The Eugene 4J School District announced Wednesday that it’s joined a federal lawsuit that aims to block new federal guidance over diversity efforts at educational institutions.
4J said it’s the first public K-12 district to sign onto the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland by a coalition that includes the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Sociological Association.
The new directives, outlined in a Feb. 14 "Dear Colleague" letter from the U.S. Department of Education, threaten to cut off federal funding for schools that have policies the Trump administration says discriminate against white and Asian students.
4J board chair Jenny Jonak told KLCC that the threat to cut funding could hamper efforts to teach about all aspects of American history, such as slavery, discriminatory housing practices, Jim Crow laws, and the Japanese internment camps.
“It’s really important for our students to be able to have curriculum that is culturally responsive and instruction that is accurate and helps develop their critical thinking skills as well as their knowledge of what’s happened in history," she said. "And the current letter makes it extremely difficult to tell whether that and other practices are going to be targeted by this administration or not."
The 4J board voted unanimously on Tuesday to join the lawsuit. Jonak said the district is being represented in the case on a pro bono basis by a nonprofit legal organization called Democracy Forward.
