Grassroots Parents Organization Files Complaints Claiming Discrimination in Schools Separating Students Based on Race

Parents Defending Education (PDE), a grassroots parental rights organization, filed three complaints Tuesday with the Biden Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that allege discrimination in schools that formed “racial affinity” groups or “community circles” to separate students based on their race.

The complaints allege that discrimination occurred in schools in Oregon, Maine, and Vermont where students were organized according to their race, which, the complaints argue, is in violation of the 14th Amendment.

“These groups encourage students to go into an identity group and exclude students who do not fit that,” said PDE President and Founder Nicki Neily in a statement. “We believe that this is not only immoral, but this is also unconstitutional because what these school districts are doing with federal funding is they are treating students differently on the basis on race, which is prohibited both by Title VI, as well as by the 14th amendment.”

To the complaint filed against Ashland School District in Oregon, PDE attached “evidence in the form of lists of affinity groups at Ashland High School (Exhibit A), Ashland Middle School (Exhibit B), and a job posting for an “Elementary Student Affinity Group Advisor” (Exhibit C), which is posted online at ZipRecruiter and denotes a placement at Bellview Elementary School (Exhibit D).”

PDE notes the document reveals Ashland School District engages in “affinity group programming at all three levels – elementary school, middle school, and high school,” whereby some programs “are only open to students of specific ethnicities, and the program descriptions do not make participation in these affinity groups open to all.”… (Excerpt from The Star News Network)