As Education Law Center marks our 50th anniversary, we are highlighting ELC milestones and successes over the decades.

In 1985, the Education Law Center filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Asian immigrant students who were being left to languish in Philadelphia classrooms because of a school district failure to provide language supports.

Our successful lawsuit, Y.S. v. School District of Philadelphia, resulted in a consent decree requiring the district to improve its academic program: the district expanded English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) instruction; hired bilingual teachers, counselors, and paraprofessionals; and provided translation and interpretation services. Under the “Y.S. Stipulation,” the district worked with ELC to monitor district progress annually for nearly three decades, pressing for continued improvements for multilingual learners.

Y.S. was precipitated by the arrival of many children from Southeast Asia who had been denied opportunities for formal schooling and spoke languages that were not familiar to district personnel, former ELC executive director Len Rieser, lead attorney in the case, recalled.

The district had relied on “the immersion model,” placing children in subject-matter classes taught in English, with no additional help. Without supports from school, students were receiving no meaningful instruction, Rieser told Education Week at the time.

Y.S., a 16-year-old who was a named plaintiff, had come with his family from war-torn Cambodia. School officials had tested him with an evaluation designed for English speakers, labeled him as having mental retardation, and assigned him to a special education classroom with no language support.

Translation and interpretation services were never offered to his parents, making it impossible for them to participate in developing the Individualized Education Program that impacted their son’s placement.

Y.S.’s placement was not unique: It was common in that era for districts to inappropriately place students identified as “limited English proficient” in special education classes. The success of our Y.S. litigation was a wakeup call to other districts to do better in their programming for immigrant children.

For its part, the district did not contest the allegations, initially moving to boost the numbers of teachers fluent in Asian languages.

“I like to think that Y.S. at least made the immersion ‘model’ unacceptable, expanded the district’s capacity to provide ESOL classes and more comprehensible subject-matter instruction, and did away with the idea that parents who speak other languages would have to fend for themselves,” Rieser said.

Today the district touts that its Office of Multilingual Curriculum and Programs supports over 25,000 English learners from 130-plus countries and speaking more than 100 home languages.

“But while Y.S. may have gotten the ball rolling, the district has a long way to go to build a truly adequate system of services for children and families whose native language isn’t English,” Rieser said.

ELC continues our advocacy to ensure multilingual learners throughout Pennsylvania have access to quality public education.

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.”