Investigators were clear Thursday: Portland Public Schools' commitment to frequently purge complaints from educators' files helped sexual misconduct go unaddressed for decades and should stop before more students are harmed.

That recommendation is one of the many concrete changes independent investigators told the Portland school board is necessary to ensure children are safe. It also may be hard to adopt as purging files is required by the teachers contract and any change requires union agreement.

Although the union in the past has resisted talking about implications of the Whitehurst case, it changed that stance Friday in a statement that followed the original publication of this story online.

The statement decried child abuse detailed in the report and said, "We will make every effort to work with the district moving forward to ensure that every allegation is properly and fairly investigated in a timely fashion. This is something we believe in very strongly."

The Portland school board, in its many iterations, has approved the contract containing the file-purging requirement over and over through the years, almost always with a unanimous vote.

The scathing investigative report, unveiled at an emotional school board meeting, comes in response to an Oregonian/OregonLive August 2017 investigation, "Benefit of the Doubt: How Portland Public Schools helped an educator evade allegations of sexual misconduct."

That story revealed how allegations from students about educator Mitch Whitehurst's disturbing conduct were repeatedly downplayed and children harmed as a result. Thursday's report backed up The Oregonian/OregonLive's findings and showed the case was even more egregious than had been previously known.

At Thursday's meeting, several board members said with audible contempt it was appalling it took three decades to stop Whitehurst.

Part of the answer to why it took so long, investigator Joy Ellis told the board, can be found in the terms in the teachers contract. Under its terms, any time a teacher changes schools or gets a new principal complaints must be purged because such complaints haven't been vetted through an extensive due process. That happened to Whitehurst more than 10 times while he was entrusted with district students over 32 years.

"It appears the protection of students is taking a backseat to the protection of teachers," Ellis said.

Investigators wanted union input but were blocked, they said.

The powerful union's president refused to discuss what can be learned from the Whitehurst case with the district's independent investigators. President Suzanne Cohen has told The Oregonian/OregonLive she will not grant an interview about the topic and last fall asked a reporter to stop asking for comment about the matter.

Under the terms of the teacher contract, records of complaints about an educator's conduct end up filed in different types of files in different offices -- the school, the legal department or human resources. That also make it hard to track a complaint and raises the odds relevant documents will be overlooked, the report said.

Per the contract, an educator has: a personnel file, a letter of expectation file, a grievance file, a building file and an investigation file. Complaints that don't go through layers of due process and don't lead to discipline are supposed to be placed only in the building file.

Files are removed from a teacher's building file if a teacher or the teacher's supervisor moves schools, which happens a lot. Whitehurst was never disciplined, so almost none of the concerns or insights about his behavior with students made it into a more permanent file.

Whitehurst, who resigned in 2015, refused to speak to the investigators. He would not agree to be interviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Former school district lawyer Maureen Sloane did keep records about her dismissal of two of the most serious complaints about Whitehurst's sexual predations in her files. But principals and other officials outside the legal department didn't have access to those.

The records Sloane kept also could have easily been purged as well. They were saved only because former district paralegal Jeanne Windham decided to save all records involving sexual misconduct.

Without a paper trail, Whitehurst was able to time and again convince people that new allegations and concerns were a first-time lapse, investigators found.

This is a "key issue," Ellis said.

Under the current teacher contract, letters of expectation must be purged after three years. A letter of expectation sets out clearly how an employee should conduct him or herself after a complaint but is not considered discipline.

These letters are maintained in the educator's building file. They also are placed in a single file at the district office, per the contract, filed by school year not by the teacher's name. This, the report says, makes it all the more likely essential information will be missed.

Another issue related to the contract, investigators found, was the short timeline to act on a complaint. Historically, administrators had just 14 days to act on a complaint, a deadline that was reduced to 10 days during late 2016 or early 2017 negotiations for the current contract. That requirement, investigators say, risks a rushed investigation.

At Thursdays's meeting on the report, Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero publicly invited the union to talk with him, "to ensure nothing in our labor agreements allow problems such as the ones addressed in this report to fall through the cracks."



That's not a conversation the union has to have but its statement Friday signaled a potential willingness. The union could agree to what is called a "reopening" but has no legal obligation to do so.

The report notes, "the district is essentially locked in to the current provisions until it negotiates the next three-year contract."

The current union contract goes through 2019.

Investigators also found some administrators did not want to follow discipline procedures because they felt it was arduous or futile to deal with the union. The culture became one where discipline was avoided, especially when it came to matters of sexual misconduct, the report said.



"We owe those who have bravely come forward a commitment to do much, much better, to do things right, and it is my intention that we deliver on that pledge," Guerrero said.

The investigative team consisted of Ellis, who is an experienced employment lawyer, former federal prosecutor and well-known defense attorney Bob Weaver, and former top Multnomah County prosecutor Norm Frink.

Although the union has refused to speak to press, after the August 2017 The Oregonian/OregonLive story ran, the union put a statement on its website.

The statement said in part, "We will continue to defend everyone's right to due process, and to fulfill our duty to fairly represent our members. No one should have their professional reputation ruined by unsubstantiated rumors or be tried in the press where they are assumed guilty until proven innocent. We continue to demand that the district do its job of investigating complaints and taking appropriate actions, while adhering to core legal principles like due process and innocent until proven guilty."

— Bethany Barnes

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com