pageId=9291816 (approximately
35-minute training for staff) or here: www.seattleschools.org/misconductvideo
(17-minute training for volunteers). The interactive training is the result of a grant
from the Department of Education. It contains videos and narration, including
interviews of various experts and administrators. To actively engage the viewer,
there are vignettes of realistic examples of borderline conduct with a self-paced
quiz after each scenario, compelling the viewer to consider how “gray” some
situations may be and how easy it is to overlook or misjudge grooming behavior or
boundary violations. It also sends the message that the district takes sexual

conduct seriously and that the responsibility for protecting students from sexual
conduct is shared by the school board, the superintendent, all school employees,
volunteers, parents, state agencies, and law enforcement. The training is required
for all staff members as well as volunteers, and is available for parents and other
community members as well.
PROPOSED CONTENT FOR EFFECTIVE TRAINING:
A Training Guide for Administrators and Educators on Addressing Adult
Sexual Misconduct in the School Setting (“Training Guide”), guidance recently
published by the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS)
Technical Assistance Center of the U.S. Department of Education, Washington,
D.C., 2017, includes extensive guidance on sexual conduct and abuse awareness
and prevention training. The entire training guide can be found here:
https://rems.ed.gov/docs/ASMTrainingGuide.pdf.
The Training Guide recommends that an all-staff training on sexual conduct
and abuse cover the following topics:
 Include a working definition of sexual conduct and abuse.
 Explain the school’s policies, underscoring the fact that some behaviors
(e.g., those meeting the legal definition of child sexual abuse) are
criminal acts. Therefore, certain behaviors may lead to termination of
employment and punishment under the law.

 Identify the warning signs of the effects of sexual conduct and abuse on
children, providing examples, when possible, from reported cases.
 Explain the role and legal responsibilities of mandatory reporters and the
school’s internal reporting procedures.
 Point out the consequences for failing to report sexual conduct and
abuse, as well as protections for those who report in good faith when
incidents of suspected sexual conduct or abuse turn out to be
unsubstantiated.
 Describe how school policy prohibits the making of intentionally false

complaints and the repercussions for doing so. Emphasize that protecting
the reputation of innocent employees is a high priority for the school.
 Identify perpetrator patterns of behavior, providing examples from local

and national media accounts or case studies that are relevant to the
school setting.
 Describe policies and procedures involving transportation, the physical

school environment, toileting, and electronic communications, including
social media.
 Take time to address questionable, but not criminal behaviors (i.e., the
“gray areas”) in both in-person and electronic interactions with students.
 Include information about which students are likely to be targets of

sexual conduct and abuse and what school personnel can do to protect
these at-risk students.
 Identify a district Title IX coordinator(s) and describe their roles, pointing

out the location of their office(s) in the school or district and providing
contact information.
 Discuss the steps school personnel are expected to take to reduce the
risk of sexual conduct and abuse in the physical environment.

 Consider distributing a handout during training that describes the
school’s policies and asking employees to sign it.
 Conduct a post-training assessment mechanism, such as a survey, to

gauge the impact of the training and determine the need for adjustments
in content, approach, or format.
See A Training Guide for Administrators and Educators on Addressing Adult Sexual
Misconduct in the School Setting, page 30.
In addition to the requisite mandatory training for all PPS employees, the
District should provide additional training to its administrators and HR staff, as well
as specialized training to its Title IX coordinator, about how to respond to and
investigate reports of sexual conduct. The Training Guide recommends that
additional administrator training cover the following topics:
 State laws and mandates specific to sexual conduct and abuse prevention
and response.
 Title IX policies and procedures pertaining to sexual conduct and abuse.
 Oversight of the Title IX coordinator.
 Strategies for ensuring prevention and response compliance by other

school personnel.
 Complaint processes and critical communication protocols within the

school and the District.
 The threat-specific and hazard-specific annex(es) relating to sexual

conduct and abuse.

 Policies for placing alleged perpetrators on administrative leave, and
maintaining confidentiality during internal and external investigations.
 Guidelines for working with local law enforcement.
 Measures to promote school recovery after an incident.
 Recordkeeping, data management, and accountability related to

complaints or reports of sexual conduct and abuse.
See A Training Guide for Administrators and Educators on Addressing Adult Sexual
Misconduct in the School Setting, pages 30-31.
In conclusion, the District has legally compliant training but it could and
should improve its online module to create comprehensive, high-quality training to
help its employees prevent, identify and report sexual conduct. Live face-to-face
training or table-top conversations at leadership meetings, where employees can
actively participate and ask questions, is also recommended, though this type of
training is not legally required.
RECOMMENDATION: IMPROVE THE SEXUAL CONDUCT PREVENTION AND

IDENTIFICATION TRAINING PROVIDED TO PPS EMPLOYEES.
As explained in more detail above, we recommend a wholesale revamping of
online training. The District should allot more time to training in an effective,
interactive, and meaningful manner. The current PAT union contract calls for four
hours of mandatory online training. (See Article 5.C.10.c.) The current sexual

conduct training runs just less than 10 minutes, which means only 4% of the
mandatory online training is allocated to educator sexual conduct.
RECOMMENDATION: REQUIRE SEXUAL CONDUCT PREVENTION AND

IDENTIFICATION TRAINING FOR PPS VOLUNTEERS AND CONTRACTORS.
Other school districts require their contractors and volunteers to take the
same training as their employees. If the District is serious about identifying and
preventing sexual conduct, it should consider adding this requirement. This
recommendation would apply, for example, to the volunteer coaches who
routinely come in contact with PPS students. (Coaches are the second most
common perpetrators of sexual conduct with students.)
RECOMMENDATION: IMPROVE THE SEXUAL CONDUCT PREVENTION AND

IDENTIFICATION TRAINING PROVIDED TO PPS STUDENTS.
ORS 339.400(3) requires the District to make training that is designed to
prevent abuse and sexual conduct available to its students each school year. 35
While the District should not rely on the students to self-report, it should teach its
students to use their voices and to speak up when something is not right, and to
report their concerns without fear of retaliation or of being disbelieved.
35
ORS 339.400(3) states, “An education provider shall make training that is designed to prevent
abuse and sexual conduct available each school year to children who attend a school operated
by the education provider.”

Age-appropriate training can play a role in prevention. Training can teach
students about appropriate boundaries with PPS employees, when to be
concerned about something they see or hear involving themselves or their peers,
and how to report inappropriate or illegal behavior. Training for students should
also emphasize that the District takes student complaints seriously and intends to
respond to any complaints with a full and fair, documented investigation. Students
should also know of their right to notification by the District about any actions
taken by the District based on the student’s report of sexual conduct. We advise
the District implement additional training in home room or health class, or provide
some other age-appropriate, centralized curriculum that is designed to prevent
abuse and sexual conduct. The District should consider translating its materials for
students for whom English is a second language.
RECOMMENDATION: FIX THE MATERIALS RELATING TO SEXUAL CONDUCT ON THE

PPS WEBSITE.
5.10.063-AD (“Prohibition Against Employee Child Abuse and Sexual Conduct
with Students”) states that the District will require annual training for district
employees and provides, “Procedures and resource materials are available and are
on the website.” Currently, there are inconsistencies in the materials on the

website. It would be helpful to ensure that all references to the timing of the
required training are consistent.
The “Child Abuse and Sexual Conduct Reporting Procedures and Resource
Materials,” a pdf available on the PPS website, 36 sets forth timing requirements for
annual training that conflict with other information on the PPS website. On page
15, the materials state:
Principals and department supervisors are responsible to ensure that

each employee under their supervision completes this annual training
in a timely manner.
• Central office employees by August 31, each year
• School-based employees by September 30, each year
• New employees within 30 days of hire date.
However, other references to the training on the PPS website have different
timing requirements. For example, under the tab for Student Support, Health &
Wellness/Child Abuse Prevention Training, the website provides “District
guidelines are for this training to be completed by October 31 for the 2017/18
school year or within 30 days of hire date.” https://www.pps.net/Page/1957
(emphasis added). This date is later than what is laid out in the other materials. We
36
These resource materials should be updated to revise the general counsel contact. Currently,
the materials list Jollee Patterson as one of the two contacts for questions about child abuse and
sexual conduct legal issues, even though Ms. Patterson left the District in July 2016. See pdf at
page 3 (“Introduction and Who to Contact”).

further recommend that PPS relabel this tab “Child Abuse Prevention and Sexual
Conduct Training” so it is clear where to find this information.
Under the tab for HR/Substituting/Substitute Secretaries/Child Abuse
Prevention and Sexual Conduct Training, the website states:
• Every year all administrators are directed by the Superintendent to

have child abuse reporting procedures presentations and sexual
conduct, including taking the online video training, for all Portland
Public School employees.
• All school district employees are required to take the training every
year.
• Any new public school employee hired shall, within six months of
their employment, complete the training.
https://www.pps.net/Page/1688 (emphasis added). This timeframe differs from
the 30-day deadline for new employees to complete the training and should be
consistent with other references on the website. We further recommend that PPS
re-locate this information so it is not buried in a remote section pertaining only to
substitute secretaries.

VI. FORMER PPS EMPLOYEE NORMAN SCOTT
In February 2018, the Board requested that our investigation be informed by
the District’s response to allegations raised about inappropriate conduct by former
PPS educator Norman “Norm” Scott, including the agreements entered into
between the District and Mr. Scott and employment references provided by the
District to other education providers. In the course of our investigation, we
reviewed Mr. Scott’s personnel records, grievance records, and HR files. We also
conducted several interviews specific to Mr. Scott. However, we did not
investigate Mr. Scott as a comprehensive separate subject of our investigation
because we understood the Board did not expect a full review of his employment
(as with Mr. Whitehurst) and desired that we focus on the post-employment
agreements. The information we gathered is not, and should not be construed as,
comprehensive or exhaustive.
We found similarities between the two educators and how their sexual
misconduct was addressed (or not) by the District. Both educators ogled female
students or made inappropriate verbal comments, for which they received verbal
counseling but rarely had written documentation of any inappropriate conduct of a
sexual nature placed in their files. Like Mr. Whitehurst, Mr. Scott had a reputation

among female students for being “creepy” and gave certain attractive female
students unwanted attention. Some female students complained that they were
uncomfortable around him and did not like the attention. Students felt unheard or
disbelieved when they brought subjective complaints (for example, about being
leered at by their PE teacher) to the attention of administrators, and did not get an
adequate response to their complaints.
Both educators had the benefit of a fresh start when they moved to a
different school and started a new building file from scratch, leaving behind any
previous supervisor’s documented concerns. Administrators rarely had enough
evidence to issue formal discipline due to the union contract’s “just cause”
requirements, and the few investigations that were conducted were not robust.
The District had no centralized method to track all the complaints and concerns, so
it did not detect or respond to the pattern of misconduct.
Both educators engaged in boundary violations with students that were
inappropriate but not clearly prohibited by any PPS policy (Mr. Whitehurst tried to
engage Faubion students on Facebook, while Mr. Scott texted and left voicemails
on his TAs’ personal cell phones and gave them inappropriately personal gifts).
And both educators ended their long careers by resigning with favorable
terms in their agreements such that no one would know there was concern about

their inappropriate behavior around female students.
Mr. Scott taught for 36 years in the Portland Public Schools as a health and
PE teacher. He started in 1976 at Sellwood Middle School as a PE teacher, taught
PE briefly at Beaumont Middle School for a year in the 1990’s, and then returned
to Sellwood from 1995-2006 (except in 2004-05, when he taught half-time at
Franklin High School). In 2006, Mr. Scott moved to Grant High School, where he
taught until his employment ended in 2012.
From time to time throughout his long career at the District, Mr. Scott had
performance and conduct issues. Many of these issues did not arise from
inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature with students, but they involved a
While Mr. Scott was a teacher at Sellwood, parents and students
complained that his conduct made female students uncomfortable. Female
students complained he was “creepy” and would brush against them and touch
them inappropriately, purportedly to assist them, when they were stretching or
exercising in PE class. He was also known to occasionally walk into the girls’ locker
room when he knew the students were changing. A student complained that Mr.
Scott was ogling her as he made multiple trips to his car one day (she was seated
outside the school). Students at Sellwood felt their concerns went unheeded.

Although the principal (Frank Scotto, who later joined the HR Department) verbally
counseled Mr. Scott about his behavior, the District was not consistently
responsive to the students’ concerns. Sometimes it was quite the reverse. One
student was forced to apologize to Mr. Scott after she was caught writing a note
complaining about how creepy he was and in it called him “Molester Scott.”
As a side gig, Mr. Scott led trips to the East Coast. These trips were not
sponsored by PPS but they were heavily advertised to Sellwood students, and
many 8th graders tended to go on them as a graduation trip. Two years in a row, in
the summers of 1999 and 2000, there were complaints about Mr. Scott’s poor
judgment and inappropriate behavior on these trips. The District attempted to rein
in Mr. Scott’s ability to coordinate his trips on school premises and use school
resources to organize them.
Thereafter, Mr. Scott continued to recruit PPS
students for his trips, though he apparently abided by the new restrictions. One
student recalled that after he was not allowed to recruit students at school, he
came to her home uninvited to provide information about an upcoming trip.

In 2001, principal Scotto received a complaint from another Sellwood
educator that something had taken place in Mr. Scott’s office that could potentially
rise to the definition of child abuse.
Mr. Scott transferred to Grant High School in 2006, where he taught Health.
There is nothing in his files to indicate the transfer was a deliberate effort to move
an offending educator to avoid issuing discipline. At Grant, many parents and
students continued to complain about his conduct and performance. Some
students had issues with his teaching style and asked to be switched out of his
classes. Some female students complained he was “creepy” and they were
uncomfortable being in his class. He offended some students when he called them

“beautiful” or told them they would “make good wives.” Mr. Scott was verbally
counseled from time to time regarding his inappropriate conduct in the classroom.
In December 2011, Mr. Scott’s student TAs (all females) complained to the
vice principal that Mr. Scott had asked for their personal cell phone numbers and
they were receiving unwanted texts and voicemails from him. As a Christmas gift,
he had given at least two of the TAs body lotion. They were offended and found
this gift from a teacher disturbingly personal. 37
(See EXHIBIT 21).
When asked about these gifts, Mr. Scott explained they were not intended to be sexual in
37
nature.

The “Retirement Agreement,” as it was titled, was negotiated by the union’s
outside counsel and the District’s Legal Department. The terms of the agreement
included the District providing only basic employment information if contacted
about his employment. Other than dates of employment, position(s) held, and the
fact that Mr. Scott had retired, the District agreed not to provide other
information. The District also agreed to put “any and all discipline issued to Mr.
Scott over the course of his [36-year] District employment in a sealed file in Mr.
Scott’s personnel file, to be opened only by the superintendent or his/her
representative, Mr. Scott or his/her representative, or a representative of the
Portland Association of Teachers, unless required by law.” (See EXHIBIT 22.)
In 2013, Mr. Scott applied to work for the Archdiocese of Portland as a
substitute teacher in the Catholic schools. The Archdiocese sent an inquiry to the
District asking whether Mr. Scott had a substantiated report of child abuse or
sexual conduct while employed at PPS.

.38 Ms. Murphy checked “yes” on the form, and attached
the warning letter itself to the form so the Archdiocese could see the reprimand
for sexual conduct and decide for itself if it wanted to hire Mr. Scott. (See EXHIBIT
23.)
In 2012, when the District , the
District did not yet have internal formal protocols in place to fulfill the procedural
requirements of the sexual conduct statute, such as formal notice to the educator
of the substantiated report and his/her right to appeal. Mr. Scott therefore had not
been provided the notice that is due an educator when there is a substantiated
report of sexual conduct reportable to education providers who may later inquire
about the educator’s employment.
When Mr. Scott learned from the Archdiocese in late 2013 that the District
had disclosed that Mr. Scott was the subject of a substantiated report of child
abuse or sexual conduct, he asked the District to promptly remedy what he
considered to be an error. He then hired a lawyer who threatened to sue the
District for breach of the Retirement Agreement. Through his counsel, Mr. Scott
38
Mr. Fish had already responded affirmatively and attached the letter of warning to a prior
inquiry by an education service district. Ms. Murphy may have simply referred to this prior form
and checked the same box on the inquiry from the Archdiocese.

demanded $5,500, written acknowledgment of the breach, and a letter retracting
the “erroneous information” communicated to the Archdiocese.
HR legal counsel Stephanie Harper received the correspondence from
Mr. Scott’s attorney and sought advice from Miller Nash (specifically, Michael
Porter). Ms. Harper had joined the District earlier that year and had no prior
involvement in the negotiation of the Retirement Agreement.
Mr. Porter advised Ms. Harper that

The District faced potential additional liability for two reasons: (1) the
District had not followed the statutory protocols proscribed in ORS 339.388(9) but
had indicated in response to an inquiry that Mr. Scott had been the subject of a
substantiated report of sexual conduct, and (2) the District had entered into a
resignation agreement that restricted its ability to disclose anything more than
basic employment information in response to inquiries about Mr. Scott.
Had the District refused to retract the disclosure it could have faced a
challenging legal dispute that would result, win or lose, in significant legal fees. The
District was defending multiple lawsuits in 2013 and was under scrutiny for its high
legal fees. To Mr. Porter,
Ms. Harper, also acutely aware of the resource-constrained environment in which
she worked and engaged in all-consuming bargaining mediation with PAT in an
effort to stave off a teachers’ strike, apparently agreed with him. 39
The District entered into an Agreement and Release in which it paid Mr.
Scott $3,500 and issued a letter of retraction to the Archdiocese; in exchange, Mr.
39
Paralegal Siobhan Murphy

However, we note that Ms. Murphy later signed a
Medford School District Sexual Misconduct Disclosure Release in March 2014 indicating that
Mr. Scott was not the subject of a substantiated report of child abuse or sexual conduct.

Scott released the District from all claims.40 (See EXHIBIT 24.) The retraction letter
read as follows:
Due to an administrative error, the form indicates that Norm Scott was
the subject of a substantiated report of child abuse or sexual conduct.
That information is incorrect, and instead the correct entries should
indicate that Mr. Scott has not been the subject of a substantiated
report of child abuse or sexual conduct and that he is not the subject
of an ongoing investigation related to a report of suspected child
abuse or sexual conduct. Mr. Scott retired from Portland Public
Schools, effective June 30, 2012.
(See EXHIBIT 25.) This language was proposed by Miller Nash and sent to
Stephanie Harper. The agreement was approved and the letter signed by chief HR
officer Sean Murray.
From the perspective that the right thing to do is to keep all students safe
from potential harm, it was not appropriate for the District to issue a retraction if
in fact it had determined Mr. Scott engaged in conduct of a sexual nature. (It is not
clear whether this conclusion was reached in the January 2012 letter of warning, or
whether the District was merely concerned about boundary violations by Mr. Scott
40
Indeed, Mr. Scott did later sue the District, just not over the affirmative responses to the ESD
inquiries. He contended that the District’s report to the TSPC, made soon after he signed the
Retirement Agreement but before he signed the Agreement and Release, violated the terms of
his Retirement Agreement. PPS denied it violated the terms of the Retirement Agreement
because the District did not – and never intended to – waive its obligation to report conduct to
the TSPC and argued Mr. Scott had released all claims against the District in the subsequent
Agreement and Release. Miller Nash represented PPS and won this case on summary judgment.

that fell below the threshold for a “substantiated report of sexual conduct.”) The
District would have been hard pressed to re-open the investigation into the
January 2012 allegations that resulted in his letter of warning or belatedly issue the
notice required by the sexual conduct statute. Furthermore, the decision to defend
a lawsuit for breach of contract and defamation in lieu of settling for nuisance
value and a retraction would probably have been questioned, if not roundly
criticized, by the Board at the time. The District appears to have made its decision
to agree to issue a retraction in the face of circumstances that on balance weighed
in favor of an expedient and cost-effective resolution.
Mr. Scott’s post-employment complaints appear to be the result of two
separate issues: first, the District agreed – as it agreed in Mr. Whitehurst’s
resignation agreement – to restrict what it would disclose about an educator’s
employment, including his past issues of inappropriate sexual behavior. The
District should not have agreed to suppress this information. Second, the District
did not have the protocols in place that are prescribed in ORS 339.370-.400 and
did not provide Mr. Scott with the appropriate notice and appeal rights when it
delivered his letter of warning.

We understand that both of these issues have been addressed by the
District such that these issues should not occur in the future if the District’s
protocols are followed.
In a lamentable turn of events, PPS’s affirmative disclosure of sexual conduct
apparently did not deter another school district from hiring Mr. Scott as a
substitute teacher. Mr. Scott was found guilty in October 2017 of sexually abusing
six girls while working in 2015 as a substitute PE teacher at Gardiner Middle School
in Oregon City. It appears the Oregon City school district was on notice of the same
sexual conduct that had caused a controversy at PPS after Mr. Scott’s resignation.
Although the disclosure to the Archdiocese was retracted, the other disclosures
that had already been made were not.
The Clackamas Education Service District (CESD) acts as a clearinghouse for
HB 2062 disclosure inquiries on behalf of the Clackamas County public school
districts. In 2012, CESD sent a disclosure release to the District and was given an
affirmative response that Mr. Scott was the subject of a substantiated report of
child abuse or sexual conduct (the letter of warning was sent along with the
disclosure). CESD loaded this information into its database and provided this
information to any Clackamas County school district that inquired about Mr. Scott.

As of February 2015, the CESD also uploaded to Mr. Scott’s file a letter from
the TSPC dismissing an investigation into Mr. Scott’s conduct. In May 2012, PPS
had reported to the TSPC that Mr. Scott “may have violated adult/student
boundaries.” The TSPC did not investigate the concern until October 2014. It
dismissed the matter without taking any action four months later after it did not
find evidence sufficient to charge Mr. Scott with professional misconduct.
Mr. Scott walked the TSPC’s dismissal letter into the CESD in February 2015 and
requested that it be added to his file.
Mr. Scott worked as a substitute at Gardiner Middle School on October 5,
2015. Based on complaints of inappropriate touching by female students in his PE
classes, he was removed from the school before the end of the day and later
charged for his criminal conduct. Mr. Scott was convicted of multiple counts of
sexual abuse in the third degree and harassment in November 2017. 41 He has
appealed his conviction.
VII. ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS
41
Mr. Scott was sentenced to six months’ incarceration in the county jail, plus a five year period
of supervised probation that requires him to register as a sexual offender; have no contact with
minors or the victims’ families; be financially responsible for all counseling costs incurred by the
victims; not teach or be present on any school property; not be involved in any organizations
that would place him in direct contact with children; and surrender his teaching license.

RECOMMENDATION: EXERCISE TRANSPARENCY AND DO NOT ENTER INTO
RESIGNATION AGREEMENTS THAT RESTRICT DISCLOSURE OF POSSIBLE SEXUAL
CONDUCT.
An educator suspected of sexual conduct is a challenge to any school
district. If a district fires the educator, it may face a very costly legal battle with the
educator’s union and, if the termination is not upheld, may have to return the
educator to the school. Putting an educator on paid leave while the TSPC
investigates the complaint is also costly because the TSPC can take months or even
years to complete its investigation due to internal and external factors; meanwhile,
the school district pays the educator’s salary plus the salary of a substitute teacher.
Resignation agreements inked before an investigation is completed provide an
expedient, final, and usually much less expensive way for a district to get an
offending educator out of its schools.
But at what cost? In exchange for protecting a school district from draining
its resources to defend arbitrations and lawsuits, resignation agreements with
problem educators can put at serious risk the safety of students in other districts.
ORS 339.392, part of the statutory scheme passed in 2009 to prevent and
report substantiated sexual conduct, was intended to curb this practice. It states,
in part (emphasis added):

(1) An education provider may not enter into a collective bargaining
agreement, an employment contract, an agreement for resignation or
termination, a severance agreement or any other contract or agreement that:
(a) Has the effect of suppressing information relating to an

ongoing investigation related to a report of suspected abuse or
sexual conduct or relating to a substantiated report of abuse or
sexual conduct by a current or former employee;
(b) Affects the duties of the education provider to report
suspected abuse or sexual conduct or to discipline a current or
former employee for a substantiated report of abuse or sexual
conduct;
(c) Impairs the ability of the education provider to discipline an

employee for a substantiated report of abuse or sexual
conduct; or
(d) Requires the education provider to expunge substantiated

information about abuse or sexual conduct from any documents
maintained by an education provider.
Mr. Whitehurst was not the subject of an ongoing investigation related to a
report of suspected abuse or sexual conduct at the time of his resignation. Nor was
there ever a substantiated report made about Mr. Whitehurst alleging sexual
conduct against students, in part because reports of suspected sexual conduct to
the District were inadequately investigated and hence, never substantiated. We do
not find that the District violated ORS 339.392 when it negotiated a resignation
agreement with Mr. Whitehurst.

There have been other educators, however, who left the District with
resignation agreements that restricted the District’s ability to share information
relating to that employee’s conduct with other education providers that requested
such information.
Historically, PPS has taken the legal position that ORS 339.392 prohibits the
District from covering up substantiated sexual conduct through an agreement, but
does allow the District to negotiate a resignation agreement before the conduct is
substantiated (for example, before a detailed investigation can be completed that
includes an interview of the educator accused of sexual conduct), so long as the
agreement does not suppress information.
While the District’s past practice may meet the letter of the law, it appears
to violate the law’s spirit – that is, to prevent sexual conduct from occurring in
other districts by being forthcoming about past misconduct. In our review of some
resignation agreements entered into between 2011-2016 with PPS educators
accused of inappropriate sexual behavior and/or boundary violations, we found
restrictive terms in resignation agreements negotiated between the HR and/or
Legal Departments and counsel for the union that protected the educator and put
students in other districts at risk. They include:

• Agreeing to limit HR inquiry responses to only basic employment
information such as the employee’s position, dates of employment,
the fact he/she resigned, and his/her salary at the time of resignation.
• Agreeing to remove from the personnel file and maintain in a

separate location all investigatory information relating to allegations
of inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature.
• Agreeing to place all discipline issued to the educator over the course
of his/her employment in a sealed file within the educator’s personnel
file, to be opened only by specified individuals or as required by law.
• Agreeing to respond, if asked whether the educator’s employment

included any sexual misconduct, that there was an investigation into
allegations of sexual misconduct that the educator denied, no findings
were made, and the educator resigned before the conclusion of the
investigation.
The District made the expedient choice to agree to these terms in an effort
to move the educator out of the District in a resource-efficient, timely manner.42
Other districts may be agreeing to similar terms in their resignation agreements.
However, expediency disserves the longer term goal of protection of all children.
The District has been unwilling to take on the union in difficult dismissal
cases but we encourage it to do just that – even if the District loses from time to
time, and even if it is costly. There is a mission-critical reason to go through the
dismissal process and terminate the employment of educators who violate

42
The lack of uniform direction and support from past Boards regarding recommended educator
terminations may also have been a factor in the decision to enter into a resignation agreement.

important policies and neglect their duty to their students; it reinforces the
message educators are first and foremost employees of the District who have a
responsibility to PPS students to keep them safe.
If the District deems it too costly or too risky to fight a dismissal case and
resignation is a more desirable alternative, then any resignation agreement that
the District enters into should allow the District the discretion to disclose
information freely. Entering into a resignation agreement that restricts the
District’s ability to disclose reports of suspected sexual conduct puts PPS’s risks
ahead of the potential for future harm to other students.
We recommend the District handle the departure of these occasional
problematic educators differently. The District should be accurate, honest and
transparent in response to inquiries about employees who have left the District.
PPS should not enter into any more resignation agreements that prevent the
disclosure of sexual conduct that potentially could have been substantiated if only
a complete and thorough investigation had taken place before the employee
resigned. We are concerned about the scenario where an employee resigns in the
middle of an ongoing investigation into potential sexual conduct that has yet to be
substantiated (or not) because the investigation has not been completed. It is not
appropriate to end the investigation prematurely and agree in a resignation

agreement not to disclose any details regarding the allegations, unless the District
has concluded that sexual conduct did not in fact occur.
We also have concerns about a scenario in which an employee resigns and
then at a later date, evidence surfaces of the employee’s sexual conduct with
students during the time period the employee was employed by PPS. 43 If there is a
resignation agreement restricting the District from disclosing any details about the
employee’s employment, then disclosure of the sexual conduct could lead to
litigation (specifically, a breach of contract claim by the employee). If the District
enters into a resignation agreement with a seemingly ethical PPS employee, it
should include a reservation by the District to disclose any known sexual conduct
and not provide a neutral reference should any credible complaints come to light.
Open transparency and full disclosure is the only way all school districts will
be able to root out employees who engage in sexual conduct or abuse and stop
“passing the trash” by allowing an employee accused of sexual conduct to leave a
school through a resignation agreement or other means and quietly seek
employment at another school district without the new school district being
alerted to the allegation. We understand that the District with support from a new
superintendent and new Board has recently changed its approach and is currently
43
It is entirely possible – as was the case with Mr. Whitehurst’s employment – that additional
details regarding an educator’s conduct can surface after the educator leaves the District.

refusing to enter into any agreements that prevent full disclosure of suspected or
substantiated sexual conduct, and we endorse this approach.
RECOMMENDATION: IMPLEMENT AN ADULT/STUDENT BOUNDARIES POLICY.
We recommend the District adopt a policy to provide its employees with
information to increase an awareness of their role in protecting students from
inappropriate conduct by adults and to ensure that contact and communication
with students occur in a professional manner.
The District currently has some of the precepts of an adult/student
boundaries policy in various other current and draft policies and administrative
directives. For example, the District already has a sexual harassment policy
(5.10.62-P) that prohibits staff-to-student harassment. It also has an administrative
directive (5.10.063-AD) that prohibits sexual conduct with students, as that term is
defined under the Oregon statutory scheme. Furthermore, the District is in the
process of rolling out a social media administrative directive that is intended to
address proper electronic communications between employees and students. And
in the PPS School Staff Handbook for 2017-18, there is an ethics policy that
reminds licensed educators of their obligation to meet the TSPC’s professional,
moral and ethical standards in their interactions with students. The District quotes

the TSPC’s “Ethical Educator” standards (OAR 584-020-0035), including in relevant
part:
1. The ethical educator, in fulfilling obligations to the student, will:
a. Keep the confidence entrusted in the profession as it relates to

confidential information concerning a student and the student’s
family;
b. Refrain from exploiting professional relationships with any

student for personal gain, or in support of persons or issues; and
c. Maintain an appropriate professional student-teacher

relationship by:
i. Not demonstrating or expressing professionally

inappropriate interest in a student’s personal life;
ii. Not accepting or giving or exchanging romantic or

overly personal gifts or notes with a student;
iii. Reporting to the educator’s supervisor if the educator

has reason to believe a student is or may be becoming
romantically attached to the educator; and
iv. Honoring appropriate adult boundaries with students

in conduct and conversations at all times.
We recommend that the Board create a policy and, if necessary, the District
staff develop a complementary administrative directive that directly addresses
interactions between all PPS employees and students. The policy should address a
range of behaviors that include not only unlawful or improper interactions with

students, but also boundary-blurring and grooming behaviors that undermine the
professional adult/student relationship and lead to actual or apparent impropriety.
The policy should define and give examples of boundary violations and
appearances of impropriety that the District expects its employees to avoid. It
should also cover in detail the District’s expectations for staff/student electronic
communications. Finally, like the administrative directive prohibiting employee
sexual conduct with students, the policy should include an expectation that any
employee who observes or has knowledge of another employee’s violation of this
policy will immediately report the information to the principal, who shall report the
information to the Title IX coordinator (or other clearly-designated HR intake point
person who routes the information to the Title IX coordinator). And finally, if the
employee suspects child abuse, the employee must also follow the District’s child
abuse reporting policy and immediately make a mandatory report to law
enforcement.
RECOMMENDATION: LOBBY FOR CHANGES OUTSIDE THE DISTRICT THAT WILL MAKE
OREGON SAFER FOR STUDENTS.
The problem of sexual conduct with students is not unique to PPS. It is a
problem state-wide and nation-wide. As Oregon’s largest school district, PPS
should lobby the legislature to amend the definition of “sexual conduct” in

ORS 339.370-.400, the statutory scheme intended to assure the prevention,
identification and reporting of sexual conduct. The definition currently requires
conduct by a school employee that is sexual in nature and directed toward any
prekindergarten through grade 12 student not only to unreasonably interfere with
a student’s educational performance but also to create an intimidating, hostile or
offensive educational environment before it is deemed to be “substantiated sexual
conduct” that must be reported to other education providers inquiring about the
employee’s past record. This bar is too high, as it does not focus on preventing
sexual conduct by the employee. Instead, it only catches sexual conduct has
already occurred and was not prevented by the employee’s former school district.
The current definition also does not address the situation where the student
is groomed and flattered by the attention, not appreciating (yet) that the sexual
attention the student is receiving is causing damage to their mental health, or the
situation where the student is academically resilient and does not objectively
manifest poor grades, spotty attendance, or some other indicator of an
unreasonable interference in educational performance. 44 The employee’s conduct
44
Query also why the legislature requires an “unreasonable” interference in a student’s
educational performance and why any interference in a student’s educational performance due
to an employee’s inappropriate sexual conduct shouldn’t be enough to satisfy the definition.

is these scenarios is no less unethical, and should be disclosed to future
educational providers conducting a background check.
PPS should lobby to align the statutory definition of sexual conduct with the
TSPC’s definition of sexual conduct. Given that the TSPC deems any sexual conduct
(using its own regulatory definition) with a student by an educator to be evidence
of gross neglect of duty and grounds for TSPC disciplinary action, including
suspension or revocation of the educator’s license (see OAR 584-020-0040(4)(f)),
there is no reason the state statute that applies to all employees of educational
providers should have a separate definition with a higher bar. Meeting the TSPC’s
“lesser” definition of sexual conduct is enough to end an educator’s career, and
the same standard should apply for disclosures of substantiated sexual conduct to
subsequent education providers.
“Sexual conduct” as defined by the TSPC is any conduct with a student which
includes but is not limited to:
(a) The intentional touching of the breast or sexual or other

intimate parts of a student;
(b) Causing, encouraging, or permitting a student to touch the

breasts or sexual or other intimate parts of a student;
(c) Sexual advances or requests for sexual favors directed towards

a student;

(d) Verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when directed
toward a student or when such conduct has the effect of
unreasonably interfering with a student’s educational
performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive
educational environment; or
(e) Verbal or physical conduct which has the effect of unreasonably

interfering with a student’s educational performance or creates
an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational environment.
See OAR 584-020-0005(5).
In addition to changing the Oregon statute’s definition of “sexual conduct”
for purposes of the reporting statute, PPS should lobby to shorten the TSPC’s
timelines for investigating educators. It should not take years for the Commission
to investigate sexual conduct complaints brought to their attention. During the
time period that an educator is being investigated, there is no public
acknowledgment by the TSPC that the educator is under investigation. Nothing
prevents that educator from finding another teaching job while under investigation
(unless the educator candidly discloses this fact to potential employers). We
recommend that the District advocate for shorter timelines in order to keep
students safe from unethical educators.

RECOMMENDATION: REVISE ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTIVE 5.10.063—AD TO CLARIFY
THAT THERE IS SUFFICIENT CAUSE FOR CORRECTIVE ACTION WITHOUT ALL FOUR
ELEMENTS OF SEXUAL CONDUCT.
We recommend the District add a line to the definitions section of its
administrative directive, 5.10.063--AD (“Prohibition Against Employee Child Abuse
and Sexual Conduct With Students”). That section currently reads:
I. Definitions
Sexual conduct and child abuse by district/school employees
will not be tolerated. All district employees are subject to the
guidelines of this administrative directive.
(1) “Sexual conduct” is any verbal, physical, or other conduct
by a school employee that is sexual in nature; directed
toward any prekindergarten through grade 12 student;
unreasonably interferes with a student’s educational
performance; and creates an intimidating, hostile or
offensive educational environment.
(2) “Child abuse or neglect” is any form of abuse, including
abuse through neglect and abuse or neglect by a third
party, of a person under age 18.
The District should consider clarifying that the first two elements of the definition
of “sexual conduct” will be considered sufficient cause for taking disciplinary
action. As written, it sounds like all four elements must be met before sexual
conduct will not be tolerated. We realize this AD was probably written in response
to the statute (which contains the four-part definition). However, the District

should be taking steps to address an employee’s misconduct before it causes an
unreasonable interference with a student’s educational performance or creates
and intimidating, hostile or offensive educational environment.
RECOMMENDATION: REQUIRE EMPLOYEES TO CHECK WITH THE HR DEPARTMENT

BEFORE GIVING A RECOMMENDATION TO ANOTHER EMPLOYEE OR SERVING AS A
REFERENCE.
The District does not currently have a policy restricting its employees from
giving recommendations and serving as a reference for other employees. Given the
confidential nature of personnel investigations, most PPS employees are unaware
of the reasons another employee has left the District. In the case of Mr.
Whitehurst’s departure, for example, Mr. Wilhelmi was unaware of any reason not
to provide a positive reference when Mr. Whitehurst requested one.
The District should have a process by which any employee wanting to give a
reference to a former employee is required to check with the HR Department to
confirm that a reference can be given freely. This process would only preclude
individuals from providing such references if the HR Department informs them that
restrictions exist.

RECOMMENDATION: DESIGNATE A LIAISON BETWEEN THE PPB AND THE DISTRICT
TO MONITOR CASES INVOLVING ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL CONDUCT BY A PPS
EMPLOYEE.
We recommend that PPS meet with the PPB and the District Attorney’s
Office and designate a person within each organization who will be responsible to
record, review and monitor every case against a PPS employee that is presented to
local law enforcement. Steps should also be taken within each organization to
ensure that these designated individuals are made aware of each case of sexual
conduct involving PPS employees. The records of all such monitoring should be
reported to a designated official at a high level in each organization on a regular
basis.

VIII. SUMMARY OF ALL RECOMMENDATIONS
 Adopt the following procedures to investigate sexual conduct complaints

(see pages 130-142):

similar designee.
2. Have a specialized trained investigator with expertise in investigating

employee/student sexual conduct complaints investigate each
complaint thoroughly and fairly.

supervisor, HR legal counsel, Title IX coordinator, and investigator if
different from the Title IX coordinator) make credibility decisions and
agree regarding what level of discipline to impose, if any.

 Work with PAT to change certain contract provisions in the District’s union
contract to adequately address sexual conduct complaints and ensure the
protection of students. Specific provisions of the PAT contract include Article
22 (Personnel Files), Article 19 (Professional Educator Rights and Just Cause),
and Article 21 (Complaint Procedure). (See pages 143-153.)
 Review and change the District’s other union contracts, as appropriate, to

adequately address sexual conduct complaints and to ensure the protection
of students. (See page153-154.)
 Improve the District’s sexual conduct training in the following ways (see
pages 160-167):

provided to PPS employees.
2. Require sexual conduct prevention and identification training for PPS

volunteers and contractors.

provided to PPS students.
4. Correct and update the materials regarding sexual conduct on the PPS
website.
 Exercise transparency with employee separations and do not enter into

resignation agreements that restrict the disclosure of possible sexual
conduct (see pages 182-188).
 Implement an adult/student boundaries policy (see pages 188-190).
 Lobby for changes outside the District to make Oregon safer for students
(see pages 190-193).
 Revise the administrative directive entitled “Prohibition Against Employee

Child Abuse and Sexual Conduct With Students” to clarify that the District
has cause to issue corrective action even if all four statutory elements of
sexual conduct are not met (see pages 194-195).
 Require PPS employees to check with the HR Department before providing a

reference for a former PPS employee (see page 195).
 Designate a liaison between the PPB and the District to monitor cases
involving allegations of sexual conduct by a PPS employee (see page 196).

IX. ISSUES BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THE INVESTIGATION
Certain issues came to the attention of the investigation team but were not
pursued because they were beyond the original scope of the investigation or could
not be completed within the timeline and budget approved by the Board. The
Board may want to consider pursuing these topics, as they deem appropriate.
Consequences for Mr. Whitehurst. One question often asked by witnesses in
our investigation was whether there could be legal consequences for Mr.
Whitehurst for his past sexual conduct with students. The scope of our
investigation was limited to what employee or systemic failures resulted in Mr.
Whitehurst never being disciplined. We did not explore possible recourse against
Mr. Whitehurst. Pursuant to his resignation agreement, Mr. Whitehurst received
early retirement benefits. He is also collecting pension benefits of $2,984/month
from the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) (see
https://gov.oregonlive.com/pers). Mr. Whitehurst’s PERS benefit is beyond the
District’s control. However, the District may want to refer our investigation report
to its general counsel to evaluate whether there is any other recourse for the
District. Our report could also be given to the District Attorney’s Office to evaluate
whether there is any criminal conduct that can still be prosecuted.

Caprice’s Retaliation Claim. During the investigation, Caprice (the student
who notified the District in 2008 and 2012 about allegations of Mr. Whitehurst’s
sexual conduct with Franklin students in 1984) made a formal complaint that she
had been retaliated against on two occasions: (1) after she brought her allegations
to the District’s attention in 2012, she believed she was blackballed from working
at Faubion as a substitute teacher; and (2) after she indicated to outside counsel
defending the Thompson v. PPS lawsuit that she was sympathetic to the plaintiff
and had spoken to the plaintiff’s counsel, she believed she was threatened by the
District’s outside counsel. Because this retaliation complaint involved a current
employee, it was deemed to be outside the scope of our investigation and referred
to the District, where the complaint was investigated internally and responded to
by a letter dated February 9, 2018. To the extent the evidence in our investigation
overlapped with that investigation, we have no reason to disagree with the
District’s findings.
Past Employment Issues Involving Former Employee Norm Scott. The Board
expanded the original scope of our investigation to include certain aspects of Norm
Scott’s employment. We investigated issues relating to Mr. Scott’s resignation
agreement and post-employment inquiries about sexual conduct, as these issues

were similar to the analysis we were already conducting for Mr. Whitehurst. We
did not exhaustively investigate Mr. Scott’s employment history, as the
investigation scope, timeline, and budget had been set by the Board. From the
evidence we did gather, however, there seemed to be a pattern in Mr. Scott’s
employment similar to Mr. Whitehurst’s history, where allegations were not
vigorously investigated and where full information about the employee’s overall
conduct was not known by all administrators who had to deal with him.
One additional issue that the Board should also address is its policy for field
trips and out-of-town travel. Mr. Scott led trips to the east coast that led to parent
and student complaints about his conduct during those trips. The most serious
incident was arguably sexual in nature and was the subject of testimony at his
sentencing hearing in Clackamas County last year. Although the trips were actually
not sponsored by PPS, they involved PPS students and teachers and the perception
by students and their families was that these trips were promoted by or related to
PPS even though they were independent. When Mr. Scott led other local field trips
that were District-sponsored, he appeared to have exercised poor judgment. The
Board may be well served to tighten up its policies relating to all trips, both
District-sponsored and independent but led by District employees.

The Role of Student Teaching Assistants. In both Mr. Whitehurst’s career and
Mr. Scott’s career, student TAs made complaints about the educators. Both
teachers’ selections of their TAs appeared to be highly subjective and involve
attractive female students who would later report that the teacher gave them
unwanted and inappropriate attention. The District may want to re-evaluate (1) its
method of TA selection, which appears to be heavily influenced by the individual
educator; and (2) whether there is a way to supervise TAs to keep them safe from
opportunistic educators.
Adult Sexual Harassment. Our investigation did not analyze the District’s
response to any adult harassment by Mr. Whitehurst, including the EAs who
complained in December 2012 that Mr. Whitehurst called them “Baby” and “Girl.”
During our investigation, some witnesses voiced concerns that PPS had tolerated
adult-to-adult sexual harassment in the schools, but noted that the environment
was improving and the recent sexual harassment training had been helpful.
Substantiated Reports of Sexual Conduct by Other PPS Educators. During our
investigation, we came across various other educators who had resigned or been
disciplined or terminated due to issues relating to inappropriate conduct of a

sexual nature. We did not analyze whether the District correctly followed
ORS 339.388 or made the appropriate disclosures under ORS 339.378.
Thompson v. PPS. We did not investigate the legal advice provided by
outside or in-house counsel regarding settlement of Rory Thompson’s lawsuit
against the District.
Public Records Requests. There have been numerous public records
requests to the District regarding Mr. Whitehurst. We did not investigate the
response to or opposition of these requests by the District or its agents.
The District’s Other Union Contracts and non-represented employees. We
did not review any collective bargaining agreements other than the PAT contract,
nor the policies and practices applicable to non-represented employees. However,
our recommendations regarding preventing, reporting and investigating sexual
conduct with students apply to all PPS employees. Any other policies, practices or
union contracts with impediments to protecting students should be changed at the
District’s earliest opportunity.
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REPORT TO THE PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Robert C. Weaver, Jr., Garvey Schubert Barer

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................................1

INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page i

INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page ii

Mitchell “Mitch” Whitehurst was an educator at Portland Public Schools

during an investigation into allegations of coworker sexual harassment. During his

institutional knowledge of his inappropriate behavior followed him. His pattern of

During this investigation, we interviewed former students who described

INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page 1

The most egregious allegations of misconduct involved

. This conduct was not reported to any adult

that she had experienced 24 years earlier, while

at Franklin. The Human Resources (HR) Department at PPS received

to the Teacher Standards & Practices Commission (TSPC).

In 2012, after learning that Mr. Whitehurst remained employed by PPS

Whitehurst was a And again, PPS responded

ever been questioned about it.

INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page 2

unwanted sexual attention from Mr. Whitehurst

This complaint went through the proper

channels but due to an inadequate internal investigation, it was treated as a

“he-said/she-said” first-time offense in which faced with two conflicting accounts

both deemed credible, the investigator accepted Mr. Whitehurst’s explanation

that his conduct had been simply misconstrued by the student.

The behavior reported by many female students in the Faubion

commenting on a student’s attractive figure, calling them “babe” or “baby,” and

other inappropriate behavior – was brought to the attention of the Faubion

administrators as well as the HR Department and in-house general counsel.

Inexplicably, an investigation that started out with multi-day student interviews

and typed notes reflecting first-hand accounts of students unwilling to participate

resulted in no discipline, no documentation of the conduct in Mr. Whitehurst’s

Whitehurst was not disciplined or terminated for the conduct.

INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page 3

have been thoroughly covered by the media. Our investigation

2001. Apparently no discipline came as a result of these investigations, either.

Another student complaint of ogling lodged early in Mr. Whitehurst’s career

incident was not documented.

In addition to these reports of sexual conduct, we heard from female

students uncomfortable and many described him as “creepy.” School

administrators who supervised Mr. Whitehurst denied witnessing this type of

INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page 4

was not documented.

Mr. Whitehurst resigned from PPS in the spring of 2015 during an

investigation into alleged sexual harassment of an adult male coworker at Faubion.

Through his union’s attorneys, he negotiated a resignation agreement that entitled

information regarding his employment other than basic employment information

(dates of employment, position, level of compensation, resignation).

written documentation of Mr. Whitehurst’s inappropriate conduct. What little

administrators repeatedly treated his inappropriate conduct as a one-time lapse in

INVESTIGATION REPORT – Page 5

The decentralized systems at PPS, coupled with a lack of any viable

document management system or misconduct tracking system, contributed to Mr.

Whitehurst’s ability to evade discipline. Our investigation found that PPS

administrators were reluctant to issue formal discipline because it could be

challenged by the teachers’ union, Portland Association of Teachers (PAT). To

that was short of formal discipline – such as delivering a verbal warning in

response to complaint or taking the remedial step of placing a