Schools hit with rights complaint

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.

The Las Vegas Urban Chamber of Commerce has filed a civil rights complaint against the Clark County School District, alleging that too many black children wind up in special education while not enough black teachers and administrators are being hired.

Hannah Brown, chamber president, said the complaint was submitted Wednesday to the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.

Brad Reitz, assistant superintendent of student support services for the district, said this morning his department is well aware that there is a disproportionate number of black children in special education and it's a problem they're trying to address. And it's a shortage of applicants that has limited the district's hiring of black teachers and administrators, said George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources.

The Urban Chamber of Commerce complaint also accuses the school district of failing to fund schools in low-income neighborhoods at the same level as campuses in more affluent areas and failing to properly manage education dollars provided by the federal government.

"We're seeing great disparity and it troubles us," Brown said. "We are asking the U.S. Department of Education to help us get some answers."

Brown said she began questioning the percentage of black students in special education classes after finding out a young girl she had been mentoring had been assigned to the program.

"She's 10, very bright and well-spoken," Brown said. "She's not a kid you would say is learning disabled or a behavior problem. That's when I started wondering what was really going on here."

As of Dec. 1, black students accounted for 14 percent of the total enrollment and 21 percent of special education pupils, according to the district's student support services division. White students made up 46 percent of the total enrollment and 49 percent of the special education pupils. Hispanic students made up 32 percent of the total enrollment and 25 percent of the special education pupils.

The district figures include students identified as mentally retarded or developmentally delayed, as well as children with physical, emotional or learning disabilities.

"If a child is not at the high end of the class and poses a perceived discipline problem, it's easier to move them to special education and get rid of them," Brown said. "The (Clark County School District) is made up of a lot of young, white educators who don't know how to deal with things any other way."

More than a year ago the district formed a task force to study the disproportionate number of blacks in special education, Reitz said. In addition to reviewing statistics, the task force is putting together new training guides for the pychologists,administrators and teachers who make up the evaluation teams, Reitz said.

"We know that eligibility decisions are made at the school level, so we need to step up our training to ensure they are fairly and adequately evaluating students," Reitz said. "We're making sure our tests aren't culturally biased, and that eligibility decisions aren't being based on environmental factors but strictly on cognitive test results."

For more than 30 years, national statistics have shown a disproportionate number of black students in special education, said Thomas Pierce, chairman of the special education department in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Historically the whole field of special education has been aware of this, and much of it has been blamed on how students are assessed," Pierce said. "We know there is a bias in intelligence testing and that people of ethnic minorities tend to score lower."

According to figures from the 2000 Census, black students accounted for 19.9 percent of special education pupils nationwide and 15.3 percent in Nevada.

In California black students account for nearly 13 percent of the special education students and 7.65 percent of the total population, Pierce said. That's nearly double, a greater disparity than in Clark County, Pierce said.

And in Washington, D.C., black students make up 67.5 percent of the enrollment but 91 percent of the special students, Piere said.

"We do have a problem with over-representation, but I don't think you can say it's worse here than anywhere else in the country," Pierce said. "When you look at the overall numbers Nevada is on par with the national average."

As for the district's hiring practices, the chamber's complaint alleges that the number of black teachers dropped 24 percent between 1990 and 2001, despite a 76 percent increase in Clark County's black population.

"The only plausible explanation for such an occurrence is the existence of a discriminatory pattern in the recruiting, interviewing and hiring of teachers by the office of personnel in the Clark County School District," the complaint states.

Brown said Wednesday: "We receive a lot of calls from qualified educators who have filled out job applications and not received interviews, or have been interviewed but no employment offers. You hear constantly that we're short of teachers by large numbers, so it makes you wonder why these people can't get employed."

Rice said her office consistently tries to hire minority educators -- including blacks -- but that the candidate pool is small nationwide. Attempts at partnerships with predominately black colleges have not panned out, Rice said.

"We travel all over the United States, go to recruiting fairs where we might expect to find a high number of minority candidates and process those applications as quickly as possible so that we don't lose them to another district," Rice said. "But the competition is fierce."

Of the 1,400 new teachers hired for the start of the current school year, 16 percent were minorities, Rice said. And overall minorities make up more than 28 percent of the district's work force, Rice said.

Blacks make up 12.8 percent of the total district work force compared with 14 percent of the enrollment, and that's not bad at all, said Thomas Rodriguez, executive manager of the district's diversity and affirmative action programs.

Statistically the most under-represented group in the school district is Hispanics, Rodriguez said, comprising just 9.8 percent of the workforce compared with nearly 32 percent of the enrollment.

Asians are also under-represented given their share of the population, with 2.6 percent of the workforce compared with 5.7 percent of the enrollment, Rodriguez said.

With minorities accounting for 32 percent of administrators the school district is "second to no employer in Nevada" when it comes to the highest possible level of employment, Rodriguez said.

"Collectively the Clark County School District has an excellent record of employment of minority group individuals and a healthy representation of employees from every minority group in Clark County," Rodriguez said Wednesday in a written statement given to the Sun.

Tony F. Sanchez, president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas, said his organization has been working with the district to improve hiring numbers, a problem with roots in the high dropout rate and low college completion rate for Hispanics both in Clark County and nationwide.

"We are the fastest growing community in Southern Nevada and we know the school district is grappling with this," said Sanchez, who is a partner in the law firm of Jones Vargas. "Our post-graduate population isn't keeping up with our growth overall. If anyone tells you there are a thousand Latino administrators out there waiting to be hired, it's just not accurate."