January 4, 2019
Update: The settlement agreements described below ended in 2021 and lasted for three school years: 2018 – 2019, 2019 – 2020, and 2020 – 2021. A final report was issued by the Department of Human Rights in May of 2022. Suspensions and Expulsions Report. However, school districts continue to create and report discipline outcomes based on race. Race-based discipline has been embedded into Minnesota school districts.
- Racial Quotas in School Discipline
- Minnesota teachers and school remain saddled with a race-based discipline policy!
- Massive New Activist ‘Diversion Committee’
- State Completes Local Control Seizure
- Take Action
Racial Quotas in School Discipline
On December 18, The Federal Commission studying school safety recommended dumping the dangerous Obama-era Racial Equity in School Discipline directive. Safety Commission Recommends Scrapping Obama Race-Based School Discipline Policy
Three days later, acting U.S. Attorney General Whitaker rescinded it, officially ending this raw federal power play against American citizens that disregarded federal law and subjected public school students to two-tiered discipline based on race.
Obama’s race-based policy fueled a four-year rise in school violence and reportedly played a major role in Florida’s Stoneman Douglas High School shooting last February.
The policy also threatened to withhold federal funding from every U.S. public school that showed students of color being disciplined more frequently than white students. Last year, the Child Protection League reported:
That directive was promoted as a way to “improve school climate.” Instead, it has created unsafe classrooms and has significantly increased physical danger to teachers trying to maintain order and protect the safety of their students.
The U.S. Civil Rights law, both Title IV and Title VI, explicitly prohibits schools from disciplining students differently based on race.
In 2014, however, the Obama administration turned that prohibition on its head by measuring “disparate impacts,” that is, disciplinary outcomes by race. As a result, students are being subjected to different standards of discipline —based on race. Schools got the message that they may face state and federal legal action of civil rights violations if disciplinary outcomes by race are not equitable. Often, discipline disparity is being couched in the language of diversity: it’s their “culture.”
Racial Equity in School Discipline Creating Unsafe Classrooms December 2017
Scrapping Obama’s race-based policy lifted a huge burden from schools, teachers and families in most states across the country.
The School Safety Commission report states:
By telling schools that they were subject to investigation, and threatening to cut federal funding because of different suspension rates for members of different racial groups, the Guidance gave schools a perverse incentive to make discipline rates proportional to enrollment figures, regardless of the appropriateness of discipline for any specific instance of misconduct. In response to OCR investigations involving school data, some school districts reportedly adopted racial quotas in school suspensions. Others entered into settlements with OCR that could be interpreted as imposing racial proportionality requirements in school discipline data.
Although the Guidance did not expressly require any school to impose a strict racial quota in suspensions, it is inappropriate for the federal government to pressure schools to establish such quotas. (page 71)
Final Report of the Federal Commission on School Safety December 2018 (PDF)
Minnesota teachers and school remain saddled with a race-based discipline policy!
The Dayton administration anticipated this sea change and initiated its own racial equity directive. In October of 2017, the MN Department of Human Rights (MDHR) sent a letter to 43 school districts informing them that they have a “racial discipline disparity” in violation of the
MN Human Rights Act. Unless they entered into a “settlement agreement” with the state, they would file charges and investigate them for civil rights violations.
MN Department of Human Rights Letter to Superintendents, October 2017 (PDF)
These settlements, “Collaborative Agreements”, require that school boards adopt an MDHR-approved plan, report its performance to the state twice a year, and appoint a representative to an MDHR “Diversion Committee.”
Massive New Activist ‘Diversion Committee’
Leftist politicos are masters at creating new power centers to move their revolution forward at our expense. The Diversion Committee is a prime example.
The new state infrastructure, imitated with no authorizing legislation, reviews districts’ performances and creates ‘best practices’ and strategies for discipline; meaning they set a standard to which all schools are expected to handle discipline.
It will also create ‘best practices’ for teaching and monitoring ‘implicit bias’ education, which means indoctrinating students and the public into the false notion that all whites are racist, minorities are victims, and re-education is necessary to purge white values from the hearts and
minds of everyone. Tragically, this is not an exaggeration.
It will also create ‘best practices’ for ‘ensuring community involvement”, meaning state-sponsored community race-based activism.
The MDHR will publish and distribute these ‘best practices’ and create a legislative agenda.
The MDHR will seek funding for all this work from other state agencies, private foundations, and private businesses. We anticipate that legislation to fully fund this massive new will be inserted into some 2019 omnibus spending bill.
| Leftist politicos are masters at creating new power centers to move their revolution forward at our expense. got white privilege? |
 |
Are you starting to see the pattern? Just as the 2014 “Safe & Supportive Schools Act” used anti-bullying as a façade to create a massive new state infrastructure (School Safety Technical Assistance Center) that has forced LGBT/gender radicalism into every Minnesota public school, MDHR is using” racial equity” as a front to establish and fund a radical new school-and-community-engagement agency based on race-based deceit.
Under this con-game, 42 “independent” school districts and charter schools have come under the authority of the state, treating discipline as racial issues and assuming racially white students and faculty are racist. Minnesota’s radical, race-based Minnesota politicians have
strong-armed our school districts.
State Completes Local Control Seizure
In an appalling lack of leadership and wisdom, every targeted district but one capitulated, handed its school discipline authority fully over to the state. With the deep pockets of state government threatening to haul school districts into court, only the Anoka-Hennepin School Board defended Minnesota’s long-established and highly prized authority of local control. The A-H Board voted Aug. 13th to cooperate and collaborate with the department, but not sign an agreement.
MN Schools Reach Agreement with Department of Human Rights, August 2018
Board Chair Tom Heidemann said, “Signing an agreement would be “the same as saying we agree our staff have failed in their work. I don’t think that this is an accurate message, or a message to send within our organization,” He’s right. The agreements implicitly presume teacher racism is the source of unequal racial discipline outcomes.
The MDHR’s racial equity mandate likely violates federal Civil Rights law, no less than did Obama’s federal dictate, which would not have withstood a court challenge. As noted by legal counsel:
Letter to Secretary DeVos (PDF)
With this in mind, a federal lawsuit appears to be the way forward for Minnesota.
TAKE ACTION:
- Find your board’s “Collaborative Agreement”. If you are in one of the targeted districts, ask your school board to see the “plan” that they submitted and was approved by the state. Know what your district is doing!
MDHR Website - If you are in one of the targeted districts, contact your school board members to express your displeasure over their transferring your local district’s discipline policy authority to the state. Express your displeasure over signing an agreement that assumes that all whites areracist and that discipline policies must be viewed through the lens of race.
- Engage personally with your local House and Senate legislators. Tell them to put a stop to this travesty. Make this a campaign issue for 2020, starting now.
- If you have children in school, engage with them about how wrong it is for students to be shamed for being white or for being any race at all. Ask them to share with you how discipline is being handled and what training or curriculum they are receiving regarding race. Protect your kids.