Portland Public Schools parents are demanding that Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong be placed on leave after screenshots surfaced showing her and other district leaders discussing public business over Signal, the encrypted messaging app, with some of those conversations set to automatically disappear. The uproar lands squarely in the middle of a bitter fight over Armstrong's proposal to close as many as 14 schools, a plan that has already drawn chants for her resignation at packed board meetings.
Screenshots Show Months of Private Chats
According to Willamette Week, which reviewed screenshots of the exchanges, Armstrong and other PPS leaders engaged in conversations about public business on the Signal app over a 10-month span, and at least some of those chats used Signal's disappearing-messages feature. Signal is widely known as a platform for messages users want to keep very private, and portland attorney Alan Kessler, who is also a PPS parent, noted that the app is often used in authoritarian countries by activists seeking protection from their own governments. He said government communications should be open to the public, not routed through a tool built for secrecy.
Kessler did not mince words about the practice. “Every single time one of those officials is turning on auto-delete and then conducting the public's business, that's criminal activity,” he said, according to the same report. He went further, calling the use of Signal for district business abhorrent — a characterization that has echoed through the parent backlash since the story broke. Other experts cited in the same reporting pushed back on that framing, saying the legality of the practice depends on the actual contents of the deleted records and that Oregon law governing digital communications is still developing.
District Says It's Checking Records Status
PPS representative Valerie Feder confirmed that Signal is not a district-approved platform for official communications. The district said it is taking action to determine whether any of the messages would constitute public records and, if so, whether they can be recovered — a process that remains unresolved.
The parents' group SavePDXSchools posted an Instagram message demanding Armstrong be placed on leave while the controversy is investigated, asserting that PPS breached public records law because the Signal exchanges involved district business and some messages auto-deleted. A broader parents' group has separately demanded the school board place Armstrong on leave during the probe, amid an already-tense standoff over the superintendent's push to close at least a dozen schools.
Signal Controversy Collides With Closure Fight
The messaging scandal didn't emerge in a vacuum. Armstrong's proposal to shutter up to 14 schools, which PPS had announced in scenarios before Oct. 6, has consumed the district for weeks, according to OPB, which reported that the district floated one scenario closing 14 schools — 13 elementary schools and one middle school — another closing 11, and a third option that would make no changes at all. Under the 11-school scenario, Stephenson, Rose City Park and Lewis elementary schools would remain open. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported the school board is expected to vote on the proposals in mid-December.
School closures, falling birth rates and declining enrollment have also been discussed nationally.
Opposition to the closure plan has organized quickly and visibly. Willamette Week reported that packed board rooms have chanted for Armstrong to resign, and that the coalition Save PDX Schools has grown to about 850 members, backing three petitions that have amassed more than 1,800 signatures combined.
Not Portland's First Signal Dispute
Oregon officials using Signal for public business isn't unprecedented. Willamette Week noted that Eugene School Board members faced a similar controversy in past years, when a lawyer said it wasn't immediately clear what liability public officials who used Signal might face over any erased messages.
For now, the central questions in Portland remain open: whether any district business discussed over Signal qualifies as a public record, and whether anything deleted through the app's disappearing-messages feature can still be recovered. PPS has said only that it is working to find out.
