The Desegregation War in Minnesota Heats Up, as State Judge Hands Charter School Advocates Key Win
The judge who recently delivered a significant victory for Minnesota’s charter schools emphasized multiple times that education officials went against state law and exceeded their authority by attempting to include independent public schools in a controversial desegregation program.
Administrative Law Judge Ann C. O’Reilly stated, "Lawmaking should not be influenced by secondary factors," and added that all mentions and applicability of charter schools should be removed from the rules.
Leaders of charter schools argue that the rule would have had disastrous consequences for some of Minnesota’s most successful high-poverty schools, many of which have attracted a large number of students from a single racial or ethnic background. The rule would have eliminated legal protection for parents who choose these schools.
Meanwhile, public district schools in affluent predominantly white communities would remain unaffected. Only schools with a nonwhite student population of 20% or more would be required to take steps towards integration.
The hearings on the proposed rules in January had to be extended by an extra day due to the vast number of school leaders and parents who testified against the backwards definition of segregation being enshrined. Additionally, numerous individuals wrote personal letters to the judge expressing their concerns.
Nekima Levy-Pounds, a Professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School and the head of the Minneapolis NAACP, stated, "People are attempting to misuse civil rights laws to claim that these schools are segregated, which is an incorrect analysis." She further explained that she intentionally sends her children to an all-black charter school so that they can feel affirmed and receive an education that embraces their history, making them feel like whole human beings rather than inferior.
Myron Orfield, a professor at the University of Minnesota, who strongly believes that charter schools worsen segregation, also voiced his displeasure with the proposed rule. He argued that charter schools and Minnesota’s open enrollment laws, which allow students to enroll in any district with available space, "facilitate racial segregation." He further stated, "Parents who do not desire integrated schools can send their children to segregated schools, and under the current rule, those schools are exempt from any desegregation requirements."
Charter school advocates across the country have been closely following the debate over the state’s rule and a separate class-action lawsuit that raises similar issues. They see these actions as a dual attack on the legitimacy of parental choice. The controversy comes at a time when charter schools are facing opposition, primarily driven by teachers’ unions, in various cities such as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Washington state.
Many observers argue that it is not entirely clear whether the lawsuit or the now disapproved state rule would genuinely result in diverse classrooms. The high-poverty charter schools that would be affected, despite being among the state’s most successful, mostly serve children who have limited alternatives and would otherwise attend poorly performing district schools with predominantly single-race student populations.
Furthermore, there is a challenge in explaining why initiatives marketed as efforts towards integration would actually harm students of color.
Minnesota’s 25-year-old charter school law, the first of its kind in the nation, states that state laws and regulations do not apply to charter schools unless explicitly stated by the legislature. Advocates of school choice frequently complain that they have to repeatedly seek legal recourse to assert their autonomy. Cindy Lavorato, a former assistant state attorney general and one of the attorneys involved in preparing the case against the rule, claims, "In the past six years that I have represented charter schools and authorizers, the Minnesota Department of Education has wasted significant time and money attempting to eliminate charter schools through excessive regulations."
The state has traditionally defined segregation as the exclusion of a particular group rather than the result of parents choosing a school that affirms their children’s identities. Public charter schools are prohibited from discriminating, and those with more applicants than available seats must admit students through lotteries that do not consider race or ability.
The judge also found the rule to be impermissibly vague, as it did not specify how schools should balance the requirement to admit all applicants while also promoting diversity. Since the law does not cover charter schools, they will not receive state funding for integration activities.
The state Department of Education can choose to appeal the decision or start over. Should they decide to challenge the exemption of charter schools, they would need to take the matter to the state Court of Appeals. If they opt to start over, education policymakers speculate that no significant effort will be made to address this contentious issue until after the November election.
Consequently, attention has turned to a second desegregation effort: a class-action lawsuit filed last fall accusing the state of denying students a quality education by allowing segregation. The lawsuit claims that the rise of charter schools has made integration impossible.
Without specifying a solution, the lawsuit mentioned in the complaint implies that Shulman has publicly discussed the creation of a large metropolitan district in order to prevent white flight. This would involve dissolving Minneapolis, St. Paul, and other districts, and establishing systems that serve large portions of the Twin Cities.
It is unclear whether families of any race would support this type of integration. Minneapolis Public Schools ceased using busing for integration in the late 1990s due to the constant movement of students between schools across the city in an effort to maintain balance.
In January, the attorneys involved in the lawsuit asked the state court judge overseeing the case to reject a request by Minnesota’s charter school operators to join as interested parties. The judge agreed with the charter advocates, recognizing that the litigation could have a significant impact on their schools.
A motion to dismiss the lawsuit will be heard on April 14 in Minneapolis. If the case continues, mediation will be required by law.
This would be an ironic turn of events. Twenty years ago, Shulman filed a similar lawsuit that was eventually resolved through expensive mediation. Many of the parents who were plaintiffs in that case were ultimately unhappy with the closed-door negotiations.
As part of the settlement, underprivileged students in certain parts of Minneapolis were granted busing to suburban schools. Orfield, who was a state representative at the time, carried the legislation necessary for this to happen.
Twin Cities schools were quite different two decades ago. The metropolitan area had a significantly higher percentage of white students, and the charter school sector was just beginning to emerge. It would be another 15 years before a handful of high-poverty public charters outperformed neighboring district schools.
This raises the same question that lawmakers faced in 2013 when they debated the legislation that the recently rejected rule was aimed at fulfilling: What should we do about students who are being denied a quality education while we work towards integration, if integration is considered a valuable goal in and of itself?
Sen. Terri Bonoff, a member of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party who represents a district in the western Twin Cities, directly addressed this question in a letter to the judge who rejected the proposed rule. She argued that a high-performing charter school with a mission to provide a curriculum integrated with language and cultural immersion should not be forced to change its focus if it happens to attract more protected students than the nearest charter or district school. According to Bonoff, this particular public charter school has proven to increase student academic achievement, create equitable educational opportunities, and reduce academic disparities, thereby fulfilling the broader mission of educating each and every child to their utmost potential.
