PORTLAND, Ore. -- A Portland School Board member is accusing the Portland Public School District of racial discrimination.
Paul Anthony said the district isn’t giving kids at every school equal opportunities. He’s trying to do something about it.
“In May, I filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education,” said Anthony.
In his complaint he wrote, "Superintendent Smith permits her staff to discriminate on the basis of race, color and national origin in access to educational course offerings and programs.”
Anthony said he got a list of courses available at all Portland schools and what he found was rampant inequality.
“If you look for instance at Beaumont Middle School, Beaumont offered 31 electives this last year,” began Anthony. “King this last year, on their neighborhood side, offered only three elective offerings. It's grossly inequitable.”
In addition, Anthony said there are five comprehensive high schools in Portland: Lincoln, Wilson, Cleveland, Grant and Franklin. He said Lincoln’s enrollment is about 6.5 percent larger than the other schools but it offers 43 percent more courses.
“The students at Lincoln certainly deserve those opportunities but the students at our other schools deserve no less,” he said.
Anthony said if students don't get equal opportunities, they will struggle when they move on. On the other hand, students who had more opportunities have the advantage when applying to college or going into a profession.
"They will enter high school having already tuned out and turned off and given up," Anthony said.
Anthony said bigger schools have more kids, which means funding and thus more elective options. He said generally those bigger schools were built in wealthier, predominantly white areas while smaller schools were built in more impoverished areas. He said smaller schools house fewer students, often have more minorities and fewer elective opportunities.
“These students didn't choose where they were going to live. They didn't choose where they were going to go to school and even if they did, they don't deserve any less than their counterparts at other schools across the district,” said Anthony.
A spokesperson with Portland Public Schools said they haven't received a copy of the complaint yet, but the superintendent has made access to equitable programming a priority.
Fellow Portland School Board member Steve Buel said he supports what Anthony is trying to do.
“What Paul has said is absolutely correct. There is disparity,” said Buel who believes the disparities are based more on poverty.
“We're not being equitable. It's something I thought for years and years. Hopefully we'll change the entire way we budget and we're going to set up our schools where there's equity in programming,” Buel said.
Nkenge Harmon Johnson, the CEO and President of Urban League of Portland said she could not speak to Anthony’s complaint. But she’s familiar with what she says is a statewide issue.
“Too often what happens in our state is our kids don't get the opportunities for the best teachers, the best classes, the best facilities and those kids are often African American, they're Native American and they're Hispanic,” said Harmon Johnson.
Anthony said he hopes to hear back from the Department of Education within the next couple of months as to whether or not they'll move forward with his complaint.