Oct 14, 2024 Story by: Editor
Over a year after the Virginia-based conservative group Parents Defending Education filed a complaint with the federal Office for Civil Rights, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has announced plans to revise its Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP).
This program was initially designed to direct additional resources toward schools serving a third of the district’s Black student population, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Parents Defending Education argued that LAUSD’s plan violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by providing extra services based on race.
“The Los Angeles Unified School District is offering race-based programming for some students that is not open to all,” the group stated in an online post, as reported by the Times. The organization did not respond to requests for further comment.
In response to the complaint, LAUSD confirmed it would no longer focus solely on Black students and would begin choosing schools for the program based on criteria unrelated to race. “There’s a lot of historical and systemic inequities that, if we’re not going to address them, Black children are going to continue to fail,” Ebony Batiste, a restorative justice teacher at 74th Street Elementary School, told the Times. “Sometimes I feel like every time we try, our hands are tied behind our back, and we’re not being allowed to help the children that need help.”
LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho assured that while the updated BSAP plan would still support Black students, it would also extend assistance to other students facing similar challenges.
According to the Times, the Office for Civil Rights dismissed the complaint in July, stating that “since the complaint was filed, the District has revised the BSAP criteria for allocating resources to its schools.” The office further explained that all schools in the district are now eligible to receive resources identified under BSAP, regardless of race, color, or national origin, and found no evidence of a current violation.
Neither the Civil Rights Office nor the U.S. Department of Education responded to the Times’ inquiries for comment.
Commenting on the issue, UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard criticized conservative groups for remaining silent on other racial disparities. “The conservative groups would sit by idly when there are a disproportionate number of Black people in jails and prisons,” he told the Times.
“They’ll sit by idly when there’s large numbers of Black students who are misplaced in special education classrooms. They’ll sit by silently when there are large numbers of Black students who are not graduating from high school. But yet, when there’s a remedy, an attempt to somehow respond, to combat that, then all of a sudden, there’s this anger, and there’s lawsuits. That’s the part that disappoints. I just wish that we lived in a different political climate.”
Source: ED Source
