Beaverton school board will consider whether to open second investigation into one of its members

This Thursday, the

Beaverton school board

will convene for the second time in as many weeks to decide whether to launch an external investigation into one of its own members.

Two sets of complaints have accused board members of creating hostile environments for students – one by expressing anti-Israel sentiments on social media and the other for publicly criticizing teacher union support for pro-Palestinian lesson plans.

The first complaints were filed against board member Tammy Carpenter alleging that her staunch and sustained pro-Palestinian stance on

social media

has impacted the safety of Jewish families and students. That resulted in the board’s May 29 5-2 decision to hire an outside party to investigate whether her actions violated board member

conduct standards

.

Board chair Karen Pérez said last week that she did not know when the third-party investigator would present their findings to board members, who could then choose to take no action or to formally censure Carpenter. School board members can only be removed from office via a recall campaign.

Meanwhile, this coming Thursday, the board will again meet in executive session to consider whether a separate outside investigation is warranted to look into several anonymous complaints filed against outgoing board member Susan Greenberg, who has served on the Beaverton school board for 12 years and will finish her final term on June 30.

Op-ed sparks criticism

The complaints, which were filed on the eve of the previous executive session focused on Carpenter, all center on an

op-ed

Greenberg wrote for the Beaverton Valley-Times. The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained a copy of the complaints via a public records request. They allege that Greenberg stoked anti-educator sentiment and spread inaccurate information about the content of pro-Palestinian lesson plans presented at an April workshop sponsored by the Beaverton Education Association.

“The harm is that Jewish and Muslim students/staff/families experience fear and a sense of being unsafe, as well as division. More generally, all associated with Beaverton Education Association or Beaverton School District experience fear of retaliation based on false accusations,” one complainant wrote.

In her op-ed, Greenberg wrote of her concern over the “Teaching Palestine,”

workshop

which she said was “attempting to inject divisive, one-sided political viewpoints into our curriculum.”

“It’s easy to see how unsafe and uneasy these efforts have made many of our students and teachers feel, especially those of our Jewish community who have already suffered and seen a rise in anti-Semitism nationwide,” Greenberg added in her essay.

At the time of the April workshop, Beaverton union leaders told The Oregonian/OregonLive that it was intended to “provide a two-hour overview of the history of Palestine to help educators address complex questions raised by our students about the ongoing events in the region.”

The

workshop

was led by former Portland Public Schools teacher Bill Bigelow, one of the editors of a teachers guide called “Teach Palestine,” published in February. Bigelow and his co-editors have said their goal is to provide context around fraught concepts like apartheid and settler colonialism, so that students and teachers may determine for themselves whether those terms apply to Israel’s actions since its establishment in 1948.

Some — but not all — of the material in their guide echoes lesson plans that the Portland Association of Teachers first

promoted

in 2024, only to

walk back

their stance amid a storm of criticism from some teachers, Jewish families and public officials.

Multiple teachers in Beaverton who have since reviewed the “Teach Palestine” materials told The Oregonian/OregonLive that they concluded that the materials failed to give any historical or geopolitical context for historical Jewish ties to the region that stretch back over millennia.

The handful of complaints against Greenberg also took aim at her for suggesting that the lessons promoted would “teach kids how to pray in a Muslim faith tradition” and that all of the materials involved were among the lesson plans removed from the Portland Association of Teachers’ website.

Reached on Sunday, Greenberg said she could not comment about the context of the executive session.

“I want the focus to be on kids and their education, not on some political agenda,” she said.

Beaverton, the third largest school district in Oregon, has historically been less prone to political upheaval than neighboring Portland. But the last few months have been a different story, following

contentious labor negotiations

that pushed the district to the brink of a teacher strike before a last-minute deal.

After that, the Beaverton Education Association, along with Carpenter,

backed a slate of candidates

for school board during last month’s special elections that it said would better elevate the concerns and priorities of teachers, including a challenger to Pérez, who is a former Beaverton teacher.

In the end, Pérez easily retained her seat, and

only one

of the union backed candidates for an open seat – parent and tech consultant

Syed Qasim

— won their race. Not long after the May 20 election, the district’s superintendent of three years, Gustavo Balderas, also

announced

that he had accepted a new job in the Seattle area and would begin there no later than July 1, 2026.

A still captured from a video of the confrontation outside of a rally at the Beaverton school board on June 2.

Provided Photo

‘We are all Hamas’

The June 2 rally in support of Carpenter was organized by the Portland chapter of the leftist

Democratic Socialists of America

. Contentious footage from the demonstration, including a brief clip of a Portland State University professor identifying herself and others in the crowd as a member of the militant group

Hamas

, has attracted

national media attention

.

“I am Hamas,” she said. “We are all Hamas.”

That professor, who did not respond on Friday to calls and emails from The Oregonian/OregonLive seeking comment, has since been placed on

administrative leave

by Portland State President Ann Cudd, as

first reported

on Saturday by Willamette Week.

In her statement announcing that the professor had been placed on leave, Cudd referred to the video as “reprehensible.”

“Portland State stands unequivocally against antisemitism, terrorism, and hate of any kind, including the statements made in this video,” Cudd wrote. “Our university community has been working hard to create a welcoming and supportive environment for all, including our Jewish students, faculty and staff. The statements made in this video are absolutely unacceptable.”

In addition to the rally, board members received reams of

public testimony

both in support of and against Carpenter’s social media presence at their June 2 meeting.

“I am confused. During negotiations, we received a strong message that the district did not have extra funds to spare,” wrote Jen Janke, who teaches English as a second languageat Kinnaman Elementary School. “We are now seeing district money spent on investigating a school board member due to her personal political expression. Attacking someone for their political expression is fascism.”

But parent Assaf Mevorach said Carpenter’s online posts have reverberated beyond Instagram.

“When a board member normalizes rhetoric that undermines [my daughter’s] identity and questions her right to exist as a Jew, the consequences are real,” Mevorach wrote. “This language doesn’t remain online. It permeates our schools. My daughter faces harassment on social media simply for being Jewish.”

In one post that has been cited by multiple complainants, Carpenter shared a post from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights suggesting that the state of Israel had been the source of ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid for the entirety of its modern history.

Carpenter’s Instagram profile notes that her views are her own but identifies her as a Beaverton school board member and faculty member at Oregon Health & Science University, where she is an adjunct assistant professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine.

She has said that she “will continue to advocate for the policies and practices that center the needs and voices of our students, families and educators because I believe that this is foundational to achieving strong outcomes in our communities.”

— Julia Silverman covers K-12 education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her via email at jsilverman@oregonian.com.

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