LEWISTON — Three groups have sent a letter to the Lewiston School Department asserting that the district has failed to adequately serve students of color and students with disabilities, the ACLU of Maine said Tuesday.
Superintendent Bill Webster said he had not seen the information on which the American Civil Liberties Union was “basing its allegations.” He called the assertions “a hatchet job.”
Webster said he stands by “the hard work of Lewiston educators in addressing our increasing English language learning population, and striving to meet the needs of all our students. We have reason to believe that the ACLU may be using faulty or incomplete data in making these allegations.”
The ACLU, Disability Rights Maine and Kids Legal at Pine Tree Legal Assistance shared the results Tuesday of their two-year investigation into race and disability accommodations in Lewiston schools, concluding that the School Department is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The groups also charge that Lewiston schools are violating the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The groups’ specific concerns:
* Discipline disparities for students of color and students with disabilities compared to their white and non-disabled counterparts;
* Failure to identify students of color as having disabilities, resulting in a failure to provide necessary services and supports to enable them to access the general education curriculum and protect them from discrimination;
* English Language Learners (ELL) are retained in non-credit and elective ELL classes without an opportunity to enroll in the required classes necessary for graduation;
* Lack of accommodations for non-English speaking parents to communicate with anyone in the Department (according to the letter, very few staff know how to use the interpreter phone service); and
* An absolute lack of black teachers.
Black students were nearly three times as likely to receive in-school suspension as their white classmates and nearly twice as likely to receive out-of-school suspensions, according to the rights groups.
Webster said he was reminded of “an inaccurate study” done by a University of Southern Maine professor a couple of years ago that made allegations of racial bias with regard to discipline in Lewiston schools. “After the initial headlines, we demonstrated that was not the case,” Webster said.
The ELL population in Lewiston has achieved a high school graduation rate that exceeds non-ELL students, Webster said.
Webster said he met last spring with the ACLU, “and we mutually pledged to work together on making continued improvements to our schools. I regret that the organization has decided otherwise.”
Webster said the district will work through its attorneys, “using funds that would be better spent on programming for students, to refute these allegations. If in the course of this work we identify needs that can be better met, we are committed to making the needed changes.”
Throughout all, Lewiston educators will continue to serve all students, Webster said.
Asked how the report and investigation came about, Zachary Heiden, legal director at ACLU, said it stems from public-interest lawyers who have examined Lewiston statistics on minority students in 2013-14 data.
They saw concerns, Heiden said.
Representatives of the three groups talked to people in the Lewiston community where some of their concerns with the data were verified, such as the number of black students suspended and the low number of black students identified as needing special services.
But having no black teachers was the biggest issue in the community, Heiden said. “We were surprised with how many people brought this up as a problem.”
Considering that about 25 percent of Lewiston students are black or ELL students, students deserve to be taught by black or minority teachers, Heiden said.
Webster said Tuesday there’s a shortage of blacks and minorities applying for teacher positions. Lewiston schools have at least one African-American teacher, and he agreed that Lewiston needs more black and minority teachers.
“We do have black staff,” including translators and ed techs who are former ELL students. Working as education technicians is where many teachers start, Webster said. “I would love to have more minority teachers in our schools. I have spoken to the (Somali) elders about encouraging more students to consider a career in education.”
But it’s early, he said. “We’re just beginning to get ELL college graduates.” He predicted that some of those graduates will return to Lewiston to teach.
Webster said he plans to collaborate with Julia Sleeper of the Tree Street Youth Center to encourage future college graduates to return to Lewiston as teachers.
On the complaint about more discipline for minority and disabled students, Webster said any student — black or white — who has not experienced school or who’s been through trauma is going to have more problems in school than students who have school experience and have not suffered trauma.
In response to the concern that too many ELL students are in elective or non-credit ELL classes, Webster said Lewiston has immigrant students who show up for school with little formal education; they need ELL classes to get them up to speed to take regular classes.
Webster said Lewiston schools provide communication and protocols to help immigrant parents and teachers communicate. “We’ve expanded our ELL department,” he said, adding that some 30 languages are spoken by Lewiston students.
The biggest number of ELL students are from Somali families. The School Department employs six or seven Somali interpreters. For students of other languages, there’s an interpreter phone service all teachers can access; only a first-time teacher may be unaware or unsure of how to call the number and get an interpreter service, Webster said.
Heiden of the ACLU of Maine said the report is meant to call attention to what it sees as shortcomings for minority students. “These things are not easily fixed,” he said. No legal action is planned.
