Portland Public Schools' threatening letter to parent-critic shows the real bully: Editorial Agenda 2016
You can't legislate Portland Polite. So Portland Public Schools is taking a novel approach: It's demanding it with a threatening letter from the district's legal counsel.
At least, that's the approach that the district took with Kim Sordyl, a parent of two PPS students whose aggressive advocacy and records requests on behalf of families has resulted in embarrassing disclosures for the district in recent years. Among the problems she's exposed: double-digit raises approved by Superintendent Carole Smith for some of her top-paid staff and the district's slipshod practices in issuing millions of dollars' worth of no-bid contracts. Sordyl, a lawyer-turned-stay-at-home-mom, also regularly helps parents navigate the district's complaint process, emails board members about problems she sees in the district's management and posts acerbic updates on PPS developments in Facebook discussion groups.
Sordyl herself concedes she can be blunt and direct. But in PPS' eyes, she's so mean and her comments are so "cruel" that it's worried employees will file workers' compensation claims.
In a November 2015 letter, the district's general counsel and human resources director warned Sordyl that if she didn't improve her behavior on social media and elsewhere, they would take "necessary measures" to protect employees from her "personal attacks and defamatory statements." The letter claims that she has made "accusatory and unwarranted statements in social media about specific PPS employees that characterize them as 'stupid,' 'unethical,' 'dishonest' and 'incompetent.'"
Editorial Agenda 2016
Get Oregon centered
Make Portland a city that works
Build Oregon prosperity
Protect and expand personal freedom
Get pot right
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We'll get to the "defamatory statement" later. But first, considering the venom unleashed on school-related discussions lately, particularly about divisive proposals on redrawing school boundaries, "stupid" and "incompetent" are among the kinder words on social media. Second, are district employees really so fragile that they need to be shielded from any criticism?
In any event, the letter contends that her comments are distracting employees from their work and hurting the district's ability to recruit and retain staff. The district did not provide any evidence of that in a recent meeting with Sordyl and her attorney, however. The district also claims she is creating potential liability for the district if employees seek worker's compensation due to stress from Sordyl's "public attacks and ridicule." Again, no evidence that that is happening. But the letter, signed by General Counsel Jollee Patterson and Human Resources Director Sean Murray, emphasizes the district has a responsibility to protect employees from harassment in the workplace.
How Facebook postings constitute harassment in the workplace or would interfere with getting work done is not ever explained. Murray and Patterson did not explain that point in the meeting with Sordyl and her attorney. Murray did, however, complain about Sordyl's supposedly defamatory email to a small group of parents and PPS administrators which, he emphasized, was sent "on our district e-mail."
So about that email. In that November 2015 message, Sordyl referred to Sascha Perrins, a top administrator, who was included on the email chain. She said he had "engaged in a cover-up of child abuse" by a teacher in 2013 referring to his investigation of multiple complaints filed by parents alleging that a teacher routinely yelled at children in class, belittled them and verbally abused them so profoundly that some of the kids had physical ailments or needed counseling. Parents, including Sordyl, criticized the investigation as shoddy, saying that Perrins did not talk with students or with adults who witnessed the alleged harassment.
Sordyl's attorney maintains there's no defamation, saying that the underlying Portland Public Schools' threatening letter to parent-critic shows the real bully: Editorial Agenda 2016 | OregonLive.com: