Eugene OR June 23 2019

The Eugene School Board unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday designating the district’s public safety office as a law enforcement agency, despite confusion and public outcry to postpone the vote.

The resolution, which was amended during the meeting and approved by a 7-0 vote, would change the public safety office’s designation as districts are allowed under Oregon law.

The law — 332.531 — states workers employed and sworn with a school district’s designated law enforcement agency are, by definition, peace officers. It allows districts access to the Law Enforcement Data System — a comprehensive criminal database maintained by Oregon State Police — and to use the agency as more of a police force if they choose. Under the law, the board could provide uniforms, badges or other identification of its agency members, define the duties of the officers and take away powers normally granted to peace officers.

The district said it is making the change to decrease the cost of background checks and increase efficiency and access to full criminal history information by allowing needed access to the data system. Eugene Police Department already provides Eugene schools with resource officers who have specialized training to work in schools, said district spokesperson Kerry Delf.

After some discussion about what the designation would allow by law, board member Judy Newman made a motion to amend the resolution to limit the district’s sole purpose of the new designation to improving information access.

 “With that statute, that could potentially — if the board and the superintendent were to have chosen that path like the University of Oregon or like Portland State Police — create a full police agency like Eugene Police Department,” said Kari Skinner, the district’s safety officer. “That’s not the intent of this, but that could happen if that was the intent.”

With that in mind, Newman made the amendment to the resolution to ensure there would be no straying from the original intent of information access in the future.

“I totally trust everyone on this board and this staff that that’s the intent,” Newman said. “But I also know if 10 years from now it’s a different group … people don’t dig deep to find legislative intent.”

Only three people in the district would have access to the system, Skinner said in response to board questions: herself, Assistant Superintendent Cydney Vandercar and Human Resources Generalist Melissia Olin.

That system would be housed in a secure area, with “second-person verification” required to access, Skinner said. The also would be audits of the system through Oregon State Police to ensure no misuse.

The district also dispelled the notion that the designation change would lead to armed staff. Superintendent Gustavo Balderas began the meeting stating that no staff would be armed, and Christine Nesbit, the district’s in-house legal counsel, later reaffirmed his statement.

“What is not true is that they’ll be armed, that they will carry mace,” Nesbit said. “The board resolution from a year-and-a-half ago is quite clear: our employees will not be carrying weaponry. Indeed, we’re prohibited from that at this time because of that resolution.”

Skinner said Portland Public Schools, Beaverton School District and Hillsboro School District also have made the designation change.

Currently, the district runs its background checks through an online vendor. Each volunteer, teacher and staff member must have a background check, which costs the district a fee. For the 2018-2019 school year, the district spent about $10,000 on these checks, Delf said. The district also estimated it lost about $45,000 in staff time due to problems with information provided by the vendor that need to be checked or additional details that needed to be tracked down, she said.

With access to the system, background checks would have no cost to the district and all criminal information would be in one centralized database. The change also would allow the district to access more complete records and faster than through its vendor.

“We want to make sure we know who is in our schools working with our students,” Delf said.

At the start of Wednesday’s meeting, it became clear there was confusion over who would be affected by the board’s designation resolution. Concerned students, teachers and parents speaking during public comment urged board members to postpone the vote. They worried that the resolution was related to a separate issue regarding Churchill High School staff potentially being laid off or that their positions would be revised to be more as a security officer.

The district and board maintained that the designation change and rumors about staff changes were not related.

“We didn’t know (these issues) would be married like this because of the timing,” said Board Chair Alicia Hays. “So I want to say sorry for that. What’s on our agenda this evening is to do that designation solely so we can have access to that database.”

Both of the staff members in question were not being laid off, Nesbit said, and the district is in the middle of bargaining with the union about a handful of roles, including those.

“No one has resigned,” Nesbit said. “The union demanded to bargain and we’re engaging in bargaining, as we should.”

registerguard.com.

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