“Members of the Philadelphia Student Union collaborated with film-makers Aidan Un, Lendl Tellington, and Sarah Milinski to create videos on issues that are relevant to the lives of young people in Philadelphia.”
“Children are being uprooted, shuffled into schools that are no better than the ones they came from,” said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, one of several organizations that are calling their effort the Journey for Justice Alliance. “In each city, African American children’s hopes of equal educational opportunity are being dashed.”
The complaints, sent to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department, charge that students of color from Newark, Chicago and New Orleans have been disproportionately affected by school closures and charter-school expansions. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in the use of federal funds by schools and other institutions.
In Newark, 13 public schools have closed since 2009. In Chicago, 111 schools have closed since 2001. In New Orleans, all the traditional public schools except five have shut down since 2003. The District of Columbia has closed 39 traditional public schools since 2008.
Those shuttered schools have been replaced by public charter schools, which are funded by taxpayers but are privately operated. Teachers in charter schools typically are not unionized.
In New Orleans, 79 percent of students attend charter schools, the highest rate in the nation. Next in line is Detroit, where 51 percent of students attend charters, and the District, where 43 percent of public-school students are in charters.
The activists called on the Obama administration to halt school closings and stop the spread of charter schools.