The Black Parents Workshop says it may take further legal action against the South Orange-Maplewood School District to ensure full compliance with a settlement reached with the district in June 2020, while a district spokesperson reports that district believes it is in compliance.
At a virtual town hall meeting on Saturday, Feb. 26, leaders of BPW presented their update on the district’s compliance with a 2020 settlement over unequal placement of Black and white students in advanced level classes at Columbia High School as well as inequities in discipline and other issues.
“We felt it was time to let everyone know our perspective of the status of what I characterize as a significant settlement with the district,” said James Davis, chairman of the BPW.
While BPW found that the district was largely compliant on Sections 7-11 of the settlement, Davis and BPW founder Walter Fields said that the district was not compliant on Sections 3-5. This involved an equity report that was undertaken by Dr. Eddie Fergus of Temple University that the BPW said was to include K-12 data but did not. BPW contended that Dr. Fergus’s plan was to be made public and has not been, and that BPW, per the settlement, was to be provided the opportunity to provide comment and input on Dr. Fergus’s report and plan but this did not happen. (Dr. Fergus presented his findings to the Board of Education in September 2021; read coverage here.)
Additionally BPW said that, per the settlement, the group was to be provided the opportunity for comment and input on the district’s Intentional integration plan but this did not happen.
Finally, Davis said that former New Jersey Supreme Court Justice John E. Wallace Jr. was to act as an impartial monitor of the settlement. BPW say they don’t know if the district has engaged Justice Wallace.
Overall Davis lamented the state of the working relationship between the district and BPW. Davis said that the settlement was, in essence, a contract whereby two parties were to work together via the settlement. “Although previously adversaries in the eyes of the courts, to get to the goals of the settlement the parties have to work together.” He said that BPW had been shut out of portions of that, while acknowledging engagement in certain areas such as working to recruit teachers with the district HR lead Stacy Robinson.
Village Green has reached out to district officials for comment regarding these statements.
Prior to the town hall, Village Green reached out to Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor and district Communications Director Anide Eustache to inquire about the status of settlement compliance. Eustache replied, “Overall, we believe we are in compliance with the settlement agreement of the BPW. If there are any disputes to be addressed or resolved, it would go through the procedures the parties have agreed upon in the settlement.”
Eustache said that the district had made data available on monthly suspensions and expulsions and yearly course enrollment data and:
“In addition, over the course of the past 1 ½ years, the District has:
- Launched Cougar Academy to support CHS students who demonstrated a need for more support;
- Added four new teachers to CHS and the Middle Schools (total) to academically support underrepresented students;
- Engaged with Equal Opportunity Schools at CHS to continue a targeted data driven approach to add underrepresented students to our most rigorous offerings;
- Created and made room for funding for the Asst. Supt A&E (interviews are progressing with hope to bring closure the position in the coming weeks);
- Year 1 of the Intentional Integration Initiative has been been successful and a proposal for year 2 will be put forward in March to the BOE;
- BPW representatives have attended planning meetings with our HR Director regarding a strategy of targeting HBCU’s to assist in recruiting a more diverse teaching force;
- Two academic coaches were added to our District this year for teacher support and professional development (as per Dr. Fergus’ recommendation); and we will be proposing 2 more to be possibly added in next year’s budget for Board consideration.”
At the town hall on Feb. 26, Fields, the founder of BPW whose daughter graduated Columbia High School in 2016, noted that the BPW suit closely mirrored a suit brought by the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights which the district settled in 2015.
“It was our intention from the founding … to try to find a way to cooperate with the school district so that we could make systemic changes that would advance the interests of Black children in the community,” said Fields. “Seeing that was not possible, we made the hard choice of pursuing litigation,” he added.
Fields and Davis both contended that the district had not been transparent in reporting out settlement actions to the public and criticized district communications that said that the BPW was not to disclose the progress of settlement compliance publicly but file complaints “through the procedures the parties have agreed upon in the settlement.” Fields said that the BPW is not in litigation with the district and said there was nothing prohibiting the school district from discussing the terms of the settlement and progress of the settlement with the public. “This agreement is public information. You should have access to it and the board should be discussing it with the community,” said Fields.
Davis wanted to stress that BPW sought to be collaborative and helpful and was “not just about filing lawsuits but for getting things done and changing outcomes.” Fields noted that BPW was not a lone actor but was joined in its suit by the ACLU and a local chapter of the NAACP.
Black Parents Workshop Chair James Davis
Regarding Dr. Fergus’s plan, Davis said BPW was supposed to see a draft in November 2020. “We did not receive the update. We understood,” said Davis, noting the COVID-19 pandemic. When BPW received the draft in June 2021, “we were concerned because Dr. Fergus’ report is supposed to include K-12 data. The report we received only included data for grades 6-8. We’ve asked and we have not received a response as to why or when. The settlement also gives us opportunity to comment.” Davis said that BPW then found that Dr. Fergus’ contract ended in June 2021.
Fields wanted to note that BPW had “no issues”with Fergus and respected his reputation and work. “But he himself encountered difficulties in obtaining the data he needed” to complete his plan, said Fields.
Davis said that the district was largely compliant with Section 7 regarding state validation of the Amistad curriculum, although he said that BPW was concerned that teachers were not receiving the training they needed to properly implement the Amistad curriculum, citing a recent incident where a teacher had students’ re-enact a slave punishment (an incident that was acknowledged by the district’s counsel). He also reported that the district was compliant with Section 8 (enrollment for advanced level courses), Section 9 (suspension data), Section 10 (hiring an assistant superintendent of access and equity) and Section 11 (working to recruit/hire Black teachers).
However, Davis questioned the accuracy of suspension data and noted that, although a recent suspension moratorium had a goal of curtailing disparate suspensions, 14 Black students had been suspended since the moratorium. Davis called the moratorium “performative in nature only.” Davis also noted the Assistant Superintendent of Access and Equity Dr. Gretel Perez had resigned late last year after being on the job for about a year and no replacement had been made yet. Davis said he found Dr. Perez to be “very candid” but also “there was some frustration.” He surmised that her resignation may have been due to frustration “not just in our settlement but in other areas.”
Walter Fields, founder and advisor, Black. Parents Workshop
Regarding Section 11, the hiring of black teachers in the district, Davis said that BPW had been working with the SOMSD HR director Stacy Robinson directly and “she has definitely been doing the footwork,” with Fields helping her tap into HBCUs. Davis said that the district was justifiably struggling with issues of the cost of living and the status of teacher union contract negotiations, etc. in attracting Black teachers. Fields said that BPW asked the district to work with the Achieve Foundation for resources for attracting Black teachers. “I’m hopeful that the Achieve Foundation will step up.”
During Q&A at the town hall, district parent Michael Paris thanked the BPW for its work. He also noted that four Board of Education members were attending the meeting, as was CHS Principal Frank Sanchez, but not the superintendent. Paris said he was very interested in seeing more information from Dr. Fergus. South Orange Middle School Principal Lynn Irby said she was learning more about the settlement through the town hall than she had through the district.
Overall, Davis said, “The BPW has never declined an opportunity to work with the district. What we are frustrated by is the seeming non-interest of the district” to work on outstanding issues. He said that BPW had not had a formal meeting with the Board of Education about the settlement agreement. “Here we are and we are looking at the calendar and quite frankly the district is running out of time.”
Fields said that BPW has set a deadline of July 1. “If we don’t see progress, we are prepared to go to a federal judge and seek a federal court order on all of the unresolved issues around this settlement. This settlement agreement does give us the right to go back to court. And we will exercise that right if we don’t see any progress by July 1 of this year. Because at some point it’s put up or shut up on the part to the SOMSD and that’s where we are right now.”
Davis said that it is in the interest of the district to respond before further legal action because a judge could then move to a court order to make the district comply, taking the disposition of the settlement “out of all of our hands.”
The town hall begins at about the 21:30 mark in the video (note: Village Green is not allied with BPW or any agency and did not participate in hosting the town hall but has loaded the video file to the Village Green YouTube page in order to embed it in the article here):
