A parental rights watchdog filed a civil rights complaint against Rochester Public Schools, a K-12 school district in Minnesota, for “discrimination on the basis of race” in programs that receive federal funding.
In its complaint, Parents Defending Education accused the southeast Minnesota school district of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by excluding white people from certain opportunities.
One document cited in the complaint, the “Minnesota Teacher Mentorship and Retention of Effective Teachers Grant Report to the Legislature,” details the $136,400 grant doled out to the district due to its race-based educator affinity group.
According to the district’s Employees of Color Resource Group webpage, the affinity group seeks to provide “mentorship for new teachers of color,” and on the district’s Grow Your Own webpage, its efforts to recruit, mentor, and retain teachers of color are described.
The latter webpage specifically states that in order to meet the criteria to participate, the teacher must be “of color.”
Rochester Public Schools has a public statement on its website saying it does not “unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race” with regard to “an employee’s membership or activity in clubs or organizations.”
In response to the complaint, Rochester Public Schools provided the following statement to the Washington Examiner: “Research has conclusively shown that when a student of color has a teacher of color, it has powerful benefits to their academic achievement and educational experience. We believe the benefits of the diversity of our staff apply to all other positions as well.”
“As a result,” the statement continues, “our strategic plan seeks to develop and recruit staff from diverse backgrounds and support them once they are employed in our district. We’ve done so in a way consistent with the law and best practices in education and other fields.”
The civil rights complaint comes on the heels of Parents Defending Education’s recent report that exposed the Biden Department of Education for issuing over a billion dollars in grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many of those grants were similarly used to facilitate race-exclusionary opportunities and race-based affinity groups.
The watchdog has filed a number of complaints against schools with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, including two recent Title VII complaints, first reported by the Washington Examiner.
The complaints alleged “racial discrimination” after white employees were reportedly excluded from an employment opportunity in Acalanes Union High School District in Oakland, California, and race-segregated employee affinity groups were created in Boston Public Schools.
Rochester Public Schools has an “equity statement” on its website that states, “We believe equity is a lens through which all decisions should be made.”
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Such a statement raised the eyebrows of DEI critics as equity constitutes treating various groups of people differently based on factors such as their race, sex, and sexual preference, as opposed to “colorblind equality,” which involves treating everyone the same, regardless of what categories they fall under.
The equity statement includes a land acknowledgment about how Rochester Public Schools sites “are situated on ancestral lands of the Dakota people” and states, “We acknowledge and honor the Dakota Nations and the sacred land of all Indigenous peoples.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
