An educator with experience advising the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) believes it’s time to sue the state agency if it doesn’t do more to reduce racial imbalances in public schools.
“They still have an opportunity before someone files a lawsuit,” said Dr. Raul Fernandez, the former chair of DESE’s Racial Imbalance Advisory Council (RAIC). “My great hope was that we would have leaders that would actually step up and meet this moment, and it just hasn’t happened. So, it seems we’re on the path that many other communities have found themselves – whether it be cities or states – on the path toward some kind of court involvement.”
In June, Dr. Fernandez and his colleagues on the advisory council released a report called “Racial Segregation in Massachusetts Schools.” It reveals that 63% of the Commonwealth’s public schools meet the council’s definition of segregated. That means more than 500,000 students are educated in school environments considered racially imbalanced and the RAIC says the law requires education leaders to do something about it – even if they didn’t create the imbalance.
Read more at NBC Boston.
