Seattle Public Schools could find itself mired in a federal civil rights investigation for separating students by race in multiple programs, a month after it hastily removed racial eligibility criteria from a "Potluck" that implicitly excluded whites and Jews.
The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism filed a complaint Tuesday with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights against the district's Pathfinder K-8 School after a year of unheeded warnings that its practices violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Atlanta Public Schools is under a long-delayed OCR probe for allegedly segregating black students in their own classrooms and retaliating against parents who objected to their daughter's placement in such a classroom.
FAIR's complaint lays out Pathfinder's invitations to "BIPOC" and multiracial families and students for events and programs, including a "Community Cafe," feedback-oriented "Listening Sessions" and "Lunchtime Community Building Groups."
Pathfinder said last fall it would offer affinity groups for BIPOC, mixed-race, white and Jewish participants but apparently cut it back to just black students in January, to be first offered to middle schoolers and then elementary students.
FAIR contacted the district March 16, the day before the lunch, to warn that it constitutes a "School benefit" withheld from students based on their race, in violation of Title VI and the 14th Amendment, according to a letter shared by O'Neill and referenced in a blog post.
It is substantially different from the original, not even naming a "Potluck." The email credits the three racial student groups for their work on Multicultural Week but not specifically for the lunch, which was planned by "a number of our student groups ... As with all our clubs, any student is invited to join and bring their lunch on Friday."
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