Portland Public Schools district headquarters, Portland, Ore., Dec. 15, 2018.
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
Portland Public Schools board members are expected to vote Tuesday night on a resolution affirming the rights of undocumented students and laying out the district’s protocols for Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to schools.
The vote in Oregon’s largest school district comes about two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Trump has promised mass deportation on an “unprecedented scale” in his coming term.
PPS and other Oregon districts passed similar policies when Trump was elected in 2016, and many, like Salem-Keizer Public Schools, have recently reaffirmed those commitments. Oregon has a decades-old history of these kinds of “sanctuary” laws and policies.
Under Oregon law, enforcement agencies are prohibited from using public resources to detect or apprehend individuals whose only infraction is violating U.S. immigration law, the PPS resolution states. State law also protects students’ education records from being used for immigration action.
Portland’s resolution goes deeper into specifics if agents come to local schools.
The district’s 2016 resolution is still in place. However, district officials said the one being voted on this week, though very similar, has been updated with best practices from the last eight years.
Under the updated resolution, the district still won’t allow employees to release information about a student, including immigration status, without parental consent. The superintendent and general counsel can still ask for an ICE agent’s credentials.
The resolution states that the district will not provide information or assistance to ICE in enforcing federal civil immigration law. Schools will not allow agents into the buildings beyond the front office, nor will they remove a staff member or student, unless the agent has a court order or other authority to do so.
The board will meet on Tuesday at 6 p.m. View the agenda and full resolution text here. Watch the meeting online here.