Portland schools hit with Civil Rights complaint for factoring race and gender into school discipline
An Oregon public school district is facing a federal civil rights complaint over its new discipline policy that factors in students’ race, gender and sexual orientation.
Parents Defending Education (PDE) filed a federal civil rights complaint Thursday to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), targeting a discipline policy in Portland Public Schools (PPS) "for discrimination on the basis of race."
The change in policy regarding disciplinary actions mandates that "continuous disruptive behavior" will now be addressed by a "support plan" that was born out of a collective bargaining agreement in November 2023.
The support plan "must take into consideration the impact of issues related to the student's trauma, race, gender identity/presentation, sexual orientation, disability, social-emotional learning, and restorative justice as appropriate for the student."
The agreement also has the district utilize a research-based "Racial Equity and Social Justice, Restorative Justice, and Trauma Informed" program to reduce exclusionary discipline practices.
PDE states that PPS has "enacted several concerning policies that treat students and educators differently based on race and gender identity."
"PDE makes this complaint as an interested third-party organization with members who are parents of school children throughout the country. PDE and its members oppose discrimination on the basis of race and political indoctrination in America’s schools," their complaint filed to the OCR states.
Another piece of the agreement that PDE takes issue with is Article 18 under the "Transfers" section. The Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) agreement describes transfers as "a change from one assignment to another."
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The PAT contract detailed "educational criteria" that would determine the transfer of staff under the circumstance of a "tax base failure, declining enrollment, or a program change" to maintain a certain share of demographic representation within the staff pool.
As the district's policy seeks to maintain "gender and racial balance" in the workforce, educators won't be transferred if doing so "would decrease the building’s percentage of under-represented male or female or transgender/nonbinary/gender non-conforming professional educators to less than thirty percent."
As far as racial balance, educators won't be transferred if it would "decrease the building’s percentage of minority teachers to less than the student minority percentage in the building or below the percentage of minority professional educators in the District."
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"Accordingly, we ask that the Department promptly investigate the allegations in this complaint, act swiftly to remedy unlawful policies and practices, and order appropriate relief," PDE wrote in the complaint.
The PPS presides over 45,000 students and PAT represents over 4000 educators.
PPS did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.