Beaverton schools official on how district is supporting students and families amid concerns over ICE activity

Last Monday, hundreds of students in Beaverton, Forest Grove and Hillsboro walked out of classes to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in their communities in Washington County.

The Beaverton School District has made available resources to assist immigrant and refugee students and their families, including reminders of its online school option and partnerships with nonprofits like the Latino Network that provide “Know Your Rights” workshops at the district’s schools. Shelly Reggiani, associate superintendent for teaching and learning at Beaverton School District, joins us to share more details about the district’s response to concerns from students, parents and staff about immigration enforcement.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Over the last week and a half, over 1,000 students in Beaverton, Hillsboro and Forest Grove walked out of classes to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in their communities. We’re gonna start today with one of those districts. Beaverton Schools have provided resources to assist immigrant and refugee students and their families, including reminders of the online school option and partnerships with nonprofits like the Latino Network. Shelly Reggiani is the associate superintendent for teaching and learning at Beaverton School District. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Shelly Reggiani: Thank you so much. Great to be here today.

Miller: How would you describe the mood right now among teachers and staff to start with?

Reggiani: On the need to support immigrant students and families, I would say the mood is serious.

Miller: What is an example of what you’ve been doing at the staff and teacher level to support students and families?

Reggiani: Thank you for this, and the article that one of your team members had written about definitely talked about this, and thank you so much for linking to the district’s website to share the information. We wanna make sure that that is readily available to any constituent in our community, and then also giving people guidance of what they can do within their own community if they’re not in the Beaverton School District.

Last year, when the post-election and prior to even inauguration, we started talking with our school staffs who are hearing from kids in community just about their generalized concerns. People have big feelings when things change at a national level, when there are national implications, when there’s local implications. We started talking about how creating spaces for students to have dialogue, respectful dialogue, constructive dialogue in a way that gave them a way to process what was happening. Then through that, we also started listening more deeply, what are the needs that people are going to have?

Right after the start of the calendar year last year, we started hearing more information about how immigration impacts might be seen in Oregon. Oregon, of course, is a sanctuary state. Oregon schools cannot participate in any immigration enforcement activity. So we were very, very clear about that, and we wanted to make sure that our communities knew this is who we are as Beaverton. This is how we support our kids and families. Beaverton’s motto is “Belong, Believe, Achieve.” This is our way of holding space for and putting our arms around every single student who is in our care.

This is certainly inclusive of our students who are immigrants themselves or who are children of immigrants. One of the first things that we did right as things started ramping up last year was lift our website and in terms of what are the supports that we have for our immigrant students and families and then also send clear communication through schools to all of the families and our students in our community letting staff know this is how we share and letting families know this is what we do in terms of this is how staff can support, this is what they do and don’t do.

Some of the biggest questions that families had were how do you protect student information? How do we make sure that our students’ information is private? Who gets access to our students, and essentially being able to share information with families was one of the first and most critical steps just to be able to give people a bit of assurance. This is how your school district supports your kiddos. This is how we keep kids safe in schools.

Miller: Not sharing information is one thing, but I’m curious what information you even have as a district. Starting with maybe the most crucial piece of information that immigration officials might want, which is, do you even know which students are themselves undocumented or which students have parents who are undocumented? Is that data that your district keeps?

Reggiani: No, as a matter of fact, we don’t ask for it. That is not relevant to a student’s ability to enroll in school. Where a student is born, whether it’s in Oregon or elsewhere, is irrelevant to how we serve them. We do not collect that information. We do not ask for that information. We don’t keep copies of that information. I appreciate you asking that. That was one of the first questions that our families asked us was, in terms of enrollment, what, what do we need?

When we enroll students in schools, we ask for proof of address, we ask for proof of age. There’s so many ways to do that other than a birth certificate from any country or a passport or a driver’s license. There are so many ways that both immigrant families and non-immigrant families share with us and for any student, we don’t collect information on their immigration status or what country they were born in, etc.

Miller: What is the current district policy for what staff or teachers are supposed to do if there is some kind of immigration enforcement action in the vicinity of a school?

Reggiani: One of the things that we wanted to share with all of our staff, our safety protocols have been in place for a very long time. Many schools, I would argue that every school, their central mission, hand in hand with educating our students, is the safety and well-being of every single child in our care. When you overlay this concept of immigration enforcement and the fear that that brings, it was really important to us to be able to share protocols with all of our staff and publicly with our families, and then also publicly beyond our families right on our website.

In that sense, if there is any report of ICE activity, immigration enforcement activity within our community that’s coming from a kiddo, that’s coming from a community member, from a staff member, our internal process is to make sure that we’re contacting the department or the school administrator immediately. In Beaverton, we have a public safety department and we have administrators inside of the public safety department who centralize our information, so the key point of this and why we report here is because as a sanctuary state and as a school district that does not communicate with immigration enforcement, we do not share information with them. They do not share information with us.

By communicating through our public safety department we can triangulate

information and then be able to source its validity or do we have a potential sighting, is there something else that’s happening, etc. Our public safety administrator then is able to triangulate that information and we then ask the person if they’ve reported the information to PIRC, the Portland Immigration Resource Coalition, etc. If they haven’t, that certainly is something they can do. We also notify our superintendent, and if there are resources that need to be deployed to the schools, then we can do so. But having that one central place to report helps us understand what is the impact that is currently happening inside of our community.

Miller: I wanna play a short clip for you. This was collected by our reporter Holly Bartholomew, who talked to Katie Lukins recently. She is the union leader, the president of the Beaverton Education Association. This is part of what Lukins said:

Katie Lukins: It is very different from school to school, and that, as the union, has been our biggest frustration, because it shouldn’t matter where, if you’re a student, where you go to school, or if you’re an educator where you work, that you know what the plan is. And we have schools who have a very detailed plan for when there is immigration activity near our schools to help ensure that our students are safe. The teachers know exactly what their role is, they’re more forward facing or not forward facing depending on their own comfort level. And those principals remind the entire staff every week of the plan. There’s been time to ask questions and understand. And then we have schools where it hasn’t been discussed at all.

Miller: Shelly Reggiani, what’s your response to that, that there is a lack, so says a union leader, of an across the board policy that that teachers are seeing?

Reggiani: I appreciate you asking that question, and Katie and I actually have talked about this a couple of times since that interview was taken. Across the district, our expectation with our administrators is that every staff member is trained. As a matter of fact, we keep internal documents to demonstrate when training has happened in person, and that is by every department, so not just our school leaders, but our bus drivers, our kitchen staff, our custodial staff. Every staff member has access to it and has received the information from their administrator. Then a process for any person who was hired after those training dates, which needed to happen by September 30, where there is a recorded training where they watch and then have an opportunity to engage with their administrator on their questions. This was critical that we provided the training.

A colleague of mine in Beaverton, Doctor Tatiana Ceballos, and I trained all of Beaverton’s school bus drivers and the substitute bus drivers just to make sure that every single department has access to this and has a place to ask questions. I think one of the main things that’s important for us in a school of any size, not just Beaverton’s size, but any size, when we have information to share, we recognize that not everybody receives it in the same way. Just like we have students who learn differently, our adults will learn differently too. So that’s one of the reasons why our administrators and department leaders share information with staff. Last year and this year, of course we have new staff, and so an opportunity for the new staff to engage with that as well.

We have a way for staff to receive the information online so they can go back and relearn it in the way that best meets them. We have access to it on our district intranet site, so that’s our internal website where they see all of the resources, the processes, the protocols about what to do if they suspect that there is immigration enforcement near our schools, what is the staff role, etc. Then we also have something that is absolutely critical, and that’s relationships, our relationships with our leaders.

One of the conversations that I’ve had with our association really recently is, and both of us agree on this, there is a collective responsibility for every person in the district, no matter what their role. If I have a question about something, I need to raise my hand. This is such an important topic. The safety and well-being of every single one of our kids is at the center. We share that collective responsibility and sense of urgency. Any staff member who has a question, approach their administrator. It doesn’t have to be in public. It can be in private, whether it’s one that’s about themselves, that they’re nervous about their own experience or if they have concerns about district processes, but to not sit and wonder if the online information doesn’t answer their questions, then let’s do that through relationship and engaging one on one. So that sits with each of us to be able to do.

Miller: I’ve read that counselors have been working with some families to make sure that emergency plans are in place in case parents are detained during the school day. What might those plans entail?

Reggiani: Not only our counselors, but a whole team of staff, our counselors and our social workers, along with key staff at our schools. One of the things that we trained every building a leader on, as well as our counseling staff on, is an urgent response to family separation. When that happens, a team at the school site is activated. So we learn about it, we immediately, connecting with the child and the family, if there are family members who are still with the kiddo here, empathizing and affirming and letting them know that their school is here to help support them in this process and, and help seek answers and find some security and emergency planning.

One of the things that our administrators will do is activate that initial team and making sure that, similar to if you have a school crisis or a community crisis, a crisis team may be activated. This is an internal team that activates and has a protocol to connect with other social service agencies, if there are other schools that additional siblings may be at, what type of wrap-around services might be most needed for this kiddo. Inside of our district, we also have a protocol when we train our staff, including all of our office professionals. One of the things that we ask for is a reminder at the start of the school year, have you completed all of your emergency contacts? A minimum of three.

And in Beaverton, we open up our system, so if a family wants to put more than three, they can list as many as they would like. That’s part of our student information system. Part of our emergency plan team would be contacting the next person on the emergency contact list so that we can have the people that the child is most close to, their safe people, as part of the response and part of that emergency plan. Who’s that kiddo going to go home with? Where are they living? How can we make sure that there are consistencies in their life while they’re in this moment of trauma?

Miller: You’ve been outlining what you are doing as a district, but I’m curious about the limitations. What can’t you do to help students and their families?

Reggiani: One of the limitations that we have, because we do not ask who is and who is not, that’s one of the biggest limitations right there. We only know the impact through relationships. We only know the impact when our families raise their hand and say, hey, I have a question or I need support. So in terms of a limitation, our response to that is to always be preparing, anticipating needs, and then responding to the needs when we hear them.

I think another limitation for a district of any size would be making sure that we understand that where we have different ideologies as individuals in a district with close to 5,000 employees, people are going to have different values and beliefs, etc. One of the things that is critical for us is to know that those things sit to the side, and when we’re talking about the care and concern for every child, that’s not political. That’s not a political issue, that’s a human centered issue.

For us making sure that folks know the limits of one’s personal beliefs sit over there and our values and beliefs about the care and belonging of every single student sits center so we keep coming back to that as a regular theme. I’d say one of the other limitations that staff have raised with us is they feel as though they want to do more. And we always are listening to that and listening to their ideas as well, of how can we improve our system?

This is not a, this is [what] the district says, and so we’re all going to do. We actually take that feedback from our different constituent groups inside of the school in different work groups, as well as our parent community to constantly refine our processes. Staff definitely share a frustration that there are things that are so far out of our control, that it just breaks our hearts. And that’s a reality for any person, really recognizing what’s in our sphere of control, and our sphere of influence is where our actions sit.

That gives us agency, and it gives our families agency. And when I have agency, then I know what I can do, and my life becomes a little bit more predictable, even when the chaos is happening outside of us. That’s one of the pieces that we have tried to really focus on as a way to combat the things that I know that I can’t do that are so far out of my control. We’re going to continue to focus on what’s in our control, giving our families agency and some predictability about how the district will continue to serve.

Miller: Just briefly, how is everything that we’re talking about affecting learning?

Reggiani: That’s on a kiddo by kiddo basis. Certainly, we look at our data, such as attendance for trends. Are we missing groups of students? In a district of our size, a little over 37,500 students, we don’t see giant swings of attendance from students. That’s too large of a sample size, but that doesn’t minimize the individual student experience and I’ll come back to that word I said earlier, relationship.

When we have staff who are so deeply connected to their kiddos, the classroom teacher, the bilingual support specialist, the office professionals, the social worker, the counselor, the administrator, our head custodian, whomever it happens to be, it’s through relationship that we know, that kiddo’s been missing or this kiddo is hurting. Those are some of the ways that we really look at this on an individualized basis. We know it through the individual stories of kids and families, and those are the ways that we continue to respond. It’s that whole iteration of we’re going to prepare and anticipate needs and be prepared to respond to those needs on an individual basis.

Miller: Shelly Reggiani, thanks very much.

Reggiani: Thank you.

Miller: Shelly Reggiani is the associate superintendent for teaching and learning at the Beaverton School District.

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