U.S. Education Department launches civil rights investigation into Green Bay School District
'In America, we do not 'prioritize' students for educational access, nor do we judge their worth, on the basis of skin color. Schools must provide special needs students access to supportive educational resources on an equal footing and on the basis of need, not on the basis of race,' acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor said in a May 28 news release.
In the complaint, the law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty alleged the district discriminated against Green Bay King Elementary parent Colby Decker's son by not providing him access to literacy resources because he was not a 'focus student,' which was defined as a First Nations, Black or Hispanic student in King's student success plan. The focus student language has since been changed.
Decker's son has dyslexia, and she told WILL she requested he receive a one-on-one intervention. She said her son was put on a waiting list for reading interventions in April 2024 and was finally placed in a small group intervention last fall, which she said caused her son to fall behind.
Decker and WILL allege the district violated Title VI, which prohibits racial and ethnic discrimination. The civil rights complaint also raised concerns about the way the district handled WILL's original complaint, saying the district's investigation was biased. The complaint also claimed the district didn't meet special education law needs relating to Decker's son's dyslexia, which they said would account for discrimination on the basis of disability.
On May 28, OCR said it had opened a formal investigation into Green Bay based on the complaint. It will investigate whether the district violated Title VI, which prohibits racial and ethnic discrimination, and whether it failed to evaluate Decker's son as a student with disabilities, which it says is discrimination under federal law.
"The district had many opportunities to change course and make clear it would be treating its students in a colorblind way, and they didn't do that," WILL legal counsel Cory Brewer said. "We really hope this investigation is eye-opening for the district, particularly for district leaders."
Green Bay communications director Lori Blakeslee said the district hadn't yet received anything from OCR.
Contact Green Bay education reporter Nadia Scharf at nscharf@gannett.com or on X at @nadiaascharf.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Federal civil rights investigation launched into Green Bay Schools
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