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School agrees to Latino parents' demands

Kevin Graman
Staff writer
October 13, 2006

In a landmark agreement in federal court, a central Washington school district has agreed to the demands of Latino parents who alleged that the civil rights of their children were being violated.

The complaint alleging ongoing racial discrimination against Latino students in the Brewster School District was filed last October in U.S. District Court in Spokane. The school district’s former superintendent and a junior high school principal also were named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Monetary damages for the plaintiffs still have to be worked out, according to their Tacoma attorney, Darrell Cochran, but both sides in the case have signed an extensive “consent order” requiring the school district to take steps to ensure an end to discrimination at the combined junior and senior high school in Brewster.

Cochran described these steps as “landmark changes” in the way the school is run and called the case a first for Washington state Latinos.

“In Brewster, Latino students had been relegated to second-class-citizen status unlike anything seen on the West Side,” Cochran said. “Latinos were resigned to taking orchard jobs and not questioning their place in society.”

He said he hoped the court order would help Brewster Latinos –comprising nearly 70 percent of students in the district – raise their status though education. An attorney for the school district did not return a telephone call from a reporter seeking comment.

Among the changes, the school district must establish an office of minority affairs to investigate allegations of discrimination and racial harassment, implement a multiracial panel to assess and prevent discrimination in athletic programs and collaborate with an organized group of Latino parents and educators on curriculum that exposes all students to Latino culture.

The court will oversee implementation of the order.

The parents were organized by the League of United Latin American Citizens after a Nov. 6, 2003, incident at the school in which 27 students, all Latino, were singled out for disciplinary action by Principal Randy Phillips.

Concerned about recent fights that he believed were the result of gang activity, Phillips gathered the students in the school library and forced them to sign a disciplinary contract that any future violation of school rules would be grounds for immediate suspension or expulsion.

With two Brewster police officers present, the students were told they were “going to end up working in the orchards like their parents,” according to the lawsuit.

No Anglo students were required to attend the meeting despite the fact school officials were aware of a non-Latino gang, “the Orchard Monkey Killers,” whose name contains a derogatory reference to Latino agricultural workers, according to the lawsuit.

Phillips was named in the lawsuit, as well as then-Superintendent Jim Kelly, who has since left the school district. The suit alleges the administrators and the district failed to take appropriate steps to ease discrimination in the school despite being put on notice that the problem has existed in the district for many years.

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights determined the district failed to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination on the basis or race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal funding. The district has since completed remedial action required by the Office of Civil Rights.

The district’s interim superintendent, Dan Farrell, said that it was time to move on.

“We need to look at the decree as a way to strengthen the system and move forward,” Farrell said. “The end result is a stronger school system for all kids.”

An Oct. 30 hearing has been set for U.S. District Judge Robert Whaley to sign the decree and hear a motion to enter a judgment for the plaintiffs, who have grown from the original eight parents to 25 parents and children.

A LULAC official said the Brewster Latinos organized because their children had higher dropout and failure rates and received far fewer scholarships than Anglo students.

“The parents have been waiting for this,” said Maria Rodriguez Salazar, LULAC national vice president for the Northwest region. “This case will hopefully open the door not just for Brewster children, but for other children across the state.”

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