The former headmistress of a Catholic school in Portland confirmed that on Thursday after six weeks of intensive criticism of her decision to call the police on campus on campus during her heated confrontation with two black parents.
As director of the Madeleine School, Tresa Rast hired the 911 call on March 31, after the parents had their action plan after a playground incident, in which the family's son believed that he was called a racist ball.
A school examination was not conclusive as to whether the hatched name was actually performed. But Rast's interaction with the parents, Karis and Mike Stoudamire Phillips, long-term pillars of the black community in Portland, was a strong one.
Within 72 hours after the alleged racist incident, the family was monitored by the pastor, who monitored the school, which he had decided after the consultation with Archdiocesan officials that their fourth grade son was no longer welcome at Madeleine.
The 911 call and the designation made international headlines after the Oregonian/Oregonlive had first reported on it at the end of April. Rast was not put on a personal vacation long afterwards and said that lawyers of the Archdiocese present their last Thursday with the opportunity to step down or be fired.
In an interview with the Oregonian/Oregonlive, who spoke next to her lawyer John Kaempf, she and the Rev. Bonaventure Rummell had been invited to reverse the expulsion and to stay at school's son. She saw the opportunity for adults to reconcile, she said.
Contemporary records, mainly e -mails and text messages, support Rast's account.
In a draft of a letter to the family that Rummell wrote on April 6 and registered Rast, Rummell wrote: “It is clear to me that the relationship between you and Tresa is deeply wounded. [But] In the name of these many people who love and speak to Tresa, who agrees, we want to consider our relationship [your son’s] The best interest and yours. “
Elias Moo, the director of the Catholic Education of the Archdiocese, checked the draft on the same day and expressed some reservations about how an e -mail from him shared rast with the Oregonian/Oregonlive.
“One of my worries would be about the precedent that he sets and [the] Message that sends it when the parents were loud and loud and loudly exercised by petitions etc., ”wrote Moo, after other parents in school on behalf of the Stoudamire Phillips and 50 had signed a letter from them in which revision of an overwork of internal guidelines and practices on racist incidents.
Moo also wrote that in the letter that supported the family, he kept “points of strong disagreements with rhetoric and ideology”.
Ultimately, Moo wrote, the decision was about whether reconciliation is striving for or not.
But a day later, officials from the Archdiocese of Portland, according to a text message dated April 7, in which Rummell wrote to Rast: “The powers of the archdiocese are not cheap too cheap [sic] This procedure. “
In the same exchange of text, Rummell wrote that the officials and advisors of Archdiocesan believed that attempts to reconcile with the Stoudamire Phillips should be created, not with the church or school.
Vanessa Gallant, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Portland, refused to express the version of the events described in the e -mails and text messages, and only said that all questions had to be returned to the Madeleine school officers.
In her interview with the Oregonian/Oregonlive, Rast also defended her decision to call 911, and said she had done what it considered necessary for the security of other employees and students of the school. She confirmed that neither Karis nor Mike Stoudamire Phillips threatened her with physical violence or had a weapon.
Rast, who was new to Madeleine in autumn 2023, said that the Stoudamire Phillips family had been worried through the school for months due to the handling of a separate incident with her older son, who was now involved in a newcomer to a Catholic high school in Portland.
According to Rast, the family wanted to “derive” this earlier edition when they arrived at school with their younger son at the end of March after the alleged racist slur.
“They were in the front office, right in the door to the hallway where children go back and forth. And I was right behind the counter of them and I asked them repeatedly to stop screaming,” said Rast. “There was no dees escalation of the situation. I asked it to go three times and they said they weren't going.”
Karis Stoudamire Phillips has recognized that they are frustrated and to question Rast's leadership, including the name of the school as “the devil we know” in response to why they had decided to keep their son inscribed there. She said her frustration was due to a repeated pattern of alleged racist incidents at school that she had not really approached.
After about 20 minutes, said Rast, she called 911. In a recording of the call that lasted almost 11 minutes, Mike and Karis Stoudamire Phillips can sometimes react to rest in the background.
When Rast was asked by the dispatcher, she doesn't know Karis or Mike Stoudamire Phillips' names. She told the Oregonian/Oregonlive that she was able to know her because “they were right there and I did not want to antagonize the situation.”
Rast also told the dispatcher that she wanted to make calls what she did because she thought it was “de -scaling the situation”.
Dan Douthit, an information officer for public security in the city of Portland, said that 911 operators usually try to stay on the line with callers until the police have arrived when they are able. In this case, after about 10 minutes and 45 seconds, the dispatcher informed that she had to put on to answer another call.
It is also not exceptional that the police reacted on Rast's call, said Douthit.
“When we receive a report about people who shout and refused to leave a location, a police request for service will be created per directive,” said Douthit.
The Stoudamire Phillipses also hired a lawyer and searched for specific changes in Madeleine, including the discharge of rast.
They also asked for a public apology, an independent examination of the administration of the complaint of their son, consulting services for their son, the mandatory anti-racism training for all administrators, employees, faculties and families as well as the assumption of clear anti-racist guidelines to combat future incidents.
Mike and Karis Stoudamire Phillips rejected it to shoot Rasts further and to express their version of the events.
-Julia Silverman covers the K-12 training for the Oregonian/Oregonlive. Use e -mail at jsilverman@oregonian.com.