[lg policy] Language services an issue in S. Phila. school dispute and settlement

[Harold Schiffman]

‘Courage’ and ‘guts’ led to S. Phila. High settlement
By Jeff Gammage

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Much of the credit for two landmark settlements to battle racial bias,
chairman Stephen Glassman told spectators at the state Human Relations
Commission meeting on Monday, goes to people who weren't in the room:

Asian students at South Philadelphia High School.

It was the quiet power of their stories, born of violence and
harassment, and their "extraordinary courage" and "guts" in coming
forward, that led officials to act decisively. Once the students
described how they were abused at school, "We knew we had to do
something," Commissioner M. Joel Bolstein said.

The commission met during school hours, and no students were present.
For an hour, commissioners, staff, community advocates, and city
school officials praised two nearly identical settlements that were
announced on Wednesday. The school district settled complaints filed
with the Human Relations Commission and with the federal government,
stemming from the violence of Dec. 3, 2009, when 30 Asian students
were attacked by groups of mostly African American classmates.

The settlements mandate broad reforms in how the district handles
complaints of harassment and violence. "I'm glad we came to a
settlement, but the work is just beginning," schools Superintendent
Arlene Ackerman said after addressing the commission. "We have a lot
of work to do." It's easy to read the federal settlement and conclude
that it's 30 pages of legalese. In fact, line after line speaks
directly to specific cases of anti-Asian harassment - none more loudly
than that involving a Vietnamese immigrant student named Hao Luu. His
name is never mentioned, but provisions for translators and parental
notifications help address what befell him in a case that began in
accusation and ended with the district admitting its error.

"I think my situation might have had some effect, a little," Luu, now
18 and attending a different school, said during an interview. Luu
said he was glad the school has improved under a new principal, Otis
Hackney, but that his harsh experience had altered his life and
disrupted his education. The day before the violence erupted, Luu was
followed after school by 10 to 15 students and beaten so badly that he
vomited. The next morning, his grandmother, Suong Nguyen, went to the
school and filed an incident report.

Neither she nor Luu was contacted by school administrators. Instead of
being treated as a victim, Luu was accused as a perpetrator. During
the next two months, he was ordered transferred from the school,
despite having won his case at a disciplinary hearing, and accused of
being a gang member, despite his family's denials. At one point,
officials accused Luu of taking part in a fight in 2008 - a time when
he was living in Virginia. A notice of his suspension hearing went to
his family written in English, a language they struggle to understand.

District officials later acknowledged that Luu had no connection to
street gangs, dropping the allegation they had used to ban him from
the school. Despite winning the right to return, Luu decided to
transfer to a private religious school. More recently he transferred
to Furness High, a city school. Now terms of the settlements require
that cases involving English-language learners - 19 percent of South
Philadelphia High students - be handled in a different way.

To start, the Human Relations Commission settlement states, victims of
racial harassment "ought not to be portrayed as perpetrators or gang
members bearing equal guilt with their attackers." The federal
settlement says the district must ensure interpreters are provided to
ELL students who complain of harassment. Interpreters also are to be
made available when their parents meet with school staff. If an
English-language learner faces disciplinary action, interpretation
must be provided at hearings and meetings. Parents must be notified -
in their native language - of the translators' availability.

Starting next month, the school must choose those translators from a
formal, pre-approved list - an important change. In the past, whoever
was nearby and happened to speak the language might be pressed into
service. That included students who often spoke little English
themselves. "You can see that a lot of the provisions are directly
related to Hao's case," said Cecilia Chen, an attorney with the Asian
American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the original
civil-rights complaint with the Justice Department.

The government acted less than a year after receiving the complaint -
lightning speed in these types of cases, which are rare in themselves.
The other prominent example is Lafayette High School in Brooklyn,
N.Y., where violence against Asians prompted an investigation and,
ultimately, a court order to fix the problem. In Philadelphia, federal
investigators moved aggressively to interview dozens of students,
teachers and staff after receiving the complaint in January. By July,
investigators had reached a conclusion: The district had deprived
Asian students of equal protection under the law - guaranteed by the
Constitution - by remaining "deliberately indifferent" to "severe and
pervasive" harassment and violence.

The district was informed. Faced with a strong federal finding and the
prospect of fighting the unlimited resources of the federal
government, the district had little choice but to settle. Drafts of a
potential settlement began to be traded back and forth, a process that
went on for much of the summer. Asian groups insisted that any
agreement contain language stating that the attacks were rooted in
racial bias - a finding the district had discouraged, long maintaining
that the events surrounding Dec. 3 represented general violence that
could have occurred anywhere.

The school district denied that it was "deliberately indifferent" to
Asian students' plight, and admitted no wrongdoing. The federal court
will maintain jurisdiction over the settlement for two and a half
years. The government can seek to enforce the agreement in court if it
believes the district is not in compliance. Helen Gym of Asian
Americans United spoke on behalf of several Asian-American
organizations at Monday's meeting, telling the commission that the
settlements were the result of "a year of bruising struggle and
painful polarization" with the school district. "It started with the
voices of the students," she said. "It is their voices that
transformed a school and a city."

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20101220_Courage_and_guts_led_to_S__Phila__High_settlement.html?viewAll=y



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