Beaverton superintendent apologizes for district official's anti-undocumented immigrants retweet

A shared tweet from Steve Phillips, a Beaverton School District deputy superintendent, that claimed undocumented immigrants were "more dangerous than assault rifles," and should be banned from the U.S., caused the school district to issue an apology on April 16, 2018.

Update: Beaverton deputy superintendent resigns after controversial retweet

One of Oregon's largest school districts issued an apology Monday after its deputy superintendent retweeted a claim that undocumented immigrants were "more dangerous than assault rifles."

The message, shared by Beaverton deputy superintendent Steve Phillips, called for undocumented immigrants to be banned from the U.S. An online petition has since been created calling for Phillips to be fired.

It has more than 700 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.

Phillips' boss, Superintendent Don Grotting, denounced the tweet in a statement.

"Our staff work hard every day to support our wonderfully diverse students and families, and we are committed to learning from our mistakes and continuing this work," Grotting said in the statement. It was issued in English and Spanish, as communications from the district generally are.

Screenshots of Phillip's retweet have circulated in responses to the statement on the school district's Facebook page and resulted in calls to fire Phillips, one of Beaverton's two deputy superintendents.

He has since deactivated his Twitter account and has apparently issued no public statements on the matter.

On Monday, 14 school board members of color from around the Portland area Monday signed a letter to Beaverton School District members.

"Though hate-based rhetoric of any kind is tragic," the letter read, "this specific instance is egregious and unacceptable from a district employee who has been entrusted to represent a large and racially diverse district."

The letter posed three questions to the school board, including, "Does the Beaverton School Board intend to work with Superintendent Grotting to appropriately discipline Mr. Phillips?"

Phillips has been with the district since 2016. Before coming to Beaverton, he served as the superintendent of the Malheur Education Services District. According to district spokesperson Maureen Wheeler, Phillips' annual salary is $171,148.

Phillips' tweets came to light last week after he shared a March 25 post by Mary Ann Mendoza, the mother of an Arizona police sergeant who was killed in a 2014 head-on crash with an intoxicated wrong-way driver. The wrong-way driver was an undocumented Latino man, who also died in the crash. After her son's death, Mendoza helped start a group called Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime.

Her tweet shared by Phillips claimed 12 Americans were killed every day by undocumented immigrants. According to PolitiFact, there isn't enough data to accurately track how many people have been killed by undocumented immigrants or the nationality of the victims.

The Beaverton School District is the third largest in the state with nearly 40,000 students. One quarter of the students who attend Beaverton schools this year identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the district. Slightly less than half, 48 percent, identify as white.

Phillips made news in February when he decided to remove the book "Stick" from classrooms serving students in middle school, ninth and 10th grades. His decision went against the unanimous recommendation of a committee made up of teachers, community members, a librarian and an administrator.

Wheeler said Monday that she knew of no plans by Phillips to offer any apology about what she described as a "teachable moment." She said he discussed the retweet with people who have called and emailed him.

"He realizes his mistake," Wheeler said. "We are working with him, but it is a personnel issue, so we're not going to publicly discuss it at this point."

District officials learned of the retweet Wednesday or Thursday. They then met with Phillips and verified that he "wasn't hacked," Wheeler said. She said district officials believe he retweeted Mendoza's post sometime during spring break.

Lizzy Acker of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com
503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey

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