Copyright The Oregonian
A Washington, D.C.-based law firm known for opposing race-based preferences at schools and universities nationwide is taking aim at Portland Public Schools’ long-time formula for assigning teachers and other staff to schools. Since 2013, the school district, Oregon’s largest, has taken the demographics of its 81 schools into account while apportioning employees, assigning 2% more funding — and the staff that money can buy – to elementary and K-8 schools that serve concentrations of students from groups that historically have lagged in academics, including Black, Latino, Pacific Islander and Native American students. Those groups also include special education students and those learning to speak English. High schools also receive so-called “equity funding,” but it is based solely on the percentage of students whose families qualify for government assistance, like food stamps or Medicaid. In practice — though not in every instance — that has resulted in more teachers and support staff assigned to schools with higher proportions of non-white students, whose families are statistically less likely to have the resources to pay for tutoring and other enrichment activities for their children or the time to volunteer in classrooms and to help their children with homework. It was long common for school districts to allocate resources at least in small part based on students’ race, along with other demographics, in recognition of large and persistent gaps in the outcomes schools have produced for Black, Latino and other students of color compared to white and Asian counterparts. But in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision barring any consideration of race in college admissions and in view of the Trump administration’s fierce opposition to race-based remedies for disparate outcomes, the legal and political landscape has changed dramatically. The legal salvo against Oregon’s largest school district is the latest example of the new drive to end special considerations for students of color. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland by the Center for Individual Rights and first reported by Willamette Week, challenges the district’s equity budgeting practice, on the grounds that it prioritizes certain racial groups over others in what it says is a violation of the constitution’s 14th Amendment and the U.S. Civil Rights Act. The plaintiff is Glencoe Elementary parent Richard Raseley; former Republican State Rep. Julie Parrish is one of the lawyers representing him. The lawsuit also challenges the Portland school board’s decision to end a previous policy allowing parent-led foundations at individual schools to raise funds from fellow parents and other supporters to add staff members at their own children’s schools. Under that policy, local school foundations could keep two-thirds of any money they raised above $10,000 to pay for staff or other initiatives at their schools; the remainder of the funding went into a common pot that was redistributed among other schools. But school board members voted in 2023 to eliminate that policy in favor of a districtwide foundation, citing equity concerns, including that whiter and wealthier schools were able to keep tens of thousands of dollars, or even six figures, while other schools got nothing or grants that topped out at around $15,000. The decision pleased some and upset others. In its first year of operations, the districtwide foundation raised only about $600,000, far less than the $2-$4 million that the previous system brought in.
