Parents sue state alleging Black and Latinx students are harmed by disciplinary practices

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, pictured speaking outside a Chula Vista elementary school, and the California Department of Education are named as defendants in a lawsuit alleging the state failed to take action against disciplinary practices that harm Black and Latinx students. Black and Latinx students are disproportionately harmed by the state’s failure to exert oversight and take action against some school district disciplinary practices, including transferring students to alternative and often inferior programs, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by parents and an advocacy group. Plaintiffs alleged this allows school districts to report low expulsion rates to disguise the “disparate treatment” of Black and Latinx students and evade responsibility. School districts maintain the authority to set transfer policies, but the plaintiffs said in the suit that the state education department has “failed to exercise any meaningful oversight of waivers and has failed to create reporting requirements for voluntary transfers or waivers.” School districts across California are “masking their exclusionary discipline practices,” the suit said, and the state’s top education institution is violating the right of equal protection for students under the state Constitution by failing to safeguard their right to an equal education. Previously, Black parents in the Los Angeles Unified School District accused administrators of sending their children home without a formal suspension, a practice known as “off the book.” The lawsuit alleges that “off the book” suspensions persist today across the state, and the Education Department has failed to address the disparity in reported suspension rates.