Good afternoon,

I am writing to give you all an update regarding the District’s implementation of its school desegregation case. First and foremost, I want to thank you all for your hard work each day. Your hard work is critical in helping our District reach Unitary Status. In fact, your hard work is reflected in the fact that the District will be moving for partial unitary status this week on the faculty and staff Green factors. Please visit Motion for Partial Unitary Status as to Faculty & Staff for more information, but please note that the timeline on that website contains outdated information and has not been updated to reflect our upcoming filing.

To reach Unitary Status, our District works closely with the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to implement the Consent Order. But, the District team also works with the DOJ to resolve concerns that are brought to the DOJ’s attention. The process of hearing and responding to these concerns is critical to the District’s good faith commitment to desegregation. I take it very seriously, and I want all of you to be able to share your concerns in a way that best suits you, within the confines of the law.

As a reminder, when making reports about the Consent Order – or any other issue – you must always remain mindful of your obligations under the Family Education Records and Privacy Act (“FERPA”). All HCS faculty and staff were required to complete training at the start of the year on FERPA, and I have attached those slides to this email as a refresher. I know we all take student privacy rights extremely seriously because no student deserves to have their protected information shared with any person who does not have a right to it. In order to protect students, I want to let you all know that the District will take action against anyone who violates our students’ FERPA and privacy rights.

For our desegregation case, there are several legal ways to report those concerns. I have included those options below – with notes about how to comply with FERPA for each:

I understand there has been some confusion about to whom you should be sending comments and feedback regarding the Consent Order. I know it can be especially confusing when the purpose or authority of an individual who requests the information is unclear, and this is made worse when individuals claim to be working for the United States despite not being authorized to do so. To help clarify this issue, I asked our legal team to work with the DOJ. Today, as a result of that work, I received the following email from the DOJ:

I want to thank Ms. Gardner and the DOJ team for sharing this and explaining that “it has not authorized any third parties or members of the public to act on its behalf in this case.” This means that there is only one way to send information to the DOJ team, and it does not involve anyone in the community. As described in the email above, the DOJ provided me with a flyer that helps explain how best to reach them, and I have attached it to this email. That flyer, and my email to you, will also be posted on the District’s webpage so that our community will understand how best to reach the DOJ.

I want to leave you with this. In my time as Superintendent, my team has been made aware of concerns, both substantiated and unsubstantiated, on a nearly daily basis. We investigate any such claims that make their way to us. As you know, we often cannot share the results of those investigations because it would involve the disclosure of FERPA protected student information. That said, I can confirm that my team has investigated and addressed all claims of potential harm to students that we have seen made in the community recently. Any allegation to the contrary is simply false.

I will be retiring on June 1, 2023, but, until then, I will continue working for this District as I have over the last 5 years. That means we will continue to focus on protecting students, supporting faculty and staff, and leaving this District better than we found it.

Very respectfully,

Christie Finley
HCS Superintendent