School District Claims Rogue Principal Okayed Anti-White Discrimination. Documents Suggest It Was Official Policy

A Wisconsin elementary school that directed teachers to prioritize meetings with students based on their race likely did not misunderstand district policies as the district has suggested, a lawyer who sued the district is alleging.

Rather, the lawyer says, the school’s leaders seem to have abided by district policies that call for educators to intentionally spend most of their time on their “targeted student populations” — black kids, English-language learners, and students with reading disabilities.

Madison Metropolitan School District policies and strategic plans, which National Review has reviewed, also call for decentralizing “whiteness” in schools, and utilizing the hiring process to build a staff that buys into the district’s vision and that is “free of blockers and resistors.”

Dan Lennington, a lawyer with the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, or WILL, first got involved in the case after a whistleblower who attended a Lake View Elementary staff development meeting in November 2020 sent him a screen grab from the meeting that discussed the creation of small instructional groups for students. According to the screen grab, as part of an “equity vision” and a commitment to “black excellence,” teachers were to “prioritize your African American students meeting with you first and more often,” and they were to “prioritize your English Language learners meeting with you second and more often.”

After a drawn-out request for records and a legal battle, the district sent WILL a letter stating that the screen grab was not district policy, but was rather a directive from the principal at Lake View. The principal was “advised of her misunderstanding,” the letter stated, according to WILL.

On Monday, WILL announced that they had settled a public-records lawsuit against the Madison district, and that the district had agreed to a series of steps to improve its process for filling records requests.

But as part of the legal fight, the district provided Lennington with additional documents about district policies, strategic plans, and its utilization of racially segregated affinity groups. In a thread on X, formerly Twitter, Lennington wrote that after having reviewed the documents, there is “MUCH reason to doubt” that Lake View’s plan to prioritize black students was a “misunderstanding” at all.

“When they say publicly, as they have now, ‘Oh, that one thing was just a misunderstanding, we do not prioritize students based on race,’ we think that’s a lie,” Lennington told National Review.

The Madison school district’s communication staff did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment on Lennington’s allegations. The communications department has been embroiled in a controversy surrounding an investigation into its former director who has been accused of bullying his employees and belittling female reporters.

According to documents from the November 2020 Lake View Elementary staff meeting, immediately after the discussion about the school’s plan to create small instructional groups and to prioritize meetings with black students and English language learners, the presentation turned to the district’s “K-5 Literacy, Biliteracy, Native American Education and Social Studies — Strategic Plan.”

The document starts out discussing a “Rally Cry” about the “Master Narrative” — “whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else: The Master Fiction . . . History,” according to a Toni Morrison quote.

According to the document, the Madison school district acknowledges that “the Master Narrative must decentralize whiteness.”

The document goes on to explain that “80% of our time will be spent attending to our top 20% priority,” which is “students of color (African American and Latinx students), English Language Learners, and students with general reading disabilities.” The document states that “we will attend explicitly to these student population needs by ensuring that they are instructionally targeted* in the literacy, biliteracy, humanities and English curriculum.”

Another professional development documents indicates that Madison teachers are evaluated on whether they explicitly apply “content goals to our targeted student populations.” Lake View identified those students as their “Focus Students.”

“The elementary school was just doing what the strategic plan says to do,” Lennington said.

The K–5 literacy and biliteracy strategic plan also talks about efforts to build a “high performing team” through hiring and onboarding, and building a staff that buys into “the vision of the school and is free of blockers and resistors.”

Lennington said that appears to be an effort to bring on staff in a way that “we’re getting only the most liberal, progressive people,” a policy that could be ethically and legally problematic. “If someone was not hired or if someone was fired because they didn’t think the right thing, they would definitely have a constitutional claim against the school district,” he said.

The district’s documents also highlight the approved use of racially segregated affinity groups, and how those groups can “support us in being more vulnerable and in grieving the ignorance, shame, and disgrace that often accommodate racial inquiry.”

“A white affinity space puts the onus on white people to learn from each other rather than relying on people of color to teach them,” the document states.

The November 2020 staff meeting at Lake View Elementary occurred while schools and institutions around the country were grappling with racial justice after George Floyd’s killing in neighboring Minnesota. After being tipped off by the Lake View whistleblower, in January 2022 Lennington requested policy documents from the district. A year later, when the district still had not provided documents, WILL sued.

Lennington said the district started turning over documents this past spring. He said WILL is considering how to proceed in light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions.

“We are definitely looking at our options right now and considering what are the next steps to deal with this sort of rogue district that wants to continue discriminating based on race, despite some of their public statements,” Lennington said.

While “this is the most explicit that we’ve seen so far,” Lennington said other schools and districts in Wisconsin are likely also discriminating for and against students based on race.

In Appleton, Wisc., for example, a local high school is hosting a special meet and greet this month for “freshman students of color.” In a prepared statement, Lennington called on the school’s leaders to “reject this racist event.”