Wisconsin School District Settles Lawsuit Alleging Cover-Up of Discrimination against White Students

A directive that instructed teachers to prioritize meetings with students based on their race was not an official policy of the Madison, Wis. school district, but was rather limited to a single elementary school, district leaders told a conservative legal group as part of a just-settled public-records lawsuit over the discriminatory measure.

According to a letter from the district to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, or WILL, “the principal involved has been advised of her misunderstanding,” WILL said in a press release.

WILL sued the Madison Metropolitan School District in January, accusing the district of withholding records around the policy for over a year. On Monday, WILL announced that the district had satisfied the request and agreed to a series of reforms around its public-records process.

Attempts to reach a Madison school district spokesperson on Monday were not successful.

WILL first became involved in the issue in January 2022, when several district employees reached out to WILL lawyer Daniel Lennington to tell him that the district was directing teachers to prioritize meetings with black students and English language learners above other students. Lennington was provided with a screen grab of the alleged policy regarding creating small instructional groups for instruction in reading, foundational skills, and math.

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.”

Lennington filed a records request with the district on January 31, 2022, for the complete policy and other records. He followed up on the request at least five more times, including in December, but received no response in that time. WILL reported that it has had to wait for long periods to obtain records related to other requests from the Madison district, and local media has also reported on the often long wait for records.

According to WILL, the settlement agreement stipulates that the Madison school district officials must meet with public-records clerks from the Milwaukee Public Schools to find ways to improve their records system. “In WILL’s view, MPS’s public-records system is superior to MMSD’s and this consultation should result in additional improvements,” WILL stated in a press release announcing the settlement.

The Madison district has also implemented a new electronic system to manage records requests, has agreed to post a list of active and closed records requests online to improve transparency, and has hired additional staff to reduce the current backlog of requests.

The district also agreed to pay $18,000 in attorney fees and punitive damages, WILL stated.

Lennington called the settlement a “huge victory for transparency.”

“A whistleblower notified us in early 2022 that MMSD had a racially discriminatory policy of treating black students more favorably than students of other races,” he said in a prepared statement. “MMSD stonewalled for over a year. Now they’ve paid the price, disavowed the policy, and committed to significant reforms.”