DCPS under review by U.S. Dept. of Education Office of Civil Rights

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education is conducting a compliance review for the Duval County School District.

According to a letter addressed to U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown’s office on Sept. 30 from the OCR, the compliance review will “examine whether the district is failing to provide African American and Hispanic students with equitable access to quality education, specifically with respect to teacher equity and instructional leadership.”

DCPS Superintendent Dr. Nikolai Vitti said he felt the review was politically motivated and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Vitti the district has invested money to keep good quality teachers in high poverty areas and said graduation rates for Hispanic and African-American students are up.

“This is a squandering of federal dollars and local dollars,” Vitti said. “This appears to be a political witch hunt or be politically motivated.”

Vitti said he suspects U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown may have played a role in the push for the compliance review because he said her office received a letter from the department of education before DCPS was informed.

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He said Brown has previously expressed opposition to proposed school boundary changes and felt that may have been a factor.

“We know that in early September during a workshop Congresswoman Brown spoke about and made vague notions of a possible lawsuit and we really didn’t understand where she was coming from when she made those statements but a couple weeks later we receive a letter sent from the Office of Civil Rights to her office,” Vitti said. “It’s awful suspicious when you look at the pattern in which how the letter was sent to us and how the letter was sent to the Congresswoman’s office.”

Brown said she did not call for the compliance review but fully supports it.

“I support it 100 percent,” Brown said. “We want to make sure that the kids in our community, African-American and Hispanics are getting quality education. I don’t have no fight with him. I’m fighting for the children.”

The OCR said the district has to follow 45 steps that include gathering documentation on student to teacher ratio and data on student enrollment broken down by grade, race, national origin and gender.

The letter from the OCR said DCPS has 30 days to provide the information from the date in which they received the letter.

WJAX