District 65's Civil Rights Complaints
An update on old civil rights litigation; and a new disturbing case
FOIAGRAS is a free newsletter run by Tom Hayden (FOIA GRAS LLC) that explores various topics in local Evanston Governance, especially around ETHS and School District 65 (Evanston/Skokie). I publish and share all my data and reports. Subscribing is free, so please subscribe or share.
Most people are not aware that District 65 currently has four open investigations with the Department of Education Civil Rights Office. Three of them are detailed in a prior piece I published regarding OCR Letter #05-19-1395. These complaints derive from the lawsuit regarding a teacher who sued District 65.1
You can read the draft letter of finding2 that the Department of Education sent to District 65 on January 5th 2021. Amusingly, the following day, as the Capitol was being stormed, District 65’s attorney emailed the Department of Ed lawyer to ask for more time to reply. You can read some of the back-and-forth in this FOIA’ed document.3
On January 13th, 2021, the District offered a response to the letter of finding. I have no idea what the District’s response was - the document is almost entirely redacted. I tried to FOIA from District 65 and this FOIA was denied.4
The letter of finding was subsequently “revoked” a week later on inauguration date. I’m not sure “revoked” is the right word. According to the District, in a FOX News article;
In January, the proceedings were suspended by OCR pending its reconsideration of the case in light of the executive orders on racial equity issued by President Biden," a spokesperson for the school district told Fox News. "At this time, there is no final decision in place.
And according to a spokesperson at the Department of Education that I reached out to;
The Office for Civil Rights can confirm that there is an open investigation (case #: 05-19-1395) of the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We do not comment on open investigations.
Since then, as far as I know, literally nothing has happened. My best guess that instead of revoked, the phrase might be, “on ice until the next Republican administration."5
A New Civil Rights Allegation
A new case was opened in November 2023. The complaint dates to May 2023, during the Horton Administration. Below you can see the screenshot from the OCR Search Tool.
This one is different than the others and seems quite severe;
The U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), has received a complaint filed against the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 (District), alleging discrimination based on race. OCR received the complaint on May 23, 2023.
Specifically, the complaint alleges that the District discriminated against a (Student A) at (School) on the basis of race (Black) when a Caucasian classmate (Student B) harassed Student A based on race on and the District was aware of the harassment and failed to respond appropriately.
If I am reading this letter correctly, it alleges that a black student was so sufficiently harassed by a white student and the District did so little to remediate the problem, that it requires intervention from the Federal Government. This is wild and absolutely unacceptable.
I’ve written a bit about the District’s new “Restorative Practices” Discipline policy, which largely amounts to “very little discipline.” I’ve spoken with teachers, administrators, and parents across the District that have told me stories of kids getting harassed and the District doing little more than offering a peace circle, if that. I’ve heard stories of violent kids in the classroom who are sent to the principal’s office, only to be returned directly to the abusive environment.
But the suspension numbers sure look good;
A major intent of a restorative practices discipline policy is to reduce the racial inequities in meting out punishment, which is a key metric the District focuses on. However, when you essentially enforce no rules, all kids and teachers will suffer, especially the very kids you are trying to help.
I have to wonder if that is what we are witnessing here because it certainly lines up with stories I’ve heard from countless parents and teachers.6
With that said, I don’t know the full details of this case, it is recently opened and I don’t think FOIA will go very far because of exemptions. If anyone knows the folks involved here, please have them reach out to me (tom@foiagras.com) - I would like to tell the story of the student, their parents, and what was so bad it required this extreme step (with their permission, of course)
A Reminder: Voting next Week!
And don’t forget, next Tuesday is the primary day here in Illinois! I went out and cast my vote at City Hall this morning. The primaries this year are pretty boring but there are some important judges and other secondary roles to vote on. Especially with judges, I’m a big fan of BallotReady7. It’s a very useful tool for finding the occasional unqualified judge that makes it onto ballots (and there are a few this cycle).
I owe you guys an update on this story; stay tuned.
I’ve subsequently learned that this draft letter was not meant to be released to the public. My understanding is that it was obtained by the Southeastern Legal Foundation via FOIA to District 65. I’ve subsequently FOIA’ed the exact same records and had my request rejected.
It took me over a full year to get this set of highly redacted records from the Federal Government.
This is a completely proper reason for denial - open legal cases.
I wrote about this in my prior story, but I think it is a completely fair critique to suggest that laws and regulations ought to be enforced the same, regardless of the party of the person sitting in the White House!
And to be fair, since I don’t know the full story and will probably never know the full story, there’s an alternative reading one could take: that Evanston is such a racist hell-hole that no matter how much we spend on diversity training, anti-racist materials, and hiring administrators, that behaviors like this are essentially unstoppable. I personally, don’t find this argument compelling, but I know that some folks will make this argument.
Full disclosure: I used to consult for them but haven’t since 2021.
The lack of discipline at D65 is outrageous. Our final year was filled with lack of discipline. It was complete chaos. That was the ultimate reason we left. It wasn’t safe.
The teacher quit mid-year with three day’s notice (there I guess was more notice if you took into account the Thanksgiving break). It was rumored the teacher left because the kids were out of control. If she did leave for this reason she is not to be blamed. Regardless, both the substitute teacher and the permanent teacher (who was ultimately hired) would have days where they would cry openly in front of the class. (This is not their fault, they were kind and good people.) On at least 2 occassions the teacher would tell the student to leave the classroom and go to the principal’s office (student calls teacher a name is one example, student steals something from teacher’s desk is another example) then student refused to go to principal, teacher calls office and student is never sent to principal’s office.
One day, a student who had been repeatedly physically aggressive with both of my kids flipped a chair across the room, lodged a water bottle at another classmate while swearing. The District’s response to this was having a peace circle and in that peace circle asking the classroom students what they did to escalate this situation. I guess the District would like to get the kids ready to be victims of domestic violence. There were so many peace circles that on several occasions important subjects like math were missed.
A child also brought a BB gun to school.
When students would complain they were having their hair pulled or being hit, the teacher’s responses (specials teachers included) would be to “ignore it.” Obviously, ignoring it does not work. Ignoring it is what caused D65 to lose 20 percent of its students and require intervention from the Federal Government.