Education
District, critics disagree on racism review
A review of employee complaints did not find evidence of
racial discrimination in hiring and promotions, as some employees have charged,
School Superintendent Manuel Rivera said at a press conference last week.
Instead, Rivera said, the problems related to those particular employees
stemmed from poor communication by the school district.
But that hasn’t satisfied some of the critics who had
pressed for action. Following the press conference, a citizen’s group called the
Parent and Community Advisory Committee charged that the review process was
“fundamentally flawed.” In a prepared statement to the media, the committee
complained that it had not been part of the review process and didn’t
participate in decisions about employees who should be compensated.
And while members of an African-American clergy group seemed
to support the review findings at the press conference, early this week one of
the leaders was more critical.
In interviews after the press conference, the Rev. Willie
Harvey had said the district was moving in the right direction. “We know
everyone is not happy with it,” Harvey
said. But on Monday, Harvey
strengthened his words. A joint statement by Rivera and the Clergy Review
Board’s chairperson, the Rev. Marlowe Washington,
had called the review a “win-win.” That, Harvey
said, was “a lie.”
“We all know that racism played a role in this,” Harvey
said. “Manny knows discrimination is going on in the district.”
The review followed months
of protests by African-American clergy and by 27 district employees who said
they had been demoted, fired, or denied promotions as a result of racial
discrimination. After discussions between Rivera and the clergy, Rivera
established a five-member panel to review the employees’ complaints. Three were
district employees and two were non-employees who were recommended by the
Clergy Review Board.
Rivera and the clergy presented the panel’s findings at the
press conference. School district officials declined to release the report, saying
it contained confidential information about the employees, who had been assured
that it would not be made public.
Nine of the 27 employees will receive some form of
compensation, Rivera said. That could include “anything from title adjustments
to reinstatement of their positions to other types of remedies that I will
advance,” Rivera said.
The compensation will be handled case by case with each of
the nine employees, Rivera said. No compensation is being offered to the other
employees.
The conflict between the district and the employees is a common one — in government or in the
private sector — when one person is chosen over another for a job or a
promotion. Were qualifications the reason? Or was it favoritism? Or racism?
School district employees do have a variety of ways to seek
help when they believe they’ve been discriminated against. They can complain to
their supervisor. They can ask their union to pursue their complaint. They can
file a complaint with the federal Equal Opportunity Commission or the New York
State Division of Human Rights. But as in many employment conflicts, district
employees may be reluctant to talk with their supervisor, particularly if the
supervisor is involved in the dispute. They may fear retaliation. And they may be
intimidated by the prospect of filing complaints with government agencies.
In several community meetings called during the fall by the
Rev. Harvey, district employees were asked to put their complaints in writing.
To investigate those complaints, Rivera and the clergy then organized a unique
review process: the appointment of the review panel.
The panel was led by Rivera’s chief of staff, Kim
Dyce-Faucette. Other members were Michele Hancock, the district’s director of
leadership and diversity development; two members of the district’s
human-resource staff, and the two women not associated with the district,
Deidra Clifton-Goolsby and Joyce House. All five are African American.
Clifton-Goolsby and House were appointed “as objective
parties,” House said in an interview late last week. “We had no upfront
information on any of these people or what their complaint was about until we
read them. We’ve never been to any of their church meetings.”
The five panel members read each complaint and met with 22
of the 27 employees individually. Four others decided not to go through the
process, and a fifth couldn’t be contacted. Clifton-Goolsby and House were the
only two allowed to ask the employees questions. After each day of interviews,
the panel debriefed.
“We were there to pull the facts out of each case,” says
House. “Were you allowed due process? Who represented you in your complaint?
What happened to these people? That was our objective.”
They looked for patterns and trends in the complaints, says
House, to see if employees shared common experiences. The panel’s feedback was
given to Rivera with a set of recommendations to help prevent future problems.
The most important, says House, was to improve communication with current and
potential employees, particularly on job vacancies and promotions.
According to Rivera’s summary of the report, some employees
said they hadn’t been informed about job openings that could have offered a
promotion for them. Some said that they had applied for jobs but didn’t get a
response. Some said that feedback about their performance “was inconsistent,
not clear, too infrequent, and sometimes not helpful.”
“I do not recall any of these people bringing any
accusations of racism to their complaints,” says House. “No person said, ‘I
applied for that job, and a white person got it.’ I understand that some people
may have different perceptions, but going by the complaints, the facts are, No;
it was not about racism. And I think one important thing that people fail to
recognize is that the complaints came from the employees in their own words.
They hand-wrote them or used a computer. They did not come from the district.
There was no screening.”
At the press
conference, Rivera outlined steps he wants the district to take to improve
communication with employees. They include doing a better job distributing
information about job openings and responding to people who apply for jobs,
being clearer about the district’s selection process, reviewing the district’s
mentoring program, and strengthening its leadership training programs.
He will also ask the School Board to create an ombudsman
office.
But members of the Parent and Community Advisory Committee
aren’t satisfied with the outcome. “We see this as a much bigger problem than
the jobs of some district employees,” says Diane Jackson, spokesperson for the
Parent and Community Advisory Committee. “This does not address the serious
problem of institutional racism in the district. And what message is this
sending to our children? This whole process is for our children. If I as an
educator am being treated this way, what is the future going to be like for our
children? They are the ones really being hurt here.”
Committee member Princess ReffellCont-eh talked in even
broader terms. “Just look at what is happening, the killing in the streets,”
she says. “Why are our kids dying? It’s because of what is happening in our
schools. This racism is trickling down to them.”
Van White, an attorney who has represented some district
employees in action against the school district — and who will become a
member of the School Board in January — says he too was disappointed in
Rivera’s response.
“I think it would have been better if Manny had just said,
‘Yes, there is racism in the district,'” says White.
It’s clear that the review doesn’t bring an end to the
issue, and there’s some disagreement within the African-American community. On
Monday, the Rev. Willie Harvey said the Clergy Review Board and the Parent and
Community Advisory Committee had met after the press conference to discuss
their differences. The two groups will continue to act as oversight groups to
the district, he said. And it seems clear that the Parent and Community
Advisory Committee wants to widen its probe of institutional racism in the
district.
The Rev. Marlowe Washington, who is pastor of the Baber
African Methodist Episcopal Church and chairs the Clergy Review Board, was more
cautious. He said on Tuesday that he agrees that there is institutional racism
within the district. “There is institutional racism wherever human beings
reside,” he said.
But, he added, after the review of “the 27 brave employees
who gave their written complaints,” the panel “did not find racism based on the
statements of these employees.”
“I am very much in opposition to any group that calls out
racism with nothing to back it up,” he said.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2006.
