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As the Salt Lake City School District hired new principals this spring, it wrongly excluded minority parents from the process, a\u00a0district board member alleges in a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an allegation district leaders have refuted, saying no policies were violated.<\/p>\n

Michael Clara, a member of the school board, sent the complaint Monday after questioning the hiring of new principals at Parkview\u00a0Elementary and other west-side schools at a board meeting last week.<\/p>\n

Clara alleges the district left parents out of the hiring process in violation of its own practices and agreements. In the complaint, he\u00a0notes that most of the families at the schools he represents are racial minorities.<\/p>\n

He claims it\u2019s part of a larger pattern of racism on the part of district leaders toward minority parents and students on the district\u2019s\u00a0west side. He was the only board member to vote against hiring the principals May 6.<\/p>\n

\u201cI attribute that 6-to-1 vote as the result of White dominance on the board,\u201d Clara wrote in the complaint. \u201cIn violating their own\u00a0principal hiring procedures for this particular school, the superintendent and school board have created an environment where the\u00a0differential or biased treatment of ethnic and racial minority parents within the school district is a common and acceptable
\npractice.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jason Olsen, a district spokesman, wrote in an email to The Salt Lake Tribune, \u201cWe do not believe we have committed any\u00a0violations.\u201d That\u2019s partly because the schools are participating in a turnaround program that uses a different hiring process.<\/p>\n

Board President Kristi Swett and board Vice President Heather Bennett declined to comment on the complaint Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Clara points to the district\u2019s practice of shared governance with schools as evidence that district leaders should have included parents\u00a0and teachers in principal hirings.<\/p>\n

Also, in some circumstances, a school-organized selection team can screen, interview and recommend candidates to the\u00a0superintendent, who may select a principal to be appointed by the board. That process, which can include school parents and\u00a0employees on the screening teams, is described in a recently updated written understanding between the board and The Salt Lake\u00a0Association of School Administrators.<\/p>\n

Clara said no such team was involved in the hiring of the principal at Parkview and possibly other schools. He said it\u2019s unfair to allow more affluent communities in east-side schools to take part in selecting principals but not those on the west side.<\/p>\n

At the previous board meeting, however, district Associate Superintendent Patrick Garcia said district leaders did not have to follow\u00a0that process at Parkview and some other schools because they are part of a University of Virginia school turnaround program, which\u00a0the district uses to develop leadership at some of its schools. As part of that program, the district hires principals using a separate\u00a0process, Garcia said.<\/p>\n

Clara also filed a complaint over the matter with the district\u2019s Title I director last week. Clara has filed at least three other civil rights\u00a0complaints against the district in the past two years on separate matters.<\/p>\n

Link to Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Salt Lake City School District hired new principals this spring, it wrongly excluded minority parents from the process, a\u00a0district board member alleges in a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights. It\u2019s an allegation district leaders have refuted, saying no policies were violated. Michael Clara, a member of the school board, sent the complaint Monday after questioning the hiring of new principals at Parkview\u00a0Elementary and other west-side schools at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2058,"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/2058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelclara.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}