Fresno Unified School District faces a lawsuit for allegedly discriminating against students who are not Black in certain academic programs.
Pacific Legal Foundation filed the lawsuit in federal court against FUSD on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation.
Driving the news: The lawsuit stems from the Office of African American Academic Acceleration (A4 Office), which the school district established in 2017 to help Black students.
- The office now runs 13 programs and has a $12 million budget to serve Black middle school and high school students.
The big picture: Fresno Unified allegedly only markets the programs to Black parents and students, with no other advertising to the rest of the student body.
- According to the lawsuit, administrators have directed teachers to only reach out directly to Black parents and students.
Go deeper: Fresno Unified has around 5,100 Black students out of its total student population of over 70,000 children.
- Black students underperform other demographics in academics. Per the lawsuit, 16% of Black elementary students read at grade level, below the 22% average for all students.
- The A4 Office provides services and programs such as summer reading for Black students, math camps for fifth and sixth grade Black students and college preparatory programs that are marketed exclusively to Black students.
- While the district’s official descriptions and communications regarding the programs say they are “for African Americans,” they do not indicate that non-Black students are welcome. But the lawsuit claims that non-Black students are directed to other services if they inquire about the programs.
- “The district’s purpose is to create a racially segregated environment in these programs as much as possible and to give preferential treatment to certain students because of their race,” the lawsuit reads.
Zoom out: Fresno Unified states on its A4 Office website that the programs served 1,212 Black students during the 2023-2024 academic year.
- That represents 23% of the district’s total Black enrollment.
- The district said A4 office programs served nearly 8,000 students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds in the 2023-2024 year.
What they’re saying: “It is unfair and unconstitutional to gate access to valuable educational programs based on a child’s race, regardless of whether the exclusion is explicit or implicit,” said Wilson Freeman, an attorney for Pacific Legal Foundation. “Taxpayer-funded academic support programs should be available to all students based on need, not race. FUSD’s practices violate multiple legal protections, including the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the Civil Rights Act, and California’s Proposition 209.”
- A spokesperson for FUSD told The Sun that the district does not comment on pending litigation.
