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BUSD Settles Discrimination Lawsuit By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Friday March 18, 2005

The Berkeley Unified School District settled a potentially embarrassing expulsion discrimination class action lawsuit this week, leaving Superintendent Michele Lawrence “pleased that we could reach an agreement” and plaintiffs’ representatives praising Lawrence and the district’s cooperation. 

The Stanford Law School’s Youth Education Law Clinic, the San Francisco-based Legal Services for Children organization, and Pillsbury Winthrop law firm joined together to file the lawsuit last August in federal district court in San Francisco. 

The lawsuit alleged that school district discriminated against an unknown number of African-American and Latino students by expelling them from school without a state-mandated hearing. Superintendent Lawrence, Director of Student Services Gerald Herrick, and the five members of the Berkeley School Board were all named as defendants. 

Three Berkeley High School students—Juan Muñoz, Summer McNeil, and Yarman Smith—were named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. 

Under a consent decree agreed to by the parties, but not yet ratified by the federal judge assigned to the case, Berkeley Unified will conduct affirmative outreach to identify students expelled from the district during the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years without an expulsion hearing, and students who were placed in alternative programs or excluded from school for more than 5 consecutive days or 20 cumulative days during those two years. 

“If any student or their parent feels these actions were taken against them without due process,” Lawrence said in a telephone interview, “the district will conduct an investigation into the merits of their claims.” 

The consent decree provides a mechanism to redress the grievances of any students who are found to be improperly expelled or transferred out of regular school programs during the two-year period, and sets up a three year court-supervised monitoring process to make sure the district complies. Among the remedies listed in the decree are reinstatement to school and tutoring to compensate for lost time. The agreement calls for the establishment of a Students’ Rights Monitoring Committee to periodically review the district’s actions called for in the settlement. 

The agreement also contains a provision that the decree “is not and never shall be considered an admission of any fault, error, or wrongdoing” by the district. 

Plaintiffs’ representatives refused to speculate on how many students might be affected by the decree. Lawrence said she expected the number “will be very small.” 

The mother of student plaintiff Yarman Smith, Lagertha Smith, said in a prepared statement that she was “very pleased with the settlement because it not only affects my son, but it will prevent other students from being mistreated in the future. Being involved in this lawsuit has given my son more self esteem, since he was empowered to stand up for his rights.” 

“To Superintendent Lawrence’s credit, the Berkeley School district recognizes that students are entitled to due process,” Bill Koski, director of the Stanford Youth and Education Law Clinic, said in a prepared statement. “The agreement…shows that the District is committed to ensuring that students will no longer be wrongfully excluded from Berkeley schools.” 

In a later interview, Koski praised the three student plaintiffs “for having the courage to lend their names to the lawsuit,” as well as “commending” Lawrence for the actions of the district once the lawsuit was filed. “Every time we identified a student who was wrongfully excluded, the district moved forward immediately to offer them a place back in school,” Koski said. 

Lawrence said that lack of paperwork during student reassignment caused many of the district’s problems during the lawsuit. 

“In many cases, the staff believed that they had an agreement with the parents to move the students to another school,” she said, “but we got sloppy, and didn’t put it in writing.” 

The superintendent said that in most cases, transfers from regular school programs to such programs as the Berkeley Alternative High School or the county-run continuation school were beneficial to the students. 

“The staff did what they thought was in the best interest of the students,” Lawrence said. “What they did wrong was to cut corners.” 

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