- November 16, 2024
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Several years after the Southern Poverty Law Center filed an August, 2012 complaint about racial disparities in the Flagler School District’s disciplinary outcomes, the district and the civil rights organization are nearing an agreement.
“Do we have areas where we can improve? Absolutely, and that's a part of this agreement,” School Board Attorney Kristy Gavin said. If an agreement is reached, the SPLC will withdraw its complaint.
In a June 2 School Board workshop, Gavin laid out the agreement's terms for the board members: The district will task the Coalition for Student Success with reviewing its code of conduct, and with checking its discipline data for disparities.
The committee’s membership, going forward, will contain two community members, one Sheriff’s Office representative, two high school students — they will be new additions to the coalition — a licensed mental health counselor, a representative from the Department of Juvenile Justice, a member of the school district’s administrative staff, and Flagler Schools Superintendent Jacob Oliva.
The district will also provide monthly discipline reports and make that data available for public review, including by the SPLC.
It will reduce out-of-school suspensions from a maximum of 10 days to a maximum of five days, with an eventual goal of gradually eliminating them entirely. It will issue a letter clarifying that school resource deputies are there to assist with “growth and camaraderie, and helping those students those students that are entering into the community, both as well as being productive citizens and in their academic success.”
If either side doesn’t feel the other is living up to its end of the bargain, they will meet and, if needed, move through a formal mediation process.
School District Superintendent Jacob Oliva said the district has taken the SPLC report seriously and worked to address the disparities the organization was concerned about.
“We want to be the district that implements some of the most innovative practices in the nation, where you’re going to bring other districts to learn from us,” he said. “So when we started this journey and sat at the table, it was with that vision in mind. And some of the ideas that we’ve kicked around, and some of the vision that we’re working on is pretty innovative, and it’s aligned with the School Board’s vision and mission. And being premier is what we stand for.”
SPLC attorney Amir Whitaker, who’d helped file the 2012 complaint against Flagler and four other northern Florida school districts, told board members at the workshop that he’d been impressed by the district’s progress.
“I’m seeing things here that are not happening anywhere else,” he said. “For a few days, starting I believe in February, Katrina Townsend showed me around personally to a lot of the schools. I met with more than a dozen administrators — great leadership — and you all have the capacity and are striving to become the nation’s leader. So we believe all that can happen. …We took into consideration the individual needs of the schools, parents, community, and it’s all compiled into this agreement. I’m looking forward to the greatness that will continue to happen in Flagler."
Whitaker said he would also attend the June 16 meeting at which the board will discuss and vote on the final agreement.
In January, Whitaker had told about 130 local NAACP members at the organization’s regular meeting that black students are 16% of the district’s student population, but accounted for 36% of suspensions in 2014. They are also underrepresented in gifted classes and dual enrollment classes, he said.
“Flagler has made tremendous improvements,” he said at the January meeting. But the disparities, he said, are the result of “an inherited system. … If you look at student outcomes today, you still see two separate stories.”
After Whitaker addressed the board Tuesday, School Board member Colleen Conklin said she was pleased with the result of the district’s efforts to address the SPLC complaint.
“I can only see good things come from it,” she said. “I think when we tend to shine the light on things, we tend to know what we’re working with and work better to try to improve them. … The conversations around any kind of race relations are sometimes difficult, and I think when both parties can come to the table in a cooperative manner, we can get so much more accomplished together than we can apart. …I think it was a good learning process.”
