The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday announced an investigation into Evanston/Skokie School District 65 over alleged discrimination in the district’s racial equity policies, programs and curriculum.
The inquiry, which is looking into alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, stems from a complaint filed by Stacy Deemar, a drama teacher who had also previously filed a lawsuit against the district in 2021.
According to a press release from the Department of Education, the Trump administration is taking aim at district practices and offerings like affinity groups, racial bias training for staff — specifically “privilege walks” — and K-5 lesson plans, including teaching students to “understand that our country has a racist history and is grounded in white privilege.”
“The policies and practices to which the District allegedly subjects students and teachers shocks the conscience,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in the press release.
“Amid a dismal academic achievement record, the District appears to focus on unlawfully segregating students by race, instructing students to step forward and others to step back on the basis of race, and associating ‘whiteness’ with the devil. If true, how is this conceivable in America today?”
Trainor went on to threaten the district’s federal funding, and the press release concludes by saying that “Institutions’ violation of Title VI can result in loss of federal funds.” This fiscal year, about $10.5 million of District 65’s budget comes from federal grants, which primarily go toward early childhood education, programs for low-income students and special education services. That accounts for 9% of the total budget.
The RoundTable asked the Department of Education what its investigation will look like, if representatives will be in Evanston to question teachers and staff and what would result in a loss of funding. The department did not immediately respond.
In a statement to the RoundTable on Thursday night, district spokesperson Hannah Dillow said Deemar filed the complaint on April 24, and District 65 received official notice on Thursday.
“The District will continue to fulfill the intent and promise of equal protection and nondiscrimination embodied in the Constitution and our nation’s civil rights laws,” Dillow wrote. “The complaint misrepresents our District’s lawful and important professional learning and student-focused initiatives that are designed to advance the work of ensuring that ALL students have access and opportunity to a robust, high quality education.”
Thursday’s press release noted that Deemar initially filed a complaint with the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights in 2019, and the first Trump administration in early 2021 sided with the teacher before the Biden administration took over and withdrew the charges.
Then, in her 2021 federal lawsuit, Deemar accused the school board, then-Superintendent Devon Horton, Deputy Superintendent LaTarsha Green and Assistant Superintendent Stacy Beardsley, of “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive racial harassment through mandatory race-based training, race-conscious student curriculum, segregated staff meetings and affinity groups, privilege walks, and frequent and repeated affirmation by Defendants about the District’s commitment to making racial distinctions among students and staff.”
At the time, the lawsuit prompted widespread condemnation from Evanston leaders and a large protest in July 2021 in James Park. In its immediate response, the district released a statement calling the complaint “baseless and inflammatory” and “part of a concerted national effort by the Georgia-based Southeastern Legal Foundation to target racial equity-based initiatives in K-12 schools.”
After a three-year process, Judge John J. Tharp Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the suit last summer, ruling that Deemar “was not personally subject to racial staff affinity groups, not treated differently from others in terms of her exposure to the school’s race-conscious lesson plans for students and teachers, and otherwise not denied any tangible benefits or targeted for negative treatment on account of her race.”
But now, with Trump back in the White House, Deemar has filed a second complaint with the Education Department, and she’s once again represented by the Southeastern Legal Foundation. In a statement, Kimberly Hermann, the foundation’s executive director, described District 65 practices as “unconscionable racial discrimination.”
“Dr. Deemar has waited patiently for the harms inflicted by the Biden Administration to be rectified,” Hermann said.
The foundation did not immediately respond to questions from the RoundTable about what kind of result Deemar is looking for, but her 2021 lawsuit asked the district “to remedy the effects of the unconstitutional, illegal, discriminatory conduct described herein.”
Dillow told the RoundTable that “the District will fully comply with the OCR [Office of Civil Rights] investigation to help ensure a just and expeditious resolution.”
Trump administration opens discrimination investigation into District 65 is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.