Public Schools Face Racial Segregation Investigation

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.

It’s FAIR’s first OCR complaint and “the most egregious version” of racial separation it has seen in submissions to its tracking portal, Managing Director of Legal Advocacy Leigh Ann O’Neill told Just the News. Multiple sets of Pathfinder parents started notifying FAIR in November 2021 but have not spoken publicly for fear of being called a “bigot,” she said.

There’s precedent for federal investigation, even in the Biden administration.  (Excerpt from Just the News.)