December 21, 2023 – A state administrative complaint filed today by the Education Law Center claims that school-age youths with disabilities at the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) are not receiving a free appropriate public education in contravention of their rights.

Allegheny County Jail serves approximately 2,000 individuals each day who are awaiting adjudication of charges imposed against them. On any given day, this population includes 20-35 youths aged 15-17 and many more youths aged 18-21 years old – all of whom are entitled to a public education. A disproportionate number of these youths are likely students with disabilities who are entitled to receive a “free appropriate public education.” According to the National Disability Rights Network, young people with disabilities make up at least two-thirds of those involved in the juvenile justice system.

The complaint identifies Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) as the host district for students at ACJ responsible for providing educational services to school-age youths. PPS contracts with Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU), which manages the school program at the jail.

“ELC filed this complaint to remedy systemic policies and practices that deprive students with disabilities of their right to a free appropriate public education. These policies clearly and unequivocally violate the federal and state disability laws and, due to systemic racism, disproportionately impact Black and Brown students who are victimized most by the school-to-prison pipeline,” said Maura McInerney, legal director at Education Law Center-PA.

According to the complaint, students aged 18 years and older are denied access to the on-grounds school program. Instead, upon turning 18, these students may be offered self-guided study packets to be used completely on their own with access to a teacher once a week; or they are offered a GED program.

“Students who do not have many high school credits are urged to ‘sign themselves out’ of high school and take the GED, regardless of their disability or need for support,” said McInerney. “In one case, a 19-year-old student with significant disabilities received no education at all during his time at ACJ from March to November 2023.”

“Youths in the juvenile justice system or who are placed in adult jails like Allegheny County cannot be deprived of their right to an education, yet that is precisely what is happening here, and it must be remedied,”  McInerney said.

See the complaint.

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.”