The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (DOE-OCR) is investigating an Atlanta elementary school amid allegations the principal assigned black students to certain classes.
In a letter obtained by CNN, the DOE said it will investigate allegations of racial discrimination and whether Atlanta Public Schools subjected students at Mary Lin Elementary “to different treatment based on race,” and whether the district retaliated against the complaint.
According to the letter obtained by CNN, the investigation began on Nov. 14, more than a year after Kila Posey filed a civil rights complaint with the office saying her child’s school placed Black students in separate classrooms from other students.
Posey, who has two children that attend the Atlanta area elementary school, said during the 2020-2021 school year, Mary Lin’s Principal Sharyn Briscoe, a Black woman, designated two second-grade classes specifically for Black students, without consulting parents,. Meanwhile, white students were placed among all six second-grade classes.
The mother said she found out about the issue when she requested her child be placed in a specific teacher’s class and Briscoe told her that was not a “black class” and would not have anyone that looks like her in the class.
According to Georgia Department of Education data, Mary Lin Elementary is a predominately white school in a middle-class neighborhood, where just 60 of 599 students are Black. The school’s second-grade class had 98 students, 12 of whom are Black.
Posey’s complaint says the assistant principal admitted in an August 2020 phone conversation that she was aware of Briscoe separating classes b
ased on race, noting “class lists are always tough” and wished the school had more Black children. The Black mother filed a second complaint in August 2022 after she was fired from her position as an after-school care provider for the district, claiming it was “retaliation for raising the issue of segregation.”Earlier this year, two members of the Atlanta NAACP visited the school to determine whether Posey’s claims had merit. Marilyn Barnett Waters, the state education chair for the organization, told the network she believed the school staged some of the classes for their arrival.
“I saw African American students, in two of the classes I saw. It almost seemed like they were foreign to that class,” Waters told CNN by phone Wednesday while recalling. “The Black students weren’t engaged with any of the other kids in the class.”
Several Black parents whose children attend Mary Lin Elementary have come to Briscoe’s defense.
“All anyone has to do is pick up a yearbook from last year and previous years to see that any claim of grouping Black students together is obviously ridiculous,” a group of Black families from the Atlanta Elementary told CNN in a statement. “We have a small number of Black students, but it’s a very loving and inclusive community of families of all races and backgrounds, led by our well-respected principal.”