08/16/2022
SoâŚuhâŚabout that white privilege. Is this what systemic inequality and implicit bias looks like in 2022 America? Where white people must sacrifice their vocation first to the betterment of non-whites? But wait a secondâŚisnât this what diversity ultimately means?
REPORT: Minneapolis Will Fire âWhite Teachersâ First: MPS Violates Civil Rights Act, by Garion Frankel, Chalk Board Review, August 15, 2022
A new contract between Minneapolis Public Schools and the local teachers union mandates that white teachers must be fired first when any kind of staff downsizing is initiated.
âStarting with the Spring 2023 Budget Tie-Out Cycle, if excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the District shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population,â the agreement, which was originally obtained by Alpha News, says. Minority teachers âmay be exempted from district-wide layoff[s] outside seniority order,â and will also be given priority during reinstatement.
In addition, teachers at 15 âracially isolated schoolsâŚwith the greatest concentration of povertyâ will also be protected from layoffs.
âPast discrimination by the District disproportionately impacted the hiring of underrepresented teachers in the District, as compared to the relevant labor market and the community, and resulted in a lack of diversity of teachers,â the agreement adds. The agreement is meant to rectify past instances of discrimination through more and different discrimination.
Hans Bader, a constitutional lawyer, says that the measure is outright unconstitutional.
âWhen it comes to terminationâŚan employer canât racially discriminate even against whites. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1996 [Taxman v. Board of Education of Piscataway] that an school district canât consider race even as a tie-breaker, in deciding who to lay off, even to promote diversity, because that (a) unduly trammels the white teacherâs rightsâŚand (b) putting that aside, the school district couldnât consider race to promote diversity when black people werenât seriously underrepresented in its workforce as a whole,â Bader wrote.
Bader also argued that the Third Circuitâs ruling is strengthened by a 1989 Supreme Court ruling (Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education) that stated that âa school district canât lay off white teachers to remedy societal discrimination against blacks.â
James Dickey, senior trial counsel at the Upper Midwest Law Center, has already announced that heâs getting involved. He encouraged âany Minneapolis taxpayer or teacher who opposes this racial preference systemâ to send him an email.
Despite the backlash, however, the teachers union is sticking to its guns.
âIt can be a national model, and schools in other states are looking to emulate what we did,â Edward Barlow, who sits on the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers executive board, told the Star Tribune. âEven though it doesnât do everything that we wanted it to do, itâs still a huge move forward for the retention of teachers of color.â
At this time, no white administrators have volunteered to be among the first laid off at Minneapolis Public Schools.
Why arenât white people lining up to be the first sacrificial lambs to diversity? Why indeed?