A conservative law firm is threatening to sue the district if it does not rescind its racially-discriminatory policy by December 16.
For nearly a year, a Wisconsin school district has denied reading resources for a white student who suffers from dyslexia, simply because a districtwide policy requires literacy educators to prioritize black, Hispanic and Native American children.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) submitted a letter to the Green Bay Area Public School District on Monday warning the interim superintendent that its attorneys are preparing to file a lawsuit if the school district does not scrap its racially-discriminatory policy.
Green Bay Area’s policy, the “School Success Plan,” states in part that literacy resources will be prioritized for “First Nations, Black, and Hispanic students,” according to a copy published in WILL’s press release. The district calls anyone in these racial groups its “focus students.”
After meeting with King Elementary School’s principal, Colbey Decker felt her son wasn’t being treated as a priority — solely because of his race.
Decker had a 50-minute meeting with the principal in which she “pushed back on him about a lot” and questioned whether the school would ever prioritize white students in that way.
“He said that would never happen,” Decker told National Review. She asked why, and he responded that given the statistics showing white students performing higher than the student population on average, it wouldn’t make sense to provide resources to “non-diverse” members of the student body.
About 14 percent of white students at the school scored “advanced” on an English Language Arts exam compared to over 8 percent of all students this past academic year, according to King Elementary’s report card obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. No data was provided for some minority groups because they didn’t have enough students in attendance at the school.
The mother noted there were other higher-performing students who received reading services before her son, who is in the 17th percentile.
“It was very clear that the principal heavily believes in DEI, and he thinks that the school is called to help these historically underperforming groups,” Decker said. “So I told him, ‘You’re choosing equity. Why can’t we do equality?'”
Diagnosed with dyslexia in 2022, the boy started attending King Elementary in January. Despite the mother’s repeated efforts, her son has not gotten the necessary help he needs to keep up with reading for the last year.
Throughout the year, Decker has provided documentation and requested one-on-one reading interventions for her son. In April, he was placed on the waiting list for a less intensive program that didn’t provide enough support for the remainder of the 2023-24 school year.
By the time he returned to school in the fall, he finally became enrolled in a one-on-one intervention program. However, it was conducted in small groups rather than individualized sessions. He had no problem with receiving one-on-one reading intervention at his previous school.
The mother said her son received about 20 to 25 minutes a day most days of the week at his prior school and started listening to audiobooks during class, considering he is unable to read aloud at the required grade level.
“Early and individualized support for students with dyslexia is so important,” reads the four-page letter written by WILL deputy counsel Dan Lennington and education counsel Cory Brewer. “Delays by the district—with resources being prioritized for students of certain races— has hindered the academic progress of Mrs. Decker’s son and denied him access to necessary literacy resources based on his race.”
The Milwaukee-based, conservative law firm says the policy violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equality under the law, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal funding.
Though well-intentioned, the district’s race-based approach to addressing racial disparities in reading proficiency is also in violation of Supreme Court precedent, WILL says. The law firm cites a few cases, including last year’s landmark decision that banned affirmative action in higher education admissions, to argue that schools cannot use race as a determining factor in offering preferential treatment to some while excluding others.
WILL demands the district rescind its School Success Plan that allocated resources based on race, adopt a color-blind approach to ensure all students receive individualized support regardless of race, and immediately give Decker’s son the sufficient reading support he needs to excel in his classes.
WILL gave the interim superintendent until December 16 to respond. Otherwise, the firm will move forward with legal action against the district. WILL has yet to receive a response indicating Green Bay Area will comply with the above demands.
The public school district did not respond to a request for comment, though it did release a statement to the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
“The District received the letter from WILL yesterday and we are investigating the allegations,” a spokesperson for the district said on Tuesday. “However, we can state unequivocally that the District does not have a policy that includes the language included in the letter. All District policies must be approved by the Board of Education and no such policy language exists.”
WILL believes the district’s statement is nothing more than an excuse.
“Our understanding is that they seem to be taking the position that because this is a school-level document and not something that the full school board voted on, that it’s not a policy,” Brewer told NR. “Frankly, that’s just making excuses because we know that it is in effect where Colbey’s son goes to school and that it is discriminatory.”