Cedar Rapids schools continue to work on racial disparities

CEDAR RAPIDS - When Cedar Rapids school administrators received a letter in January 2014 notifying them of a federal investigation into racial disparities in their discipline practices, they already were aware of the problem and working to address it.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District has suspended students of color at rates disproportionate to their percentage of enrollment in recent years. Even before the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) began investigating that disparity in Cedar Rapids last year, the district was working to close it and other gaps, administrators said.

Nevertheless, critics said, the district has a contentious relationship with the black community, and the district's myriad equity efforts in Cedar Rapids schools lack cohesion and districtwide support.

On Jan. 28, Bernard Clayton, a former president of the NAACP's Cedar Rapids branch, said at a public forum on the district's superintendent search that the district has an 'adversarial relationship” with people of color, citing cases in which he believed black parents were intimidated by administrators during meetings about their children.

'Instead of there being a cooperative effort between the parents and the teachers, it seemed like they were fighting with each other,” Clayton said.

But the district has good programs in place to address equity problems, said Dedric Doolin, the current Cedar Rapids NAACP president. Those efforts, however, must be integrated to improve equity in the district overall.

'There's some nice programs out there, but there's not continuity and connectedness to them,” Doolin said.

An equity plan due in April from the district should create that type of cohesion, administrators said.

Parent complaints

According to a letter sent from the OCR to Cedar Rapids Superintendent David Benson on Jan. 22, 2014, the investigation started after the office received a complaint alleging discrimination in late 2013.

The complaint alleged that the district discriminated against two Washington High School students 'by failing to respond to their complaints of bullying while responding to similar complaints made by white students,” and by punishing one of the students for assaulting the student's alleged bully, among other allegations.

The district also received 12 formal complaints from parents between August 2013 and November 2014, some of which include similar allegations.

But the OCR is investigating the overall racial disparities in the district's discipline data as well, and Benson said the district has focused its efforts on trying to improve that gap. Black students make up about one in five students in the district overall, but they account for about half of the students who are suspended, according to a review complied by the district and given to The Gazette.

No one reason

Similar trends have vexed school systems around the country, with skeptics saying that some students simply misbehave more than others, and some researchers arguing that the problem can be traced to historic segregation in schools and implicit biases among educators.

Paul Hayes, the district's executive manager for student services, said he couldn't point to any one reason for the pattern of disproportionately punishing students of color.

'The presence of a disparity doesn't necessarily equal discrimination,” Hayes said. 'The question is, is that disparity the results of intentional acts of commission or omission?

'Obviously from our perspective, it's not. But we recognize that that disparity exists here and across the nation, and we have responsibility to (address it).”

Hayes said differences in student behavior and educators' implicit biases contribute to the problem. But he acknowledged that the district's policies could be part of the issue.

'The policies and practices that an institution has in place might not evolve as quickly as the demographic that that institution is serving,” Hayes said. 'To some extent, we're playing catch up and responding to those that we're serving by going back and changing policies and practices based on what we're seeing in the numbers.”

Equity programs

To that end, Hayes and other administrators said, they have cultivated a long list of training sessions for teachers and administrators, after-school programs and behavioral curricula aimed at improving equity among Cedar Rapids students.

Documents detailing those efforts make up a significant portion of the thousands of pages of documents and data the district handed over to investigators last year. Among the programs:

' An ongoing contract with Edwin Javius, a California-based school consultant who has given training sessions in culturally conscious teaching for Cedar Rapids educators, saw him work with the district's diversity committee on developing an action plan and led 'equity walks” through school buildings to identify practices that could be improved. The goal, Hayes said, is to make sure educators see students and classrooms through an 'equity lens” at all times.

' After-school and summer programs for minority students, often led by community organizations and sponsored by the district, include the United Way's Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success and Kids on Course programs and a baseketball-focused program led by the LBA Foundation, among others.

' Behavioral curriculum used by the district, such as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, seek to teach students what behaviors are expected of them before punishing them for not meeting those expectations. The PBIS curriculum is in place in all but one Cedar Rapids elementary school, in every middle school and Metro High School, Hayes said, and the district has seen positive results.

The district also uses a similar curriculum, called PARRT (Personal best, Active listening, Respect, Responsibility, Trustworthiness), in its elementary schools.

Ken Morris Jr., the district's manager of student equity, said the programs specifically geared toward students of color help nourish 'the ethnic identities of a growing number for students of color in our district, (to) help them develop a sense of pride and determination, so that when they start the school year, they're firmly grounded in who they are.”

Unifying efforts

Beyond those programs, Benson and other administrators meet quarterly with Dedric Doolin, the president of the NAACP's Cedar Rapids branch.

Doolin and administrators characterized the conversations as positive and constructive. But Doolin added there still are areas in which the district can improve.

The NAACP has tried to discourage the district from suspending students in general, Doolin said, and he supports cultural consciousness training for teachers.

The goal for that training, he said, is 'making sure they're consistent in how they treat kids, regardless of their race or their color. And that we don't just automatically assume just because the person is of color, they're guilty.”

But just as important, he said, is unifying the programs the district already has and broadening them to reach more students.

'Those programs only work for a handful of people,” Doolin said. 'They're really not (ingrained) in the whole goals and plans of the school district. There needs to be more continuity, there needs to be more of an investment into a program districtwide.”

Administrators said they are working toward that exact goal with a coming action plan from the district's diversity committee, which includes Morris, Hayes and several community members. Hayes said the plan will be ready by April at the latest.

'We're going to have a more holistic view of the programs and services that are taking place,” Morris said. 'It's going to help us see where there are areas where we can do some additional work to make sure this action plan is lived out.”