New York Office of the Attorney General, AG Schneiderman Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Utica City School District Regarding Enrollment Barriers Face by Immigrant and Refugee Students(Nov. 18, 2015).

 Links: 

• Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/nyregion/new-york-state-accuses-utica-school-district-of-bias-against-refugees.html
• Archival: https://perma.cc/J882-2RSC 

New York State Accuses Utica School District of Bias Against Refugees

By Benjamin Mueller

Nov. 17, 2015

For years, the authorities say, administrators for an upstate New York high school turned away refugee children because of their age and their unsteady English while covering up discriminatory enrollment policies.

A lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, against the Utica City School District charges that children over 16 were funneled into alternative programs, in which they could not earn credits toward a diploma, as part of a broad program aimed at barring immigrants from the district’s only public high school.

In one case, the lawsuit says, an administrator told twin 19-year-old sisters who were refugees from Myanmar that the law prevented them from enrolling at the high school, Proctor High School, because they would not have enough time to pass state exams and graduate before age 21 — a violation of state and federal law. Another administrator expressed interest in using separate buses for immigrant students, one part of an effort to maintain “the segregation of immigrant students from the general student population,” the lawsuit charges.

People who work with immigrants to obtain services say that some districts exclude students who are in their later years of high school and are inexperienced in English in order to drive up graduation rates.

“Every New Yorker under the age of 21 has a right to attend public school in the district in which they reside, regardless of immigration status or national origin,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “Access to a quality education is the foundation of the American dream. School districts cannot place arbitrary impediments and barriers in the way of immigrants and refugees who have struggled to achieve a better life for themselves and their families.”

A lawyer for the district, Donald Gerace, said Utica had “never refused to enroll any students.” He said there were at least 220 students at the high school who had been classified as “English-language learners” and had enrolled when they were at least 17. The

district is “severely underfunded,” Mr. Gerace added, “which affects services for all of its students.”

You have 8 free articles remaining.

Subscribe to the Times

The attorney general’s findings grew out of a statewide review to determine whether districts were violating a Supreme Court mandate against discrimination in schooling by asking about children’s immigration status before enrolling them. The review, initiated in October 2014 in response to an article in The New York Times about children who were barred from school after fleeing violence in Central America, has resulted in more than 20 districts agreeing to change their enrollment policies, according to Mr. Schneiderman’s office.

The office is continuing to investigate enrollment policies across the state, a spokesman said.

But the practices alleged against Utica go further than those in other districts. The lawsuit describes several layers of administrators instructed to keep out immigrant students   without leaving any trace of the refusals. For many years, the lawsuit says, the policy was unwritten but enforced at the highest levels, including by the district superintendent. The suit says it was codified last year to say that any immigrant students over 16 who are perceived to have problems with English cannot enroll at Proctor, regardless of their wishes.

Even some students who had finished years of high school in other American districts and then transferred to Utica were told they could not enroll at the high school, the lawsuit says. The district kept no records of these children’s attempts to enroll and did not test them on their English as required by law, according to the lawsuit.

“The district could claim that these individuals were unknown to it — effectively strangers to the district who never sought to enroll and, thus, toward whom the district had no legal obligations beyond whatever piecemeal services the district chose to offer them,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says the alternative programs sent students “down a path to nowhere.” They could not earn credits toward a diploma or properly prepare for a high school equivalency exam, the lawsuit says, leaving students to languish for years with only training in basic English. They were also housed in separate buildings and segregated for gym, art and music classes. The lawsuit says they could not mix with their peers for lunch or extracurricular activities either, a violation of state law.