TOPEKA, Kansas — Teachers in Kansas’ largest public school district discriminated against black and disabled students in their discipline, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday. The department announced an agreement to overhaul the district’s policies.
The changes the Wichita district has agreed to include reducing the number of times unruly students will be restrained and ending the practice of leaving misbehaving students alone in school starting Jan. 1, 2025, the Justice Department said.
The district also agreed to offer counseling or tutoring to any student who has been alone in a room for the past three school years, with the number of hours equal to the number of hours the student has been secluded. The department said the district is already writing a new student code of conduct and has scheduled crisis prevention training for staff.
The agreement comes amid an ongoing national debate over classroom discipline and whether punishments for minority and disabled students are disproportionately harsh. The Justice Department has previously reached similar agreements with other school districts in the U.S.
The settlement “sends a strong message to schools in Kansas and schools across the country to ensure they no longer alienate or target Black students or students with disabilities,” said Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas.
The Justice Department said in a letter to the Wichita County district attorney that it was investigating disciplinary actions over the past three school years and visited the district in March 2023. It concluded that the district disciplined black students more often and more severely than white students.
The DOJ also said that of the more than 3,000 times in three years that the district restrained or sequestered students, 98 percent of those students were disabled. And it noted that hundreds of the cases involved students in kindergarten, first or second grade. More than 40 students were restrained or sequestered more than 20 times each, the DOJ said.
“We have substantiated allegations that the District discriminated against black students in its administration of school discipline and referral of student conduct to law enforcement,” the department said in its letter. “We also found evidence that the District denied students with disabilities an equal opportunity to participate in or benefit from its educational programs.”
The Wichita district has more than 46,000 students, nearly 10 percent of all students in Kansas. About 64 percent of the students are black, Hispanic or of multiple ethnicities, according to figures from the state Department of Education, and the state estimates that nearly 78 percent are at risk of academic failure.
The Justice Department said the district had cooperated with the investigation and “expressed a desire to make positive improvements.”
“We can and must create a more equitable school district by changing some of our practices and procedures,” Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said in an online statement after the Wichita School Board approved the agreement. “Safe learning communities — for students and staff — will always be paramount.”
Disability rights advocates in several states have been criticizing for years restrictions and isolation of disabled students, because these punishments are overused and dangerous.
In 2022, Iowa’s second largest school district pledged to end the use of seclusion rooms after the Justice Department concluded it violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2023, The largest district in Alaska decided to stop isolating students and to only use coercive measures if there is a real risk of physical harm to the student or others.
According to Nichols, Kansas law already states that restraints may only be used if there is an imminent risk that students will seriously harm themselves or others.
“Wichita public schools should have been adhering to that requirement all along,” he said.
In other states, pressure to do more over unruly students has led authorities to take a different direction.
Arkansas expanded its restraint law last year to allow other school employees — in addition to teachers — to use restraints on students in some cases. Some states still allow corporal punishment: a district in southwestern Missouri reintroduction of student punishment in 2022 as a form of discipline, but only in cases where the parents agree.
In Wichita, the Justice Department said, the disparity in discipline for black and white girls was “particularly pronounced.” At one high school, black girls were disciplined 4.5 times as often as white girls for insubordination and were fined 3.6 times as often for dress code violations, the Justice Department letter said. Wichita schools held students in detention 1,570 times over three years and placed them in solitary confinement 1,450 times, the letter added.
“We have concluded that most of the District’s restrictions and isolations are inconsistent with District policy and generally accepted practice,” the letter said.