Month: August 2024

State Directs the School District of Philadelphia to Award Compensatory Education Services and Revise Procedures for Serving Students with Disabilities at PJJSC

In response to ELC’s systemic complaint filed in March on behalf of students with disabilities at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center (“PJJSC”), the Pennsylvania Department of Educations’ Bureau of Special Education recently issued a decision, finding in our favor on all seven issues raised. The ruling requires the School District of Philadelphia to determine compensatory education service awards for over 200 students and to significantly revise its process and procedures for serving students with disabilities placed at the PJJSC.

Our complaint was based on information received from partners and families that students with disabilities at PJJSC failed to receive needed services and inconsistent or intermittent access to instruction or were deprived of classroom instruction due in part to conditions of overcrowding.

The Corrective Investigation Report issued by the Department found in part that students with disabilities failed to receive special education services mandated by their IEPs, progress reports, timely re-evaluations, and that youth placed in Admissions or Quarantine failed to receive access to classroom instruction at all. The state ordered significant compensatory education services for individually named students and directed the District to determine compensatory education awards for over two hundred students placed at the PJJSC by October 25, 2024.  As a result of our complaint and the ensuing decision, the District must also revise its procedures for: transitioning students to the PJJSC; implementing IEPs; ensuring parent participation and conducting evaluations to assess eligibility for special education services.   

Civil Rights Complaint Highlights Persistent Discriminatory Policies in Pennridge School District

An amended federal civil rights complaint was filed on Aug. 27 against the Pennridge School District in Bucks County. Below is a press release.

(Content warning: The amended complaint linked here contains descriptions of racial epithets and racial and sexual violence, including violence targeting Black students and LGBTQ+ students.)

August 27, 2024 – Nine months after filing a federal civil rights complaint on behalf of parents and students in the Pennridge School District, families and legal advocates today filed an amended complaint alleging that this Bucks County school district continues to perpetuate a “hostile environment” for students of color and LGBTQ+ students.

The amended complaint was filed on behalf of the Bucks County NAACP, the PairUP Society, and affected families by the Education Law Center-PA and the Advocacy for Racial and Civil Justice Clinic of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

The amended complaint, filed with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education, lays out a pattern of ongoing racist bullying at Pennridge – including targeting Black students with racial slurs – and the district’s refusal to protect students from known and pervasive racial harassment. The complaint further describes anti-LGBTQ+ policies at Pennridge, including the removal of LGBTQ+ materials from libraries and the implementation of a new bathroom policy designed to limit the bathrooms transgender students can use. The intense harassment of LGBTQ+ students and students of color has led some students to transfer to online schooling or other districts to avoid the district’s hostile conditions, while others have suffered emotionally and psychologically, requiring intervention and care.

After years of efforts to bring problems in the schools to light, parents, students, and legal advocates drew wider attention to conditions in Pennridge through an initial federal civil rights complaint filed in November 2023. The complaint asked the school district to directly address race- and sex-based harassment to ensure that it did not recur and to adopt policies that affirmatively foster the inclusion of marginalized students.

 “Students across the area are preparing to go back-to-school, but marginalized students in Pennridge do not truly have equal access to education.” said Cara McClellan, Director of the Advocacy for Racial and Civil Justice Clinic. “Pennridge has a legal and moral obligation to address race- and sex-based harassment to ensure an inclusive environment for all students.”

In May of 2024, the Office of Civil Rights released guidance clarifying that a school district violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act if, based on the totality of the circumstances, it “creates, encourages, accepts, tolerates, exacerbates, or leaves unchecked,” an environment that “limits or denies a person’s ability to  participate in or benefit from a school’s education program or activity” based on race, color, or national origin. Title IX provides similar protections based on sex, and the duties of school districts were clarified and expanded by new Title IX regulations that became effective on August 1.   

“The district must be held accountable for creating and sustaining a hostile environment that is literally pushing Black and Brown and LBGTQ+ students out of school or undermining their ability to learn, depriving them of their legal right to education,” said Maura McInerney, legal director of Education Law Center.  

“No child should have to choose between their safety and their education,” said Adrienne King, a Pennridge parent and founder of the PairUP Society, a nonprofit that supports underrepresented students facing bullying in schools. “Pennridge has a duty to foster an inclusive learning environment to protect students of all identities so that they are not prevented from learning simply because of who they are.”