Who knew it had taken root in Utica, New York? The New York Times reports and the Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman rightfully brags that the right thing is being done.
The Attorney General announced his office filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Utica City School District, alleging that the District has discriminated against immigrant students since at least 2007. The lawsuit charges that the District diverted immigrant students above the age of 16 away from the local high school and into alternative programs which were academic dead-ends. As a result of this alleged policy, the lawsuit charges that Utica’s diverse community of refugees and immigrants have been denied the opportunity to obtain meaningful education and a high school diploma. The Attorney General has no tolerance for barriers that inhibit equal access to a quality education—the foundation of the American Dream.
Twenty school districts! Utica is not alone, but perhaps more inventive.
The attorney general’s findings grew out of a statewide review to determine whether districts were violating a Supreme Court mandate against discrimination in schooling by asking about children’s immigration status before enrolling them. The review, initiated in October 2014 in response to an article in The New York Times about children who were barred from school after fleeing violence in Central America, has resulted in more than 20 districts agreeing to change their enrollment policies, according to Mr. Schneiderman’s office.
According to the Times’ report:
Even some students who had finished years of high school in other American districts and then transferred to Utica were told they could not enroll at the high school, the lawsuit says. The district kept no records of these children’s attempts to enroll and did not test them on their English as required by law, according to the lawsuit.
“The district could claim that these individuals were unknown to it — effectively strangers to the district who never sought to enroll and, thus, toward whom the district had no legal obligations beyond whatever piecemeal services the district chose to offer them,” the lawsuit says.
One response to FOIA and public records requirements has been to just not keep records. It seems to be rather pervasive. Here in Georgia, environmental regulators simply fail to assign case numbers and keep no permanent files. Then, in response to a Georgia Open Records Act (GORA) request, a complainant is lucky to get just a copy of what s/he previously sent in.
“Eternal vigilance” is required not, it turns out, to defend against the vandals at the gates, but to make public servants do their jobs.
Apparently, anti-refugee sentiments are not recent:
The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit against the district in April on behalf of six refugee students, describing a similar pattern of exclusionary enrollment practices stretching back to at least 2007.
I used to question the necessity of the phrase “innocent victim,” as it suggested there are also guilty victims. However, I’ve recently come to appreciate that innocent people are normal predator prey for the simple reason that they are unsuspecting and can be taken by surprise. Being cowards, surprise is what predators depend on.