RALEIGH -- The U.S. Department of Education plans to investigate allegations of racism filed by the NAACP against the Wake County school system.
In a Nov. 5 notification letter, Alice B. Wender, director of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, says that it will open an investigation into the complaint. The NAACP has alleged that the school board has engaged in racial discrimination through the move to community schools, student reassignments made this year and in the way minority students are suspended.
Federal officials receive thousands of complaints each year but investigate few of them. If the school system is declared in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Wake could lose more than $80 million a year in federal funding.
“We look forward to working with the Department, which grants millions of dollars of Black, White and Hispanic taxpayers' money to Wake County each year, to insure our money is not spent in a discriminatory manner,” said the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, in a written statement.
School board chairman Ron Margiotta said today that board attorney Ann Majestic was not too worried about the investigation. He said that the full board hasn’t discussed the latest news yet.
“The charges they made, from our viewpoint, seemed to be invalid and without merit,” Margiotta said.
The complaint was filed in September by the NAACP to both the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice. It was uncertain whether the Department of Justice would also investigate the complaint..
