Minneapolis Public Schools is defending its agreement with the teachers’ union to lay off White instructors ahead of less-senior minority faculty, saying the terms are needed to fix “past discrimination.”
The district issued a Tuesday statement after coming under criticism for language in its latest collective-bargaining agreement that requires schools to make a racial exception to the first-in, last-out seniority system on staffing cuts spurred by enrollment declines.
“To remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) mutually agreed to contract language that aims to support the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups as compared to the labor market and to the community served by the school district,” the district said in an email.
The clause in the district’s latest collective-bargaining agreement with the Minneapolis Teachers Federation doesn’t kick in until the spring semester, but some legal experts are already arguing that race-based layoffs are blatantly unconstitutional.
“The school district and the union should be on notice that what they’ve done is illegal and is going to be struck down,” said James Dickey, senior trial attorney at the Upper Midwest Law Center in Minneapolis. “And frankly, it’s such an easy thing for them to fix, although I’m not sure if there’s any political will to do that.”
