Education Dept. wants to narrow civil rights work in schools
WASHINGTON — The Education Department wants to narrow the scope of civil rights investigations at schools, focusing on individual complaints rather than systemic problems, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.
Under the Obama administration, when a student complained of discrimination in a particular class or school, the education agency would examine the case but also look at whether the incident was part of a broader, systemic problem that needed to be fixed.
Proposed revisions to the department’s civil rights procedures, distributed last week among civil rights officials at the department, remove the word “systemic” from the guidelines.
The changes would also allow schools a greater say in how a case is handled, compared with the student or parent who filed the complaint, and would eliminate the appeals process.
The document is only a draft; a final version is expected to be published next year after suggestions and proposals from staff.
The action comes as the Trump administration looks for ways of streamlining the work and trimming the budgets of many federal agencies. The administration has called for a $9 billion, or 13.5 percent, cut to the education budget, which would mean the loss of more than 40 employees out of about 570 at the agency’s Office for Civil Rights.
The Education Department did not comment on the proposed revisions Wednesday.
Seth Galanter, former principal deputy assistant secretary for human rights in Obama’s Education Department, criticized the proposed revisions, saying the civil rights office’s key mission is to identify and solve systemic problems.
Galanter gave an example of a complaint stemming from a white and a minority student getting into a fight, but the minority student being disciplined more harshly than the white student. Under the previous procedure, OCR would examine that particular case but also look at whether that teacher, school or school district was engaging in other similar discriminatory behavior.
“It’s a very surface level fix that certainly will make that particular parent happy, but isn’t fulfilling OCR’S obligation,” Galanter said. “OCR is underfunded and understaffed and in order to get through all the complaints in some kind of timely manner, staff is being forced to give them superficial treatment.”