The Lee County School District announced Tuesday that it reached a settlement agreement with the Lee County NAACP, following the civil rights complaint the organization filed against the district last year.
As Lee County Superintendent Greg Adkins took the stage at Dunbar High School, the screen behind him illuminated the district’s logo beside the logo of the NAACP.
“As the Reverend Martin Luther King (Jr.) stated, ‘The function of education is to teach one to think intensely and to think critically,'" Adkins quoted. "'Intelligence plus character — this is the goal of true education.’”
The Lee County NAACP filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in December of 2017, alleging the school district’s disciplinary policies are what led to the overrepresentation of students of color in the so-called "school-to-prison pipeline."
You can read the full complaint here.
Though the fastest-growing population in Lee Schools is students of color, those same students are more likely than their white classmates to be transferred to alternative education programs, suspended or expelled and referred to law enforcement for incidents on campus. On the opposite end of things, minority students are underrepresented in advanced placement and gifted programs and, ultimately, are less likely to end their education by crossing a stage at graduation, diploma in hand.
Lee County School Board member Mary Fischer said she witnessed that disparity herself in her decades-long career with the district, beginning as a counselor.
“A lot of the time that used to be spent on those social-emotional supports really went by the wayside," Fischer said. "I think that we’ve seen the result of that, and now, we are working to implement prevention and intervention programs and to have a little resurgent with our counselors and social workers and nurses and psychologists so that we can support those children.”
It has been more than nine months since the complaint was filed, which may sound like a lot of time, but attorney Ricky Watson says he’s seen these types of cases drag on for several years. Watson is part of the team of attorneys with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which is representing the Lee County NAACP.
“Every child deserves a safe place to learn, and we’re confident the commitments made today will build to create that outcome," Watson said. "Students’ ability to succeed should not be limited by the color of their skin, and that’s something we should all be able to agree on. This is our moment to put those values into action and fight for students of color.”
The settlement agreement, which you can read in full here, comes down to eight actionable items on the district’s part — the bold of which have already been done.
They go as follows:
- The creation of an Office of Diversity
- The implementation of restorative disciplinary practices as an alternative to suspension
- A quarterly review of the district’s disciplinary practices by community groups, including the Lee County NAACP
- The institution of quarterly community forums and public talks about racial equity in the district
- The establishment of ongoing training for district administrators and staff in structural racism, cultural awareness and implicit bias
- The collection of statistics on disparities in each school’s disciplinary actions
- The conception of training for administrators in protocol on when to involve school resource officers
- The allocation of resources and funds to the schools with the most need first
At the joint press conference, Lee County NAACP President James Muwakkil shook hands with Superintendent Adkins, as they swapped copies of the agreement and signed it again.
“We looked at ways we could work with the school district as opposed to fighting the school district," Muwakkil said. "We thought it was very, very important that we partner with the school district.”
The district has, so far, checked three of the aforementioned items off the to-do list, but the NAACP also agreed to withdraw the civil rights complaint with the DOE, which, at the time of the signing, had yet to happen.
