One school district in Lancaster County, Pennyslvania, is currently facing a class-action lawsuit being brought against them by a group of six refugees and their families. Khadidja Issa, Alembe Dunia, Anyemu Dunia, Sui Hnem Sung, and two minors who are not named in the suit are suing the School District of Lancaster, alleging that the district violated their civil rights by denying them fair access to a "meaningful education". The ACLU of Pennsylvania has taken up the case on the part of the plaintiffs.
This story was originally picked up by Fox News, whose headline left an impression that the students were merely disgruntled with the school district. It also failed to address a number of important facts which clearly identify that the districts's treatment of the students was unfair, and more importantly, unconstitutional.
According to the students, upon arriving in Lancaster, rather than being placed in the school district's regular high school, JP McCaskey, the students were assigned to one of the district's two alternative schools, Phoenix Academy. Phoenix is an alternative school in the School District Of Lancaster meant for "underachieving" students. It is operated by a private company called Camelot Education under contract for SDOL. Camelot Education specializes in the operation of disciplinary schools. The high school was operated as such as well, with practices including full-body pat downs upon entering the school, strict dress codes that required students to wear colored shirts which correlated with their behavior, and physical disciplinary codes reminiscent of a prison yard.
The lawsuit also alleges that the SDOL has made it common practice to either refuse admittance to the school district for 17-21 year-old refugee students altogether, or else only admit them to Phoenix Academy. Had the students been allowed to attend McCaskey High School, they could have easily been placed in the transitionary International School offered by McCaskey, a program which is distinctly lacking at Phoenix Academy. Because of the lack of a proper transitionary course, the students, most of whom speak little to no English were unable to properly assimilate into the school system.
The students in this case are inciting the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, claiming that the school district denied the students equal protection due to them under the law on the basis of their national origin. The laws in question here include the Equal Education Opportunity Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Pennsylvania Public School Code.
Most notably, the district failed to follow the Pennsylvania Public School Code by placing the students in an alternative assignment (Phoenix Academy) despite none of the students ever having been suspended or expelled from the district's - or any other's - main school. This blatant disregard for the students' quality of education through the withholding of better options legally entitled to them is a serious infringement on the students' civil rights. For clarification, here are some of the major academic differences between JP McCaskey and Phoenix Academy cited in the lawsuit:
1. The student-to-teacher ratio at Phoenix Academy is three times worse than at McCaskey, at 42:1 and 14:1, respectively, although Camelot Education refutes these numbers. They claim that the student-teacher ratios are 14:1 at both schools.
2. While 92% of the classes at McCaskey are taught by "highly qualified teachers," the number at Phoenix Academy is a scant 0%.
3. The most damning difference lies in the percentage of graduating students from each school deemed "college ready", with 83% of McCaskey graduates and (again) 0% of Phoenix Academy graduates reaching the metric.
There is a correlation between quality of education and the student's chances of leading a happy and successful life afterward, so the evidence points toward a qualitative harm being done on the part of the school district in refusing to admit these students and others to a rightful school on the basis of their status as refugees.
The lawsuit brought forth another damning practice by the Phoenix Academy. Camelot Education has prided itself on providing what it describes as an "accelerated" program, designed to enable students to earn credits and graduate faster than at a regular school. This has led one of the plaintiffs, Anyemu Dunia, to be pushed through a full four years of high school in less than two. Despite the fact that the district has failed to teach him to write, read, or even speak English and has not achieved a level of proficiency that is required to graduate from any American school, Phoenix Academy and Camelot Education have decided to allow him to graduate. This raises questions about the legitimacy of the diplomas awarded to other students, both refugee and native, that have been forced through the Phoenix Academy program.
All of these students were brought to America to escape their war-torn homes in Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burma. They were seeking an opportunity at a better life with the goal of learning English and assimilating into the American education system to make lives for themselves in a new country. Instead, they were fed to the wolves of a private, for-profit "education" company. They and many others included in the class-action suit were handed a faulty education, refused the right to learn English, and treated like delinquents because of their nations of origin. If you were in their shoes, would you have done the same thing?
