MLSD board determines no civil rights infringement
Feb. 26—MOSES LAKE — In the Feb. 20 meeting of the Moses Lake School Board, the issue of equity in physical education resurfaced, spurred by a civil rights complaint submitted by Larry Dagnon, a teacher at North Elementary which he presented at the previous Feb. 6 meeting.
The complaint claims the district has disproportionately impacted minority students with reduced physical education resources.
"I cannot stress to you enough the impact that the discrimination has on the kids," Dagnon said. "They are sad; they want things to go back to normal. When I was listening to the student representatives hearing kids want school to go back to normal ... What gets kids to school? PE is one of the big ones."
School board member Ryan Coulston made a motion saying no civil right violations have taken place. School board vice-chair Carla Urias seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously by the board.
During the Feb. 6 board meeting, Dagnon presented his concerns regarding the allocation of physical education teachers across the district's 11 elementary schools.
According to previous meetings from the Moses Lake School District, Garden Heights Elementary, Lakeview Elementary, Larson Heights Elementary and North Elementary all receive one 30-minute period once a week for physical education.
Other schools are on a weekly ABC rotation, meaning they have gym every third day, resulting in some weeks where students get PE once a week and some weeks they get it twice a week. Groff Elementary has PE once or twice a week for either 30 or 35 minutes. Longview Elementary gets one or two 40-minute gym sessions. Park Orchard Elementary and Peninsula Elementary get one or two 30-minute sessions a week. Sage Point Elementary gets one to two 40-to-45-minute sessions a week.
Knolls Vista Elementary gets two physical education periods weekly for 30 minutes. Then, Midway Elementary gets two or three sessions of 35 minutes each, depending on the semester.
According to RCW 28A.230.040, students in elementary schools must receive at least 100 minutes of physical education every week. However, right now, the only school within MLSD that is fulfilling that requirement is Midway Elementary for one of its two semesters.
With budget cuts caused by the district's recent financial crisis, there are only seven full-time elementary school physical education teachers. Four of the elementary schools share two PE teachers. Garden Heights and Lakeview share a teacher. North Elementary and Larson Height Elementary share another teacher.
"What that looks like right now is in our school, you could have as many as 35 minutes a week, but a lot of the time it's zero minutes," Dagnon said during the Feb. 6 meeting. "My own classroom has only had it once a month where they've had PE. You're supposed to have 100 minutes per week."
He said students in schools with mostly-minority populations are the ones most affected by the situation, causing unfair treatment of those students. Those campuses include North and Larson Heights which have a high percentage of minority students.
Dagnon accused the school district of using misleading data to downplay the issue, saying the district's response failed to accurately reflect the racial composition and needs of the affected schools. He said the district presented percentages of minority populations at various schools without giving a complete picture of how these populations are impacted by reduced programming.
"When I got a response from the district, you had pulled up the percentage of minority population for the entire schools of the elementaries," Dagnon said. "That doesn't show in an honest way really what's happening."
In response to the complaint, Michelle Musso, the district's HR director and civil rights coordinator, expressed appreciation for Dagnon's concerns but defended the district's actions.
"I also want to state that as a district we have repeatedly said we understand that reduced PE programming is not equitable across schools. We are clear and we know that," Musso said.
However, she maintained that the data analysis concluded no formal discrimination occurred.
"White students are receiving 81,812 minutes of PE programming per year, and minority students are receiving 79,799 minutes... The difference of 13 minutes annually is not significant and does not indicate discrimination," she said.
A critical point of contention was the methodology used to measure the impact of the cuts. Dagnon said that the analysis overlooked the realities faced by students in schools with significant minority populations.
He said a redistribution model could more equitably allocate PE resources based on need, arguing that "this is discrimination, and there's no other way to look at it."
During the meeting, board members sought clarity on the factors influencing the district's decision to limit PE resources at certain schools.
MLSD Superintendent Carol Lewis said the decisions were made based on a combination of school size, available resources and staff availability.
"We had to allocate the resources as best we could... The decision was made to keep full-time counselors at all of those schools," Lewis said, indicating that resource distribution was complicated by budgetary constraints. She also noted that if counselors had been let go to keep PE teachers, the conversation would be about a lack of counsellors instead.
During the Feb. 20 board meeting, community members expressed concerns about access to PE or lack thereof.
Andrea Carrillo, a parent health advocate, said, "Denying equitable access to PE is yet another example of how our most vulnerable students are left behind."
Guadalupe Collazo, another community member, echoed similar sentiments, highlighting that existing disparities reflect a broader inequity in the district's treatment of minority students.
When asked whether changing the current scheduling to address these inequities would be feasible mid-year, principals expressed concern over the potential impacts on other programs and services, especially for students with disabilities.
"Changing the schedule in March changes life skills schedules... It would change literally every teacher's schedule," explained one principal during the meeting, stressing the logistical challenges that such a move could entail.
As of now, according to MLSD Director of Public Relations Ryan Shannon, the district has passed the resolution saying no civil rights violations have taken place with no planned action in the future. However, Shannon said that if those who filed the specific civil rights complaint wish to continue, they could bring the cause directly to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for further investigation. Shannon said he is unaware of that action taking place.
"In some schools, they have more, in some schools, they have less, and we have presented that extensively to the board," Lewis said. "We've talked about it quite a lot, and that's one of the very first things that we want to fix if we have levy money and even if we don't have levy money, we need to even it out across our district. ... We know we will do that going forward into the next school year, one way or another."
PE time by campus:
Amount of physical education time each school receives weekly according to MLSD:
Washington State Requirement: 100 to 150 minutes
Garden Heights Elementary: 30 minutes
Groff Elementary: 30 to 70 minutes
Knolls Vista Elementary: 60 minutes
Lakeview Elementary: 30 minutes
Larson Heights Elementary: 30 minutes
Longview Elementary: 40 to 80 minutes
Midway Elementary: 70 to 105 minutes
North Elementary: 30 minutes
Park Orchard Elementary: 35 to 70 minutes
Peninsula Elementary: 30 to 60 minutes
Sage Point Elementary: 40 to 90 minutes
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