The ACLU of Idaho released a report on Monday alleging school districts in Canyon County systematically discriminate against Latino students. The report says dress code policies disproportionately target Latino students and jeopardize their civil rights.
The report found schools did not provide clear guidelines to parents and students on what could be worn by students, which allows staff to broadly enforce bans against what they deemed to be “gang-related” items.
ACLU legal fellow Erica Rodarte, who authored the report, said this results in over-disciplining of Latino students.
“Latino students have experienced a lot of racism and a lot of discrimination in Idaho,” she said.
Rodarte started this research in September 2022.
She hosted listening sessions at the beginning of the year for Latino students and their parents to share their experience navigating the school system. She also conducted formal interviews with community members and used data provided by the schools.
“We started to see a pattern and a trend come up, especially in Canyon County of families telling us about experiences that they've had where their children have been either treated differently or unfairly or just right-out been discriminated against,” she said.
The report found that in Nampa and Caldwell District schools Latino students were suspended at twice the rate of their white peers, according to data from 2013 to 2021, excluding the 2019-2020 school year, which did not have available records.
It also found districts informally relied on police recommendations to determine what could signal “gang” affiliation. The report says some schools prohibited students with no gang connection from wearing clothing and accessories commonly associated with Latino cultural and religious heritage.
“Although the dress codes do not mention Latine students as their target, in practice, the districts are enforcing the dress codes in a way that targets mostly Latine students,” Rodarte wrote in the report.
Latine is a gender-neutral term used to describe someone whose identity is tied to Latin-American culture.
Some schools ask students to not wear certain colors like red or blue because they can be perceived as a form of membership to violent coastal street gangs. Rodarte said a lot of students wear red or blue, but only Hispanic and Latino students are being disciplined.
The Caldwell School District dress code says, “The wearing, using, carrying, or displaying any other gang clothing or attire, or style, jewelry, emblem, badge, symbol, sign, codes, tattoos, or other things or items which evidence membership or affiliation in any gang is prohibited on any school premises or at any school sponsored activity at any time.”
Many of the banned items are tied to cholo style, a Chicano subculture which originated in Los Angeles in the 60s, which some Latinos strongly identify with. In some schools, banned items include Catholic rosaries and Mexican flag bandannas.
“You know, you take away the rosary, the gang is still going to exist,” said Brenda Hernandez, a recent graduate of Caldwell High.
She garnered national attention in January for staging a rally at her school to protest its dress code. She said administrators told her to take off a hoodie with the words ‘Brown Pride’ written on it because it could be seen as being “gang related.” Hernandez disagreed, saying it was an expression of her culture.
“I want to be able to wear something that, you know, shows that I have pride for my culture,” she said, “that I'm proud of my roots, my ancestors, you know, being proud of [being] Mexican-American, of being Chicana.”
Rodarte said labeling something as being gang-related means students start getting excluded as early as middle school..
“It's a word [gang] that has a lot of weight; it has criminal legal significance,” she added, writing in the report that such labels can make Latino students feel unwelcome and push them out of school.
Lieutenant Jason Cantrell of the Nampa Police Department confirmed school resource officers communicate with schools and share information gathered by the police.
“This information comes from training as well as [the] experience of talking to gang members out on the street,” he said, adding he personally interviewed gang members who described to him which items denote gang affiliation.
About a third of students in Canyon County are Latino, against 5% of staff statewide. In Nampa and Caldwell school districts, while Latinos student make-up between 40 to 44% of the population, they are disciplined at twice the rate of their non-Latino peers, the report found. These findings parallel trends seenacross the US. Multiple studies have shown that Latino students are disciplined at higher rates than their White peers.
Studies have shown that punitive school policies that remove students from classrooms negatively impact their future academic prospects.
“Every student, regardless of whether they are or not, in a gang, deserves access to free public education,” Rodarte said, “I would urge and encourage school districts to find ways to support rather than exclude those students.”
According to the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs, 13% of the state population identifies as Hispanic; in Canyon County, that number is closer to 25%. Latino students in Idaho make up 18% of school enrollment, and that number is growing.
In an email, a representative from Caldwell School district wrote the district would continue to partner with the police department and encouraged students and staff to reach out to the board of trustees with concerns over dress codes.
The Caldwell Police Department and Nampa School District did not provide comments at the time of publication.
