Yet Another School Disrtict Being Investigated for Civil Rights Violations

Monday, November 29, 2010

I have posted before about school districts being investigated by the Office of Civil Rights. This time we have a school district being investigated after a NAACP complaint was filed against the board for eliminating racial diversity through reassignments and disproportional suspension of minority students.

Wake School Board Under Probe
By T. Keung Hui, Thomas Goldsmith, and Mandy Locke, The News & Observer, N.C. (MCT)

Wake County school leaders will have to defend their student assignment and discipline policies to federal civil rights investigators responding to complaints filed by the NAACP.
The Office of Civil Rights investigates a third of the 6,900 complaints it receives each year, according to Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman of the U.S. Department of Education. Wake was notified about the investigation in a letter dated Nov. 5. Bradshaw said they typically try to complete investigations within six months.
If the school system is declared in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Wake could lose about $80 million a year in federal funding.
Word of the Wake review comes near the end of a tumultuous year for the elected leaders of the 143,000-student system. Having discarded socioeconomic diversity as a factor in school assignment, as newly elected board members promised voters last fall, the school board now faces not only the federal investigation, but also a review by a national accrediting body.
The state and national NAACP alleged in complaints filed in September that the board engaged in racial bias by eliminating diversity in the assignment policy, through student reassignments made this year and in the way minority students are disproportionately suspended.
Read the entire article here.
 
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