Disciplinary measures used by Kansas’ largest school district discriminated against Black and disabled students, DOJ says

The largest public school district in Kansas has agreed to revise its disciplinary practices as part of a settlement with the US Justice Department, resolving a federal civil rights investigation that determined its educators engaged in a pattern of discrimination against Black and disabled students.

The largest public school district in Kansas has agreed to revise its disciplinary practices as part of a settlement with the US Justice Department, resolving a federal civil rights investigation that determined its educators engaged in a pattern of discrimination against Black and disabled students. As part of the settlement agreement, which the Justice Department announced Tuesday, the Wichita Public Schools district will implement changes to end its use of seclusion, reform its restraint practices and refrain from referring students to law enforcement while dealing with routine school discipline matters, the department said in a news release. Black students in the district faced harsher, more severe disciplinary action than White students who engaged in “similar conduct and had similar backgrounds and disciplinary histories,” the agency found. Insubordination was the most common offense for which the district disciplined Black students at a higher rate. The agency called the pattern “especially stark” when it came to disciplining Black girls, whose behavior was “repeatedly characterized using stereotypical terms like ‘attitude’ or ‘drama,’” the release said. Black girls were also frequently and unnecessarily excluded from the school environment for “perceived insubordination” as well as dress code violations at some middle schools, the agreement said. During the period covered by the investigation, students with disabilities were subjected to 98% of the district’s roughly 3,000 restraints and seclusions, and at least 44 students received 20 or more, the release said; one student was restrained or secluded at least 144 times, including 99 seclusions that lasted over 15 hours.