UPDATED: DCPS reverses policy on girls' admission to Ron Brown school
On a Friday afternoon call with several top officials
from the Office of the Attorney General, the ACLU of the Nation's Capital learned
that the Ron Brown High School (previously called the Empowering Males School)
and other grant-funded Empowering Males of Color programs throughout the
District will now begin accepting girls.
“By
opening up these important programs to girls as well as boys, DCPS has done
right by both the Constitution and the neediest children of the District,” ACLU
of the Nation's Capital Executive Director Monica Hopkins-Maxwell said. “The
Constitution prohibits sex discrimination, and as our report demonstrated, both
boys and girls of color in DCPS suffer from poor outcomes as compared to their
white classmates.”
The
$20 million Empowering Males of Color initiative, announced in 2015 and rolled
out earlier this year, includes the Ron Brown College Preparatory High School
in Ward 7 and grants to fund enrichment programs at specific elementary,
middle, and high schools throughout the city. The high school and eleven of the
sixteen grant-funded programs were originally designated as boys-only.
In
its May 2016 report Leaving
Girls Behind,
the National ACLU and the ACLU of the Nation's Capital lauded the District’s efforts
to address racial disparities in educational outcomes but charged that the
exclusion of girls was unwise and unconstitutional.
On
Friday’s call, Elizabeth Wilkins, Senior Counsel to the Attorney General,
explained to the ACLU of the Nation's Capital that although DCPS would continue
to “target” boys with Empowering Males programming, it would not deny admission
to students on the basis of sex.
“From
the robotics team at Noyes Elementary School to the mentoring and travel program
at Eastern High, girls can benefit from additional programming just as much as
boys, and we hope they’ll take advantage of these opportunities right away,”
Hopkins-Maxwell said. “We encourage DCPS to make good on this promise, and to conduct
marketing and outreach to ensure that girls are aware of these opportunities. We
assume that girls will be able to apply to Ron Brown High School in the lottery
for the next school year.”
Officials
from the Attorney General’s office also indicated that DCPS would be hiring a
staff member this fall to plan programs aimed at the particular challenges
facing girls.
“We
welcome programs aimed at closing the race gap and lifting up all of the
District’s children,” Hopkins-Maxwell said. “Whatever the themes and goals of
the new programming, they too should be open to all.”
A
list of the sixteen grant programs funded by the Empowering Males of Color
initiative is available at pages 24-25 of the ACLU’s report.
UPDATE
For over a
month the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital had asked the AG’s office for a copy of
the admissions policy for Ron Brown. On Friday representatives of the AG’s
office called the ACLU, indicated they had spoken to the General Counsel for
DCPS, and said there was no written admissions policy that differed from the
lottery admission policy for all DCPS schools.
The ACLU
then asked two very specific questions:
- Can girls apply through the
lottery to Ron Brown High School? - If they apply through the lottery
will they be accepted?
The
representatives from the AG’s office answered “yes” to both of those questions.
While this was a change in what the ACLU had learned prior to Friday’s
conversation, now OAG is saying this has been policy all along and that girls
can be admitted – and could have been admitted in the 2016-17 class.
If DCPS has
a different admissions policy, one that restricts Ron Brown to only admitting
boys, they should produce the policy.
"We had been delighted to learn on Friday that girls would be
given the same equal educational opportunities as boys," said Monica
Hopkins-Maxwell. "The DC Government should be clear about its admissions
policy – to do otherwise erodes the public trust."
Contact:
Monica Hopkins-Maxwell, [email protected],
(202) 457-0800 ext. 1001
Scott Michelman, [email protected], (202)
457-0800 ext. 1005