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I was extremely disappointed to learn today that Portland Public Schools continues to employ Diana Kruger, who has apparently changed her name to Diana Madarieta, as a #PPS kindergarten teacher. 🧵 www.yahoo.com/news/us/arti...

For those unfamiliar with Kruger/Madarieta, she was the principal at Arleta Elementary when our son attended kindergarten and first grade there. During her tenure, a fourth grader from a blended 3rd/4th grade classroom brought crack cocaine to school and convinced a third grader to ingest it.

Despite the fact that Arleta had no medically licensed school nurse, Kruger/Madarieta refused to allow her staff to call emergency services for the child. Instead, she called her husband, Portland Police Bureau Captain Mark Kruger, who has his own troubling backstory (I'll get to that in a second).

Kruger/Madarieta was removed from her position as principal but stashed away in a PPS administrative office, like a Catholic priest who got caught molesting a child. And then the pandemic hit, and we all had bigger fish to fry.

But here's what's really disturbing: she is/was married to the aforementioned Mark Kruger, who was credibly accused of being a vocal Nazi sympathizer while employed by PPB. He nailed tribute plaques for Nazi war criminals to a tree in a city park, which he referred to as "Ehrenbaum" ("Honor Tree").

Kruger, under oath, acknowledged that he owned Nazi memorabilia and had worn Nazi German uniforms to World War II re-enactments. A former friend of his alleged that, in the 1980s, Kruger drove around town listening to Hitler speeches and yelling racist and homophobic statements at people.

We learned about Kruger/Madarieta's marriage (which it appeared she had gone to great lengths to erase any record of online) before the crack cocaine incident. We and another pair of parents requested a meeting with her, during which we were given almost no opportunity to speak or ask questions.

Instead, we were shown a photo of her husband shaking hands with President Obama, because apparently no racist person ever shook Obama's hand? She also claimed that her husband's interest in "WWII history" was because she suspected he was "on the spectrum."

That one was particularly insulting, because as someone who's at least as far on the spectrum as Kapitän Kruger, I can say that never once have I considered dressing up as a fucking Nazi for a public function.

I hope that all parents of PPS students will join us in making it clear to Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong, the broader PPS administration, and the PPS school board that there is no place for someone like Kruger/Madarieta in our children's classrooms.

Surely the Portland Association of Teachers, who have made anti-discrimination messaging so central to their platform, have something to say about this. Where are you on this, Angela Bonilla?

Ending this too-long thread with links to all of the things I've mentioned here. If Diana or Mark or their lawyers take exception to any of this, I very much look forward to having that discussion with you publicly in a court of law.

www.opb.org/news/article...