Students

The department said its investigation into the district was based on a complaint filed with its civil rights office.

In interviews with OPB, former St. Helens High School students say teachers have crossed lines for decades. A teacher who allegedly had a sexual relationship with a student in the 1980s later represented state agencies responsible for protecting Oregon’s children and holding accountable those who abuse them.

The Seattle branch of the department’s Office for Civil Rights launched the investigation after a transgender girl played in a high school girls’ basketball game last month. This comes weeks after Trump issued an executive order barring transgender girls and women from competing in women’s sports.

This week, Portland is the host city for a national high school tournament in a sport you may not even know local high school athletes still participate in: racquetball. Oregon is one of two remaining hubs for the sport natinally.

A 2023 law barring sale of fluorescent bulbs has schools wrestling with flickering lights – and major costs.

Colleges and universities are no longer protected from immigration raids, and Oregon’s higher education institutions are preparing for the worst.

The war in Gaza sparked protests at universities across the U.S. last school year, including at Portland State. Reports of both antisemitism and Islamophobia were rampant.

Oregon schools showed slow but steady increases in statewide graduation rates year after year leading up to the pandemic. Now, the rate hovers around 81%.

Federal funding for research projects is a particular worry for the state’s larger public universities, which receive millions of dollars in federal research funding each year.

The biggest question this session is about how much money the state will invest in public schools for the next biennium. But it’s not the only question.