RALEIGH—Prompted by complaints filed by our Advocates for Children’s Services project, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has launched formal investigations into the routine failure of Guilford County Schools and Vance County Schools to provide educational services to their students incarcerated in adult jails. For each of the three students covered by our complaints, the school systems failed to provide them with any educational services whatsoever.

We learned of the investigations in a letter from the department dated June 5, 2020. We filed our complaints with the department on May 29, 2020.

We filed our Guilford County complaint on behalf of two high school students and our Vance County complaint on behalf of one high school student who experienced the same deprivation over two separate periods of incarceration.

The complaints allege that the school districts failed to fulfill their legal obligations by:

• Failing to provide the students with any education during their incarceration. Two of the students received packets of work without assistance or instructions. One received no work, instruction or assistance of any kind.
• Failing to follow required procedures regarding discipline of students with disabilities while the students attended their regular community schools.
• Failing to provide the students with appropriate educational services while they attended their regular community schools.

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires the school system to educate all students with disabilities—including incarcerated students—in an appropriate manner in accordance with their Individualized Education Plans. Yet, Advocates for Children’s Services believes that youth in adult facilities across North Carolina—not just in these two counties—typically receive no education.

The students’ cases paint a compelling picture of how the school-to-prison pipeline operates when students’ special education needs are consistently ignored, funneling students into the criminal justice system. For that reason, the complaint describes violations occurring during the students’ incarceration as well as those leading up to it.

These violations have led to—and will continue to lead to—dire educational consequences for students in adult jails, if not fixed on the systemic level. Tessa Hale, an attorney with Advocates for Children’s Services, notes, “The link between education and reduced recidivism rates is well established in research. When we fail to educate these youth, we return them to their communities without the knowledge that will allow them to function in society.”

The parent of one of the students named in the complaint said, “I want my child to be a productive citizen. Anyone wants that for their child. Nobody wants to see their child in and out of jail because they don’t have the skills to do better. Without education, my child will be in a worse position when he gets out. How is that rehabilitation?”

The parent continued: “When a child goes to jail, they are taken away from everyone in their community who was educating them. The child is locked away from parents, grandparents, and other adults that care about them and could try to help guide them. They spend their time with the other kids in jail, and those kids aren’t getting any education either. We can’t also take away the chance for them to learn from teachers who are trained to educate them.”

One of the students named in the complaint stated, “I was 16 when I was first incarcerated. The second time was when I was 17 and a junior in high school, and I was taken out of high school and incarcerated in an adult facility for four months. I didn’t receive any support or education while I was in jail and after I was released, I had a lot of difficulty re-enrolling in high school and lost over a year of my life and education.”

In our complaints, Advocates for Children’s Services asks that our clients and all similarly situated students receive tutoring and other educational services to address the past and ongoing harm done to them. We also request that the Department of Public Instruction institute oversight measures to ensure future compliance with the law for all similarly situated students.

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About

Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Legal Aid’s Advocates for Children’s Services project seeks to end North Carolina’s school-to-prison pipeline by defending the rights of low-income children in public schools.

Media Contact

Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.org

RALEIGH, N.C., December 9, 2014 – Out-of-school suspensions in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) dropped 45 percent in the last five years, according to data released by the district yesterday. Although these numbers represent a positive shift to keep students in the classroom and out of the school-to-prison pipeline, they also demonstrate the persistence of huge racial and disability disparities in suspensions rates in the district and the need for more work to be done.

Since Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Advocates for Children’s Services (ACS) began its work five years ago to reduce suspensions and end the school-to-prison pipeline in Wake County, the total number of out-of-school suspensions in WCPSS has fallen from 20,244 in the 2009-10 school year to 11,205 in 2013-14—even as student enrollment rose over that period by 9.4 percent. The number of individual students suspended declined by 35 percent over the same five-year period. WCPSS made the announcement about the declining suspension rates in a press release at the Student Achievement Committee of the Board of Education meeting on Monday.

“We are thrilled by the decline in out-of-school suspensions and commend the district for its ongoing efforts to reduce the number of students being pushed out of school,” said Jennifer Story, an attorney for ACS. “However, we remain extremely concerned about the ongoing disparate push-out impact of district policies and practices on African-American students and students with disabilities, as well as the quality of some of the alternative settings in which students who would otherwise be suspended are placed.”

African-American students represent one-quarter of WCPSS students, but last year received over 60 percent of all suspensions. Similarly, students with disabilities represent about 13 percent of the WCPSS population, but were one-third of suspended students. ACS has also long raised concerns about the quality of Alternative Learning Programs such as the Second Chance Online Recovery for Education (SCORE) and other programs intended to decrease out-of-school suspension rates.

“These data make clear that much work remains to be done to remedy the discriminatory impacts of Wake County’s school discipline policies,” said Jason Langberg, supervising attorney at ACS. “The persistence of student and parent advocates that we have seen over the last five years will continue to be critical moving forward.”

Since 2009, Legal Aid of North Carolina has provided high-quality legal advice and representation for hundreds of Wake County families and trained thousands of students, parents, service providers and advocates. ACS has filed multiple state special education complaints and federal civil rights complaints on behalf of clients against WCPSS. In the past two years, ACS published a comprehensive report and produced a documentary detailing the school-to-prison pipeline in WCPSS.

“We’ve made wonderful progress, but still have a long way to go,” said Story. “To increase student achievement and equity, we must continue to be diligent about reducing suspensions, eliminating discipline disparities and ensuring the availability of high-quality alternatives. The district is heading in a very positive direction, and we are hopeful that that it will continue to work collaboratively with parents, students, and advocates to meaningfully end the school-to-prison pipeline in Wake County.”

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Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Advocates for Children’s Services is a statewide project that works for education justice and an end to the school-to-prison pipeline through legal advocacy, community education, and collaboration.

Media Contact

Jennifer Story, Advocates for Children’s Services, 919-226-5921, jenr@legalaidnc.org

RALEIGH, January 5, 2017 – Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Advocates for Children’s Services project joined the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and other youth advocates to urge the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to resolve the partners’ six-year-old complaint regarding racially discriminatory discipline practices in the Wake County Public School System.

“Discriminatory discipline practices have remained virtually unchanged over the past six years. That clearly demonstrates that the problem is systemic,” said Jennifer Story, lead attorney of Advocates for Children’s Services. “Not only are we asking for action from the U.S. Department of Education, we are asking for ongoing monitoring to ensure compliance. Otherwise, we run the risk of continuing to allow discrimination and depriving kids of the fairness and opportunities they deserve.”

Read the full press release and letter to the U.S. Department of Justice.

RALEIGH, July 14, 2015 – Shaw University will revise its discriminatory policies and procedures for students with disabilities following a complaint filed by Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Advocates for Children’s Services project with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of a client with cerebral palsy.

Legal Aid of North Carolina filed the complaint with OCR on behalf of its client, Almari Moore, in December. Moore was admitted to Shaw University last spring, but the university rescinded its admission offer soon after, when officials became aware of the severity of his disability.

In a June 3 resolution letter, OCR determined that Shaw University had discriminated against Moore in violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section 504 prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs and activities that are federally funded.

OCR’s investigation found that, among other violations, Shaw University failed to engage in an interactive process to determine Moore’s needs, and that the university’s process for screening applicants with disabilities results in students who self-identify as having a disability facing a higher standard for admission.

OCR stated in the letter that “In the course of the investigation, OCR further determined that the university’s admission practices more generally, as they pertain to all students with disabilities, run contrary to the requirements of Section 504.”

Shaw University must now follow a resolution agreement with OCR which requires several revisions to the university’s policies and procedures. Among other changes, the university will address how the admissions process evaluates students with disabilities, ensure that the proper staff and administration are trained in the requirements of Section 504, and identify and review previous applicants and current students who may have been affected by the university’s discriminatory policies.

As part of OCR’s resolution agreement, Moore and his family will be reimbursed by Shaw University for expenses they incurred in preparation for attending the university. The university will also be sending Moore a letter that offers him the opportunity to reenroll at any point in the future. He plans to start as a freshman at Shaw this fall.

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Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and remove legal barriers to economic opportunity.

Advocates for Children’s Services​ is a statewide project of Legal Aid of North Carolina that focuses on education justice and dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.

Media Contacts

Seth Ascher, Attorney, Advocates for Children’s Services, 919-630-8622

Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, Legal Aid of North Carolina, 919-856-2132

RALEIGH · July 25, 2018 – Attorneys with Advocates for Children’s Services, a project of Legal Aid of North Carolina, yesterday filed the latest in a series of formal complaints with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction alleging that the Wake County Public School System  still routinely violates the rights of its students who have mental health disabilities. The complaint identifies seven students whose rights have been grossly violated by the school system. However, these seven – by illustrating the system’s patterns and practices – represent hundreds of others treated the same way.

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires the school system to educate all students with disabilities – including students with mental health disabilities – in an appropriate manner and in the least restrictive environment.

The system routinely violates these legal requirements by:

• Suspending students without holding required manifestation determination reviews: a meeting of the student’s special education team to determine if the student’s behavior is related to their disability, in which case the school is legally prohibited from suspending the student;
• Failing to provide educational services to suspended students with disabilities beginning on the 11th cumulative day of suspension;
• Failing to provide transportation to alternative placements across the county, leaving students with mental health disabilities stranded at home receiving no instruction at all; and
• Relying on overly restrictive placements for students with mental health disabilities instead of using counseling, social work, or other supports in schools, and instead of using appropriate, research-based behavior assessments and interventions.

Other rights violations include holding Individualized Education Program team meetings without the student’s teachers present, failing to update the IEPs of students in discipline-related alternative placements, and failing to appropriately monitor the progress of students in alternative placements.

These violations have led to – and will continue to lead to – dire educational consequences for students with mental health disabilities, if not fixed on the systemic level. Consequences faced by students in the complaint include: grade repetition, academic failure, over 40 days missed to suspension, placement in restrictive alternative programs, being required to receive all instruction at home, and drop out.

As one complainant parent stated, “I don’t think they did my son properly. My child wasn’t getting the education he needed, fell behind when WCPSS didn’t provide transportation for weeks to an alternative program, and thought he had no choice but to drop out. For him, school was hard enough. Wake County Schools didn’t need to make it harder.”

The school system often responds to these violations by offering compensatory tutoring services. However, Cari Carson, a Skadden Fellow attorney with Advocates for Children’s Services, says that “valuable, compensatory services are often hard for a family to access. The tutoring may only occur during the parent’s work day, or may be offered only after a student has already failed a semester. Frequently, the school system doesn’t offer the compensatory tutoring until the student’s family involves a lawyer of their own. What happens to all of those families who don’t have a lawyer? Moreover, individual compensatory services do nothing to remedy the widespread violations affecting the many students with mental health disabilities who are being denied an appropriate education. This is a systemic problem that will only be solved with a systemic solution.”

This is Advocates for Children’s Services’ fourth complaint since 2009 alleging that the Wake County school system systemically violates the rights of students with mental health disabilities. The Department of Public Instruction has found the Wake County Public School System to be out of compliance with the law multiple times as a result of these complaints. However, the school system continues to deny appropriate educational services to many students with mental health disabilities.

“It’s time to turn the tide for students with mental health disabilities in Wake County schools,” Carson said.

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About

Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Legal Aid’s Advocates for Children’s Services project seeks to end North Carolina’s school-to-prison pipeline by defending the rights of low-income children in public schools.

Media Contacts

Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.org