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Home » News » Archives » Civil Rights Groups Ask Court to Maintain Desegregation Agreement for Chicago Public Schools
Civil Rights Groups Ask Court to Maintain Desegregation Agreement for Chicago Public Schools For Immediate Release March 21, 2003 CHICAGO - A voluntary agreement, supervised by a federal court judge for more than two decades, designed to combat historic racial segregation in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has made a critical difference in the lives of students in the school system and should be maintained. This argument is the centerpiece of a filing today in U.S. District Court in Chicago by a coalition of Chicago-based civil rights organizations. The amicus brief was filed in response to a request from U.S. District Court Chief Judge Charles Kocoras, who asked interested parties in January whether the agreement should be maintained or vacated in light of demographic changes in the City of Chicago since 1980. The coalition of civil rights groups assert that the lack of a factual record and the lack of an opportunity for participation by the public and community groups in considering the future of the desegregation agreement argues against the court taking the extreme step of vacating the voluntary agreement immediately. The coalition, instead, asks Judge Kocoras to conduct a complete, factual review of the Chicago Public Schools� compliance with the agreement, and consider the impact on students � particularly students from ethnic minority neighborhoods � if the decree is vacated. The amicus brief filed today was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the Southside Chicago Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. and Designs for Change. �The Chicago Public School system has failed to meet the legal or educational tests necessary to move for the immediate removal of the federal court from overseeing the voluntary agreement,� said Harvey Grossman, Legal Director for the ACLU of Illinois, after the amicus brief was filed. �A strong string of cases dating back to the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education nearly fifty years ago set out tangible goals that must be met for a decree to be dismissed. Chicago has not reached that point as yet, as a full and complete review by the court will demonstrate.� CPS and the U.S. Department of Justice forged the voluntary agreement in 1980. Under the terms negotiated by the sides, CPS agreed to desegregate the student body, integrate the system�s faculty and staff, establish magnet schools, provide bilingual education and create remedial and compensatory education for minority students. The brief filed today raises doubts about whether the CPS is in compliance with the terms of the original agreement. The desegregation plan, for example, called on CPS to maximize the number of integrated and desegregated schools (those schools where at least 30% of the student body was white) and no school in the system would have a student population of less than 30% minority. According to the 2000-2001 Annual Desegregation Review, however, only about 15% of all students enrolled in CPS attended stably integrated or desegregated schools, or schools with potential for racial change such as magnet schools, scholastic academies and metropolitan high schools. Additionally, the brief filed today notes that CPS has fallen far short of meeting the goal of integrating faculty in its many schools. The goal was for faculty integration at a racial ratio in each school building that differed by no more than 15% from the racial population of the entire district population. A Monitoring Commission, charged with overseeing CPS� integration efforts, reported in 2002 that compliance on faculty integration was �deplorable.� �While there is not a complete record to judge the degree to which the student population and faculties in the public schools of Chicago have been integrated in compliance with the voluntary agreement, the data available to us at this time is not promising,� according to Maria Valdez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. �It is clear that the vestiges of segregation remain in CPS facilities and the court should fully analyze this data before any decision is taken to vacate the consent decree.� Other areas of concern to the civil rights advocates are the impact of magnet schools and the dispersal of compensatory educational funding. The brief notes, again according to information available from the Monitoring Commission�s 2002 report, that the City�s cluster magnet schools are �clearly . . . not a desegrative initiative.� The Commission also raised questions about the allocation of compensatory education funds, finding that more than $1 million in such funds went to eighteen elementary schools that are not racially isolated and do not have desegregation programs. This practice was labeled as �troubling� by the Commission. �With these concerns about the nature of desegregation steps by CPS, it would be rash for the court to vacate the consent decree without a full analysis, public input and consideration of the impact on various communities within CPS,� added Clyde Murphy of the Chicago Lawyers� Committee. �We hope the court will undertake a full review of these facts � and others to be developed � before making a decision about this agreement which has benefited many students in Chicago.� Attorneys Gary Johnson and Justin K. Schwartz in the Chicago office of the Jones Day law firm authored the amicus curiae brief on behalf of the civil rights coalition. |
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