This Bay Area school district is being sued over teacher vacancies. Is it violating students’ civil rights?

Textbooks, qualified teachers and clean, safe and functional schools are required, following the landmark Williams v. California settlement in 2004.

RICHMOND — An East Bay school district accused of breaching California law by failing to adequately address chronic staffing vacancies and dangerous facilities is being sued for what advocates describe as an ongoing “systemic failure” to properly educate its students.

In a lawsuit against West Contra Costa Unified School District, six district educators, staff and parents claim district administrators have illegally violated the rights of students by failing to correct or even provide substantive responses to dozens of complaints since the winter of 2022.

The plaintiffs specifically cited conditions at Stege Elementary School, Helms Middle School and Kennedy High School, campuses that have large proportions of low-income, non-white and multilingual learners.

Friday’s lawsuit — the first of its kind in the state — focuses on California’s guarantee to provide all public school students with the basic tools necessary for a quality education. The requirement to supply textbooks, qualified teachers and clean, safe and functional schools was established by the landmark Williams v. California settlement in 2004. The same nonprofit civil rights firm that filed that lawsuit is now representing the West Contra Costra plaintiffs.

Karissa Provenza, a law fellow with the nonprofit, first started investigating issues inside the district’s classrooms with teachers at the end of 2022. After Public Advocates began representing plaintiffs in February, she said attorneys began connecting with parents and hosting workshops about their options to push the district to change course.

By law, the district is required to remedy complaints within 30 days and report resolutions to those making such complaints within 45 days.

In a series of April letters responding to Provenza about plaintiffs’ complaints, the district admitted that its practice of relying on substitutes amid a statewide shortage of teachers isn’t lawful and acknowledged the dangerous conditions at Stege Elementary. However, Provenza said no plan has been put in place to adequately resolve those issues.

Moreover, the complaints weren’t properly included in quarterly reports to the county’s schools superintendent and WCCUSD’s governing board — a concerning and illegal administrative lapse that allowed problems to compound for more than a year, removed opportunities for public discussion and undermined state-mandated accountability tools, Provenza said.

“The district has completely disregarded the process every step of the way,” Provenza said in an interview. “The district needs to change, because it creates a cycle of vacancies and higher turnover of teachers when they have to constantly cover classrooms and students. On top of that burnout, these environments are physically unhealthy and often unsafe in many instances. … This is a systemic failure.”

District officials, on summer recess, could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

Last week’s lawsuit is seeking a court order to compel the district to immediately respond to the complaints and remedy the violations, which would “finally provide students with the safe and healthy school environment to which they are entitled.” Public Advocates is collaborating on the lawsuit with pro bono co-counsel from Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Darrell Washington, a parent and alum of Stege Elementary, fears that his son — a rising fifth grader at Stege Elementary — has not been set up for success. Specifically, he said the rotation of teachers in his son’s classroom last year “felt like a chaotic game of musical chairs.”

“This system is not supportive for my child, or any child at Stege,” Washington said in a statement Friday. “As a community activist, I want to raise awareness about what is happening at the school not just for my son, but because it is a disservice to all of our children.”

The lawsuit claims that the district’s failure to improve conditions inside classrooms is negatively impacting some of the district’s highest-need students. Poverty rates range from 84% to 97% at Stege Elementary School, Helms Middle School and Kennedy High School — higher than the 58% poverty rate reported districtwide.

Additionally, data from the state Department of Education show that these problems disproportionately affect students of color. In the 2022-23 school year, Stege Elementary enrolled roughly 38% Black students and 34% Hispanic or Latino students. Helms Middle School has an overwhelmingly Hispanic or Latino student body — comprising nearly 83% — with Black students making up about 7%. At Kennedy High School, approximately 73% of students are Hispanic or Latino, while nearly 18% are Black.

If district leaders continue to claim that their hands are tied to properly fix teachers vacancies and dangerous school conditions, Provenza said the nature of the lawsuit — a writ of mandate — requests that a judge intervene and order administrators to expeditiously find and implement solutions.

And time is of the essence, as there’s less than a month before students start returning to school in August.

“There’s a lot of distrust in these accountability tools, especially after WCCUSD’s systemic failure to address these concerns,” Provenza said. “When people don’t find any answers, they get discouraged that these (Williams) complaints even work. But this process hasn’t been working as it’s intended to because districts aren’t following through.”