ACLU Sues To End Almost Total White Control Over Ferguson’s Majority Black School System
A lawsuit filed Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union paints a grim picture of a school district whose leadership bears little resemblance to its student body. Although “African-American students accounted for 77.1% of total enrollment in the Ferguson-Florissant School District in the 2011-2012 school year,” only one of the district’s seven school board members are black. This is the district that includes Ferguson, Missouri, where the police shooting of African American teenager Michael Brown triggered widespread protests.
Under white-elected leadership, according to the ACLU’s complaint, “[t]he District experiences significant racial disparities in terms of enrollment in gifted programs, access to advanced classes, assignment to special education programs, and school discipline.”
The complaint describes a pattern that is common in many school districts that were once segregated by law. White residents dominate a local school board, even as the overwhelming majority of students are black and most white families send their children to private schools. The complaint alleges that “only 13% of the district’s student body is white” and “approximately 68% of white school-age children who live in Ferguson or Florissant do not attend public schools in the District.”
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