Portland Public Schools Seeks Broad Confidentiality Agreements from Employees

"This is the kind of thing maybe the CIA could get away with," says one open-government expert.

Closed doors
By BETH SLOVIC

Portland Public Schools may want to rethink its name. 

This month the state's largest school district is requiring certain employees sign a non-disclosure agreement that bars them from discussing confidential information from PPS under penalty of being fired. 

“Confidential” usually means sensitive matters such as student records, personnel matters and the like. But not at PPS, which wants each employee—a district spokeswoman couldn't immediately say how many or in what departments—to agree by Friday that “confidential” means “information of any kind, nature, or description concerning any matters affecting or relating to my services for the District, the business or operations of my department, and/or the products, plans, processes, or other data of my department.” 

That's just about everything. 

Only non-union employees, including staffers in the district's human resources and finance offices, must sign it. 

Gwen Sullivan, president of the Portland Association of Teachers, whose members don’t have to sign, says the agreement goes way too far. “That’s too big of a blanket statement,” she says. 

PPS spokeswoman Christine Miles says the intention is to remind employees what matters are protected by privacy laws, not to gag employees entirely.

But Terry Francke, general counsel for the open-government advocacy group Californians Aware, says the agreement is so broad it could be illegal. "I can't imagine any court finding that this kind of totalitarian gag clause was enforceable by any government agency," he says."This is the kind of thing maybe the CIA could get away with enforcing," because the intelligence agency deals with matters of national security.

Francke says PPS employees affected by the agreement should seek a lawyer to challenge it, because it infringes on their First Amendment rights.

Becky Straus, legislative director for ACLU of Oregon, agrees with Francke that the agreement is broad. "By deeming basically anything and everything 'confidential information,' it seems that this agreement might prevent employees from engaging in protected speech activities," she says.

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