In Aug. before the return of their students, administration decided to remove the flags from the commons due to too many complaints from students.

     During the 2021-2022 school year, a group of administrators decided to rehang the flags. The flags originally rested in the school’s old cafeteria, now in the newly built commons. According to the school’s Cultural Responsive Coordinator Matthew Kingsley, the flags themselves hung in the building for over 20 years.

     Originally, they hung the flags intending to represent students’ diversity. 

     “[We wanted to] hopefully give students a feeling of pride to see [their flag], whether it’s the country that they’re from, or the country that their family is from, or that they can trace their roots back to, or even [feel] some kind of affiliation or support,” Building Equity Coordinator Robert Parness said.

     During the 2022-2023 school year, administrators began to receive many complaints from students about certain countries’ flags being hung.

     “Traditionally there’s some flags that are in conflict with one another,” Parness stated. “There’s a lot of trauma attached to that in many cases where families have had an impact. There’s wars and there’s death. There’s things like that, very complicated histories between some of these [countries].”

     Over the course of the school year, administrators went through the process of taking down and rehanging flags as they received more complaints.

     Finally, at the beginning of the school year they decided to find a solution. A group of several administrators including Parness, Kingsley, and newly hired principal Melissa Baran sat down to talk out the situation. After assessing the situation, they decided the best course of action was to remove all the flags from the commons. 

     “We know that the flags that were up [were] causing harm and so that was what the step was,” Baran said. “We don’t want to cause harm, so let’s take them down while we figure out what the next is.”

     At the beginning of the school year, Moss Weigel, a student on the Student Equity Council, approached admin with the idea to create a Student Leadership Roundtable, a committee consisting of affinity leaders and advanced leadership members.

     “The purpose [of the roundtable] is to honor, respect, validate student voice, and the agency in school and in matters that are important to the school and in school decision making,” Kingsley said.

     Administrators also wanted to make sure that students had the opportunity to represent themselves.

     “We really feel like that’s a student’s decision,” Baran said. “How they want to be represented is up to them so we want to have that conversation.”

     The group had their first meeting on Sept. 27th.

     As for other schools in the district, several of them have flags hung up around the school as well. Tualatin High School has flags hung up in their own commons. Fowler Middle School has flags hung up in their commons, as well as murals of historical figures. According to their Equity Coordinator, Ari Ash, they have yet to receive complaints about their displays.