The U.S. Department of Education has apparently substantiated civil rights complaints by four students against Carroll Independent School District schools in Southlake and has given the school district 90 days to reach an agreement to address the discrimination, NBC News reported today (Thursday, May 9).
He civil rights enforcement arm of the Education Department sent a letter on May 6 to the NAACP, which is representing the students who lodged the complaints, explaining what the department’s next steps are.
The four students have all either graduated or left Carroll ISD since telling the Education Department that they had faced racist and homophobic slurs and comments, NBC reports. One student said he suffered retaliation about reporting racist harassment to school officials. Another said he was repeatedly bullied by classmates because of his sexual orientation, to the point that he considered suicide, and that school officials did nothing to stop the bullying.
Southlake schools made national news in 2018 when a video of white high school students repeatedly chanting the “N” word went viral. That prompted dozens of Carroll ISD parents and students to go public with their own stories of discrimination. The controversy prompted the school board to appoint a Cultural Competence Action Plan, which was released to the public in 2020.
That action plan, however, prompted a backlash by conservative white parents and activists who dubbed it anti-white and anti-American discrimination. They formed the Southlake Families PAC that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and then pushed a slate of far-right school board candidates that, in November 2021, won enough seats to take control of the school board.
Two weeks later, NBC notes, the U.S. Department of Education began its investigation into the complaints of discrimination.
— Tammye Nash
