Fairview-Clifton German Language School is aware of widely shared discipline data showing Black students are nine times more likely to get referrals than are White students.
The school plans changes to address the issue for the 2026-27 school year, according to draft presentation slides shared with The Enquirer by Principal Savannah Rabal.
During a June 26 virtual meeting with parents, community members and Cincinnati Public Schools Superintendent Shauna Murphy, Rabal said she wants to take ownership for what parents describe as a lack of transparency around discipline.
Parent complaints gained momentum in May after newly shared 2025-26 data showed 88% of discipline referrals involved Black students, who make up 55% of total enrollment. Fairview’s Local School Decision Making Committee chair, Sonya Swift, said in a letter to the school shared with The Enquirer that the data was delayed before being presented at the committee’s May meeting.
Unlike previous reports, Fairview parent Lauren Campbell-Kong wrote in a letter shared with The Enquirer, the data did not include Individualized Education Program or 504 breakdowns, limiting parents’ ability to determine whether proper accommodations were being provided to students being disciplined.
Parents say Fairview quietly dissolved Alternative Learning Center
Swift and Campbell-Kong also raised concerns about the school’s quiet removal of its Alternative Learning Center, one element of the districtwide approach to discipline called Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports.
The center is required by the district’s Student Code of Conduct as a first intervention before suspensions or expulsions.
“The removal of this intervention resource, in a school where 88% of discipline referrals involve Black students, raises serious concerns regarding disparate racial impact under Title VI and warrants district review,” Swift wrote in a letter to Fairview dated May 26.
Title VI is a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in institutions that receive federal funds, like public schools.
Eliminating the center allowed Fairview to move more paraprofessionals into classrooms to help teachers, Rabal said at Friday’s meeting.
Campbell-Kong, a member of the school’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports committee, asked Rabal why parents in that committee weren’t told the center was dissolved at the start of the 2025-26 school year.
Rabal wasn’t sure. She said she hasn’t attended that committee’s meetings but intends to do so in the upcoming school year, she said.
“It’s never my desire to keep anything from anybody,” Rabal said.
The principal confirmed that district leadership learned about the removal of the Alternative Learning Center last month, the same time the PBIS committee was informed.
Reinstituting the center was one of many promises Rabal made to parents of the high-performing CPS magnet school serving students in preschool through sixth grade.
Fairview principal lays out action steps to confront racial bias
Fairview aims to reduce discipline referrals for Black, non-Hispanic students by at least 15, Rabal said in her June 26 presentation. She and fellow Fairview staff will do so with monthly data reviews for school leaders and case reviews in PBIS meetings to address repeat-referral students.
Parents also cited a lack of cultural competency as a key concern, with several saying their children had been called racial slurs during their time at Fairview.
Rabal promised to host a book study alongside the Local School Decision Making Committee using a “text focused on equity, culturally responsive discipline,” her slides read. She added that she plans to meet regularly with Kendra Uhl, an Urban PBIS Specialist through the Ohio Department of Education, to monitor the execution of equitable discipline practices.
The lack of racial diversity among Fairview’s teaching staff – an issue seen across schools districtwide – was another common theme in the parents’ letters of concern.
Fairview staff are 24% people of color, Rabal shared But most – 15 of the 20 staffers – hold nonteaching positions such as aides, custodians or food services.
“We know it’s so important to get teachers of color in front of our kids,” Rabal said, adding that Fairview is committed to recruiting more broadly, diversifying the school’s interview team and pairing new staff with mentors so diverse hires are retained.
Parents said fractured communication between school leaders and parents, particularly involving the Alternative Learning Center and discipline data, tainted much of the 2025-26 school year.
“I have lost complete and utter trust in this school,” Campbell-Kong said at the meeting. “The pattern of behavior here alludes to the mismanagement of information.”
Rabal hopes to repair communication between Fairview staff and groups like the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports committee and the Local School Decision Making Committee.
In monthly meetings, she said, they’ll assess referral counts overall and among Black students and look at whether the Alternative Learning Center is being used to its full potential.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Fairview principal responds to alleged racial bias in discipline
Reporting by Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
