ANTIOCH — A battle over the unequal use of discipline in school will be headed to trial after Antioch Unified School District attempted to get out of what was described as a “groundbreaking” agreement with the local NAACP to address civil rights violations.
In early February, a Contra Costa Superior Court judge tentatively ruled against AUSD’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit over an alleged failure to follow through with a previous agreement with East County NAACP.
The previous agreement was in response to threats of a lawsuit from the East County NAACP and advocates over the unequal rate of suspensions and expulsions of black students and students with disabilities. Prompted by what the East County NAACP said was numerous complaints of discrimination and its own investigations, as well as numerous lawsuits, settlement agreements and resolutions between the district and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights and others.
At the time of the agreement, black students represented nearly a quarter of the student body, but over half of all suspensions and nearly two-thirds of expulsions. The gap in these rates were even higher for black students with disabilities.
In response, the district signed an agreement with East County NAACP that was described as “groundbreaking” in 2015. The agreement was for experts to review AUSD’s disciplinary practices and special education program and to identify the “subtle, complex, and often unintentional ways” that cause disparities in school suspensions and expulsions.
At the time, then-superintendent Don Gill said the district was signing on to the agreement to avoid a costly lawsuit that was “not in the best interest of our students.”
The lawsuit and agreement came around the same time as a bill was passed that banned subjective “willful defiance” suspensions and expulsions for K-3 students. Those protections will end in December of this year. In the 2014-15, AUSD had the largest disparity between white and black students in rates of instructional days lost due to defiance or disruption in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.
A complaint filed the East County NAACP alleged that the district began undermining the agreement by preventing the selected experts from accessing the district’s information that would help them write their reports and issue recommendations.
This “deliberate sabotage” went on for eight months before the East County NAACP sued again.
“We’re very hopeful, now that the judge has rejected the district’s attempt to short-circuit this lawsuit, that the district will work with the plaintiffs to resolve the underlying issues that are still present,” said Michael Harris, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, which has partnered with the East County NAACP on the lawsuit.
Attorney Kathryn Alberts, who represents the district in the lawsuit, argued that the East County NAACP could not compel the school to work with specific experts that it had identified.
The team of experts was led by Dan Losen, Director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA. In October, Losen authored a report with ACLU attorney Amir Whitaker for UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, titled “Lost Instruction: The Disparate Impact of the School Discipline Gap in California,” delved into the state’s school discipline data and quantified the number of days of missed instruction from suspension.
Overall, the report found that there was a large decline in lost instructional days from suspensions for black students, which went from 66 lost days of instruction per 100 students in the 2011-12 school year to 43 days per 100 students in 2014-15.
However, black and Native American students still appeared to have lost the most instruction time in every type of district, according to the report.
AUSD was identified as having the 11th largest gap between black and white students in days of lost instruction per 100 students. Black students lost 105.2 days of instruction per 100 students and white students lost 27.4 days of instruction.
Since the lawsuit was first filed, the district’s disparate disciplinary rates have not improved to a significant degree. Suspension rates still remain in the “very high” category for students with disabilities, African-American students, homeless youth and foster youth.
In a letter published in the East Bay Times in Nov. 2017, Walter Ruehlig, president of the Antioch School Board, reported that after years of dramatic decline, “suspensions are, perplexingly, up 16 percent this school year,” and promised to work double time to address it.
Ruehlig discussed the differences in educational outcomes for students of different racial and economic situations, pointing to his son’s successes at Deer Valley High “where he encountered few discipline distractions or time-consuming struggling students.”
The lawsuit wouldn’t be the first time AUSD has faced litigation over discriminatory practices.
In 2009, the district settled a racial discrimination lawsuit for $775,000 after seven students from Deer Valley High School were unanimously expelled by the AUSD school board after being arrested by a school resource officer for allegedly blocking traffic as they walked through a shopping center, off-campus and after-hours.
Ruehlig was among the board members that voted for the students’ expulsions.
