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
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Hernandez wins second election for Winona ISD school board seat
WINONA, Texas (KETK) – Winona ISD's second election for Board of Trustees Place 3 has a winner after the district's first election on May 3 ended in a tie. UPDATE: Winona ISD school board candidates address voters ahead of second election The challenger, Luis Hernandez, has won the seat with 244 votes against incumbent Randy Hawkins' 181 votes, according to unofficial Smith County election results. Hernandez and the incumbent Hawkins first ran against each other for the seat in the May 3 election but that election resulted in a rare tie where both candidates got 137 votes. After a recount confirmed the equal vote counts, Winona ISD moved to schedule a second election on Saturday, which Hernandez has now won. Hernandez ran on expanding the district's athletic programs and implementing a 3-year, 5-year or a 10-year plan. To hear more from Hernandez, check out the video above where he spoke with KETK's Ashlyn Anderson about his plans for the district. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press
3 days ago
- Associated Press
Here's what to know about American Samoans in Alaska who are being prosecuted after trying to vote
WHITTIER, Alaska (AP) — FOR MOVEMENT AT 9 A.M. EASTERN ON SATURDAY, 6/7. WITH VOTING-AMERICAN SAMOANS MAINBAR. They were born on U.S. soil, are entitled to U.S. passports and allowed to serve in the U.S. military, but 11 people in a small Alaska town are facing criminal charges after they tried to participate in a fundamental part of American democracy: voting. The defendants, who range in age from their 20s to their 60s, were all born in American Samoa — the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship at birth. Prosecutors say they falsely claimed American citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The cases are highlighting another side of the debate over exaggerated allegations of voting by noncitizens, as well as what it means to be born on American soil, as President Donald Trump tries to redefine birthright citizenship by ending it for children of people who are in the country illegally. Here's what to know about the prosecutions in Alaska and the status of American Samoans when it comes to voting. What is the Alaska case about? The investigation began after Tupe Smith, a mom in the cruise-ship stop of Whittier, decided to run for a vacant seat on the regional school board in 2023. She was unopposed and won with about 95% of the vote. That's when she learned she wasn't allowed to hold public office because she wasn't a U.S. citizen. Smith says she knew she wasn't allowed to vote in federal elections but thought she could vote in local or state races, and that she never would have voted if she knew it wasn't legal. She says she told elections workers that she was a U.S. national, not a citizen, and was told to check a box saying she was a citizen anyway. About 10 months later, troopers returned to Whittier and issued court summonses to her husband and nine other American Samoans. While Smith appeals the charges against her, the state filed charges against the others in April. The state argues that Smith's false claim of citizenship was intentional, and her claim to the contrary was undercut by the clear language on the voter application forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022. The forms said that if the applicant did not answer yes to being over 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, 'do not complete this form, as you are not eligible to vote.' Why can't American Samoans vote in the U.S.? The 14th Amendment to the Constitution promises U.S. citizenship to those born on U.S. soil and subject to its jurisdiction. American Samoa has been U.S. soil since 1900, when several of its chiefs ceded their land and vowed allegiance to the United States. For that reason, Smith's lawyers argue, American Samoans must be recognized as U.S. citizens by birthright, and they should be allowed to vote in the U.S. But the islands' residents have never been so considered — Congress declined to extend birthright citizenship to American Samoa in the 1930s — and many American Samoans don't want it. They worry that it would disrupt their cultural practices, including communal land ownership. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited that in 2021 when it declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don't want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision. People born in all other U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam — are U.S. citizens. They can vote in U.S. elections if they move to a state. American Samoans can participate in local elections on American Samoa, including for a nonvoting representative in Congress. Have other states prosecuted American Samoans for trying to vote? Supporters of the American Samoans in Whittier have called the prosecutions unprecedented. One of Smith's attorneys, Neil Weare, suggested authorities are going after 'low-hanging fruit' in the absence of evidence that illegal immigrants frequently cast ballots in U.S. elections. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare. In Oregon, officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they got their driver's licenses under the state's motor-voter law. Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's office, but officials found they did not intend to break the law and no crime was committed. In Hawaii, one resident who was born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn't allowed to hold public office or vote. She also avoided charges. Is there any legislation to fix this? American Samoans can become U.S. citizens — a requirement not just for voting, but for certain jobs, such as those that require a security clearance. However, the process can be costly and cumbersome. Given that many oppose automatic citizenship, the territory's nonvoting representative in Congress, Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, has introduced legislation that would streamline the naturalization of American Samoans who do wish to become U.S. citizens. The bill would allow U.S. nationals in outlying U.S. territories — that is, American Samoa — to be naturalized without relocating to one of the U.S. states. It would also allow the Department of Homeland Security to waive personal interviews of U.S. nationals as part of the process and to reduce fees for them. ___ Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska, and Johnson from Seattle.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Rockingham County Schools could have budget cut
ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — Proposed budget cuts could hit Rockingham County Schools in 2026. Possible budget cuts on the local level for RCS could stem from a reduction in funding on the federal level, according to Superintendent Dr. John Stover III. 'We lost about $200,000 from migrant funding. We lost about $100,000 from our Title 1 funding and … $200,000 for professional development funding,' Stover said. Stover said it's something he wants to avoid, but the decision ultimately falls on the school board. An anticipated decline in enrollment wouldn't help. '286 students less than projected, and so we are projected for approximately 10,900 students. Our budget is based on that,' Stover said. To make up for the loss of funds, Stover said the school district has to save $2 million to $3 million over the next fiscal year. He said he's looked at several options, including shrinking the school resource officer program through the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office. 'Which was basically one for every two schools. I actually talked to the sheriff, and he said he didn't think that was a good idea, and I told him … that's all I needed to hear, and that was off the table,' Stover said. As of right now, Stover's proposed budget cuts for the 2025-2026 fiscal year include the following: shortening the school year from 172 days to 168 cutting one unfilled counselor position cuts to the central office adjusting staff allotment cutting the parent resource centers Centers were launched as a Title 1 initiative, and Stover said they're currently run by three employees. 'We're one of the only counties in the state that still has that. It's an incredibly valuable program. We just weren't seeing enough traffic into those centers. Each center averaged five or less visitors a day,' Stover said. The cuts aren't something parents like Sarah Guymon want hanging over their heads as the school year comes to a close. 'I feel like they struggle every year to have enough staff and enough teachers and assistant teachers and bus drivers. It's really concerning,' Guymon said. Stover is looking to calm those concerns as summer break kicks off. 'None of these cuts I want to do. If we work together, and we have a conversation for what's best for our kids and our community, we can get through anything,' Stover said. Stover said he will present the proposed cuts at the Rockingham County Board of Education meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
