Burbank Schools’ Racial Practices Being Investigated : Education: Federal officials looking into reports of discrimination in hiring and bilingual programs, which district denies.

Federal officials are investigating employment practices and bilingual programs in Burbank public schools to determine if parents of minority children and potential job applicants were victims of racial discrimination.

The Burbank Human Relations Council said Thursday that the federal action stemmed from two complaints it filed last summer with the department’s Office of Civil Rights.

At least one elected district official said she was unaware of the U. S. Department of Education investigation, but was confident that the findings would exonerate the district.

“This is a form of harassment to the district and the school board,” said board member Elena Hubbell. “We bend over backwards to make sure we’re in compliance. I don’t believe for one minute we have been negligent.”

In June, the council alleged that the Burbank Unified School District made a sudden, midyear change to a bilingual program without notifying Latino parents of children at William McKinley Elementary School. Two months later, the council claimed district officials discriminated against minority applicants seeking administrative and teaching jobs.

Because bilingual programs are federally funded, the Department of Education has the authority to deny financing if it finds the district violated a civil rights law barring racial discrimination.

“At the conclusion of our review (of bilingual programs), we will write a letter of our finding,” said department spokesman Rodger Murphey. “It can result in one of three things: no violation, a violation that is corrected, or, under a worst-case scenario, an ‘out of compliance’ that would begin the process to stop federal funding.”

The Burbank Human Rights Council filed its first complaint against the district on behalf of Latino parents who believed they had been left out of the district’s decision-making process.

Before February, 1994, language arts lessons at McKinley were taught in bilingual classrooms that included Spanish-speaking students with limited English skills.

The district then moved those students, but not other students of limited proficiency in English, into separate classrooms where teaching was predominantly in Spanish, according to the council.

In addition, the council claimed that the district moved the same group of Spanish-speaking students with limited English skills into separate math classes taught predominantly in Spanish.

District officials said those classroom changes, involving all the school’s first-, second- and third-grade students, remain in effect. Officials said that while they continue to support bilingual education overall, in this instance, students are better served by instruction predominantly in their native tongue.

Federal investigators have requested information about the district’s policies on bilingual education, among other things, Murphey said, but have not determined when to make on-site visits to Burbank schools.

Supt. David Aponik said the district has fully cooperated with the federal request. Aponik said he was told by a federal official that Burbank was randomly selected as one of 17 school districts in the state for review of bilingual programs.

A second complaint filed by the Burbank Human Relations Council in August pointed out that out of 49 management officials in the district in 1993, only one was a minority.

The U. S. Department of Education responded in a Sept. 16 letter by stating that there was enough evidence to investigate the district’s recruitment efforts, but no reason to look into its hiring, promotion or retention practices.

Aponik said the district in October sent federal investigators’ reports related to its policies on equal opportunity employment, and has not heard back. “It doesn’t mean they’ve found us guilty of anything. It’s just one area they want to look into,” he said.

The investigation into the district’s employment practices is ongoing, Murphey said.

Federal investigators, he said, routinely look into such complaints of racial discrimination. “If a school district is in receipt of federal funds, we have to do the investigations. We don’t get to pick and choose what investigations we do,” he said.

The review of the district’s bilingual programs, on the other hand, was prompted by other factors and was not simply a random decision, Murphey said. He declined to say what those factors were.