ACLU and RI Legal Services sue Providence Schools

City of Providence, the school district, and the city solicitor Thursday.

The lawsuit alleges that the school district is trying to hide documents relating to last year’s Department of Justice report on the schools.

The report found, among other things, that there was not enough staff to teach English learners, and that hundreds of those students were placed in schools where they couldn’t even learn English.

So far only a summary of the violations have been available. And according to the ACLU, the city has denied requests for the details to be made public.

“If there was nothing important in there then they would have given us the documents,” said lead counsel for the ACLU Ellen Saideman.

The school district agreed to a settlement last August with the DOJ, which said they violated the Equal Education Opportunities Act of 1974, because they didn’t provide the necessary ESL education to hundreds of students.

“The more information we have about the problem, the better we are able to assess whether Providence is making an appropriate response to these problems,” said Saideman.

City Council President Sabina Matos agrees, especially in light of the recent Johns Hopkins report on the Providence school system, which according to the ACLU also indicated issues with ESL programs.

She herself has also been denied access to this document.

“That is crucial information! When you have the Department of Justice coming to us, and telling us that we are not doing our job when we it comes to educating English language learners, that is huge, especially with the population that we have in our school system,” said Matos.

According to the ACLU, the city has cited attorney client privilege as reason for not releasing the document.

Saideman called that absurd, since the United States government is not an attorney for the City of Providence.

A spokesperson for the mayor told ABC 6 the city cannot comment on pending litigation.

The school district has not returned ABC 6’s request for comment.

WLNE-TV / ABC6 2019