An exhaustive investigation into Kansas’s largest school district found it disciplined Black and disabled students more frequently and harshly than their white counterparts, the Justice Department said Tuesday, announcing a settlement agreement with the district.
The Justice Department investigated Wichita Public Schools and “uncovered discriminatory treatment of Black students in the administration of discipline at multiple schools,” it said in a release Tuesday.
The probe into the district’s 87 schools and special programs from the start of the 2020-2021 school year through the end of the fall semester of the 2022-23 school year found Black girls faced “especially highly levels of exclusion” for dress code violations or “perceived insubordination,” and their behavior was frequently characterized using “stereotypical terms like ‘attitude’ or drama’” the release said.
The probe also found “evidence of racial discrimination” in referrals to law enforcement, and “a pattern of security officers responding to routing discipline matters and escalating those incidents, resulting in the unnecessary referral of Black students to law enforcement for routine or minor misbehavior.”
The district also “repeatedly secluded and restrained” students with disabilities as punishment or in response to noncompliance with school rules and staff orders.
In fact, students with disabilities received more than 98% of the district’s roughly 3,000 restraints and seclusions — meaning putting a child in rooms alone — during the investigation time period and at least 44 students experienced “20 or more restrains and seclusions” during the period covered by the investigation, the release said.
One student was restrained or secluded a startling 144 times — including 99 seclusions lasting over 15 hours total, the statement said.
Overall the district’s schools and settings for students with disabilities lacked student behavior interventions or failed to implement them. Even more stark, the district’s special schools for students with behavioral disabilities were found to be “inferior facilities devoid of furniture, educational equipment and the kinds of decor commonly found in schools, and staff who could not meet the needs of the students,” the department said.
Under the settlement, Wichita Public Schools will have to improve their care for disabled students including by getting rid of seclusions as a punishment, offer counseling for students who have been repeatedly secluded and restrained, and create an office to monitor restraint practices and ensure staffers are providing students with interventions and support.
Further, the district will create a district-level monitoring of schools to ensure nondiscrimination in discipline, the district must ensure school security and law enforcement only get involved in “appropriate circumstances,” and standardize dress code policies.
“Schools in our communities should not be a place of fear or mistrust. This agreement upholds our core principles of ending the school to prison pipeline and protecting our most vulnerable students against all forms of discrimination and segregation,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the release.
Changes must be in place by Jan. 1, 2025.
Wichita Superintendent of Schools Kelly Bielefeld said in a statement: “We can and must create a more equitable school district by changing some of our practices and procedures. The settlement agreement with the DOJ will end the use of seclusion, create a new Student Code of Conduct, and provide clarity and consistency for staff, students, caregivers and our community regarding disciplinary practices.”
“Together, we will continue to do and be better for our students,” he added.
