Posted on December 28, 2012

3 Teachers, Union Sue CPS, Allege Racial Bias

Jennifer Delgado, Chicago Tribune, December 27, 2012

Three Chicago Public Schools teachers who lost their jobs this year said in a lawsuit that the district’s process for “turnaround” schools is racially discriminatory because it targets West and South side campuses with a higher percentage of African-American teachers and staff.

The teachers, Donald L. Garrett Jr., Robert Green and Vivonell Brown Jr., are joined in the federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Chicago Teachers Union. The lawsuit asks for class-action status, saying the district discriminates against African-American teachers and paraprofessionals when it selects schools for “turnaround” based on performance, “resulting in the termination of all employees of the schools.”

The lawsuit said the percentage of African-Americans teaching in the district has declined from about 41 percent in 2000 to about 29 percent in 2011. That corresponds with the district’s “intentional actions, policies and practices to phase out, close, combine or reconstitute purportedly poor-performing schools,” the lawsuit said.

In February, the district designated 10 schools as “turnaround” and later fired 347 tenured teachers from those schools, along with staff, the lawsuit said.

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