The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) took more than a year to open an investigation into allegedly intentional racial segregation in Atlanta Public Schools and purported retaliation against parents who complained.
The feds may soon face a similar complaint: keeping predominantly black and white elementary schools apart in a summer program intended to mitigate learning loss due to COVID-19 policies.
The nonprofit Committee for APS Progress asked district officials why majority-black Hope-Hill Elementary School in Atlanta would not be housed on the same site as “the rest of the cluster schools” in Midtown — majority-white Mary Lin, Morningside and Springdale — for this summer’s Academic Recovery Academy, a departure from last summer.
The program website confirms that HHES, which has far smaller enrollment than each of the other three, will continue meeting at its own site while the others will meet at Mary Lin. Only three APS elementary schools among 40 are being kept alone for the summer program.
The arrangement resembles a larger version of the race-based “affinity groups” that are popular in higher education but have prompted litigation when applied to K-12 students and municipal employees. OCR has received several complaints about affinity groups for faculty, according to anti-woke medical advocacy group Do No Harm.
Hellbound and Down 