Photo by eshutt
A federal judge has dismissed the remaining claims of a lawsuit filed against D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson over the closure of 15 D.C. schools.
When Henderson announced in January of 2013 that 15 public schools would close by the end of the 2014 school year, activists with Empower D.C.—a social change community organization—filed a lawsuit to stop the school closures, claiming that they were discriminatory, disproportionately affecting minority students and students from low-income families. According to the Post, black students accounted for 93 percent of the students affected in the closures.
Empower D.C. also argued that the decision for the school closures—all of which saw under-enrollment, according to Henderson— was to free up the buildings for new charter schools and to pay bonuses for teachers, a disproportionate number of which, the plaintiffs argued, work in schools that have a majority white student enrollment.
Although U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg originally dismissed most of their lawsuit in October, he let parts of the lawsuit—a civil-rights claim that the closure of schools by Henderson was racially motivated—move forward. However, in an opinion released on Friday, Boasberg dismissed the rest of the lawsuit, writing that “although Plaintiffs dislike charter schools, performance pay, and the increasing number of D.C. school closures, there is simply no real evidence that these policies are discriminatory.”
He added in his 29-page opinion that “no one is denying that the racial disparities in the recent closings are striking. In the closed schools, after all, a startling 93 percent of students were black and fewer than 0.2 percent (six students) were white. But here, the disparity appears to be caused by the location of the under-enrolled schools, not by intentional discrimination.”
But Empower D.C. says they’re going to appeal the decision. “The plaintiffs in this case would be happy for their schools to reopen, though it would be too late for their children whose education was already interrupted,” the group writes on their Facebook page. “They want the schools to be restored for other children, though, and for discrimination in D.C. Public Schools to stop.”
Empower D.C. says that the school closures have “caused harm to 3,000 low income children of color,” adding that it’s caused them to lose friends, teachers, and staff who have supported them and helped their community. “DCPS has done this without investing time or resources to ensure the well being of students after school closures and without making promised investments in the receiving schools,” writes Empower D.C. Education Organizer Daniel del Pielago. “We must continue to organize against the planned closure of Sharpe Health and Mamie D Lee Schools, attended by our most vulnerable special needs students, to save them from the same fate.”
One of the students harmed by the closures, Empower D.C. says, was Relisha Rudd, who was last seen on February 26 at the D.C. General homeless shelter, where she lived with her mother and siblings. She is still missing. Shannon Smith, lead plaintiff for Empower D.C., said in a release that when Relisha’s school, Ferebee-Hope Elementary School in Southeast, closed, she “lost the protection of her school community, and at her new school people did not immediately notice her absence.”
In a statement, Henderson says that “our decision to consolidate schools was made after careful consideration and conversations with the community, recognizing the best way to use the limited resources we have to support all of our students in all wards across D.C.”
You can read the Court’s full opinion below:
