William S. Richardson School of Law is Thin on Civil Rights
My Request for Info from the Law School re: Civil Rights Courses
18 Aug 2022 - Please provide me with the course names and descriptions of all classes that teach civil rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act, The Rehabilitation Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Please specify which of these classes are required to attain a Juris Doctor of Law at Richardson School of Law at Manoa, and which of these classes are electives.
W.S. Richardson Law School Responds
09 Sep 2022 - We only cover the ADA and Rehabilitation Act in small amounts in the following courses. None of these courses are required.
- LAW 521 Law Aging and Medicine
- LAW 532 Health Law Bioethics
- LAW 507 Employment Discrimination
(Course descriptions and Links are below.)
Law, Aging, and Medicine
Law School Description
This course provides an introduction to the myriad legal issues which confront the elderly in our society, such as age discrimination, elder abuse, estate planning, entitlement to government benefits, guardianship, alternatives to guardianship and health care decisions, including end-of-life decisions.
Health Law: Bioethics
Law School Description
Introduction to health care jurisprudence and the study of bioethics, a term used generally to describe ethical issues in the life sciences as applied in professional fields, including medicine, nursing, philosophy, theology and law.
Employment Discrimination
UH Mānoa Catalog Description
A study of the law of employment discrimination.
https://www.law.hawaii.edu/class/employment-discrimination-semester-88743
What Type of Training *DO* HIDOE CRCB Employees Receive?
Waiting for DOE Civil Rights Compliance Branch to Respond
On August 18, 2022, I sent the following request to the Civil Rights Compliance Branch.
REQUEST TO ACCESS A GOVERNMENT RECORD
I request copies of any and all publications, training materials, procedures or memos that teach, train, and/or guide DOE Civil Rights Compliance Branch employees how to abide by the ADA and Rehabilitation Act federal laws with regard to workplace accommodations, claims of employee discrimination and employee retaliation. For each record, please specify the archived location of the record within DOE (e.g. URL).
REQUEST TO ACCESS A GOVERNMENT RECORD
I request copies of any and all publications, training materials, procedures or memos that teach, train, and/or guide DOE Civil Rights Compliance Branch employees how to abide by the ADA and Rehabilitation Act federal laws with regard to workplace accommodations, claims of employee discrimination and employee retaliation. For each record, please specify the archived location of the record within DOE (e.g. URL).
How Does the Hawaii DOE CRCB Handle Conflict?
Answer: They don't.
The Hawaii Department of Education does not train its employees how to handle conflict in a professional manner. Click here to read about my efforts to obtain DOE training materials regarding conflict management. They don't exist!
When an employee asks for an ADA workplace accommodation, or a student asks for an IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) accommodation, and a principal does not want to provide this accommodation, that is the very essence of civil rights related conflict. For four years, the DOE CRCO against discriminated against me by denying a cost-free, very reasonable disability accommodation (RDA). I needed a key to the school parking gate so that I, a handicapped teacher, could access the campus to work in my classroom after 4:30 pm and on weekends. It was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act to deny this accommodation, but no matter. The CRCB/O violates the ADA all the time! The retaliation I endured for filing a complaint was outrageous. The only way to make it stop was to quit working for the DOE, which I did in 2012.
Then, for the next 10 years, the CRCB (previously known as the CRCO - Civil Rights Compliance Office), did the same thing to a friend of mine. Even though my 3-year grievance had established that a key to the parking gate is a reasonable accommodation for a teacher with a mobility impairment (me), they denied this other teacher the same RDA. As of this writing (16 Sep 2022) we are awaiting the court's decision on her court case.
In all those years, once we filed a RDA, no one from the CRCO/B ever spoke to us. One of the first steps in professional conflict management, is to have an open, mediated discussion with all the parties involved. The CRCB/O is not doing this. They do what all DOE administrators do, from the Complex Area Superintendent all the way up the chain to the State Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent. They speak only to the school principals. If and when a principal lies or obfuscates the truth, they always accept the principal's version of circumstances and never investigate properly what's really going on. The CRCB tells the employees, whose civil rights they are supposed to protect, to work it out with the principal. How is that possible when the CRCB/O doesn't bother to train the principals under what circumstances a RDAlegally can be denied. I'm beginning to realize that the DOE doesn't even train the CRCB/O compliance Specialists, for why else would they not respond to my request for copies of their training materials.
Click here to read my 31-Aug-2022 letter to the State of Hawaii Board of Education concerning the lack of professional conflict management throughout the DOE -- another letter that most probably will receive no response, as usual.