A Wisconsin law firm is suing the Green Bay School District for violating a student’s rights after a parent said her son was denied access to resources because of his race.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sent a letter on Dec. 9 to Green Bay Schools Superintendent Vicki Bayer and the district on behalf of Colbey Decker, who says the district denied his son individual reading intervention because of his race. Decker’s son is white.
The complaint is based on Mambo Elementary’s student achievement program, which says its literacy program focuses on “intentional work to educate our special needs students, while prioritizing additional resources for First Nations, Black and Hispanic students.”
“This law, even though it aims to resolve conflicts, discriminates against students of other races who also need support,” says the letter. “The district policy fails to treat students as people and does not value their different needs.
WILL is demanding that the district abandon the system, adopt a more transparent approach to allocating resources and providing early reading support to Decker’s son. It requested that the change be made by December 16; if no change is made, it will consider “all legal means.”
“If we need to go to court to get more information and show discrimination under this school policy, we will,” Education Minister Cory Brewer said.
The district’s reading standards document states that the goal of the district’s reading program is to “provide effective literacy instruction to all students, including providing timely and appropriate learning support to any student who may be struggling with reading and related reading skills.”
However, it also sets initial performance goals, which are “established based on data that show the district is meeting the needs of certain groups of students better than others.”
“The district received a letter from WILL yesterday and we are investigating the matter, however, we can say without a doubt that the district does not have a policy that includes the language written in the letter. and no such language exists,” the district said in a statement.
Decker reached out to WILL after her son, who has dyslexia, was placed on a waiting list for reading intervention in April after she made formal requests for one-on-one intervention, according to a news release. In the fall, her son was placed in a small group intervention program after receiving help from a classroom teacher. The delay in support has hurt his progress in school, the letter says.
Decker says he would have been treated better if he was a member of one of the groups that valued King, and that he was denied access to these resources because he is white.
WILL said the law violates Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin. It says the district excluded Decker’s son from equal access to educational resources, and says the law discriminates against certain racial groups who need help because of their race.
“Our client’s child is not on a level playing field to get the services he needs,” Brewer said.
According to Mambo’s report card, white students at this school perform better than the average student. About 30% of white students at King scored proficient or advanced on the English Language Arts test compared to 16.7% of all students. Many small groups had too few students to provide data.
Contact Green Bay education reporter Nadia Scharf at nscharf@gannett.com or at X at @nadiaascharf.
This article originally appeared on the Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay school accused of human rights violations