One of seven Mansfield Integrated Learning Center seniors who was not able to graduate over the weekend has brought a lawsuit against Mansfield City Schools for $5 million.
Student Stanley Darell Brown's mother, Jumille Franklin, filed a lawsuit against the district and Superintendent Brian Garverick on Friday, alleging Brown was wrongfully withheld from graduating and was discriminated against based on his race, according to a complaint filed with the U.S. Northern District Court of Ohio.
The court denied emergency relief to allow Brown to participate in the graduation ceremony.
Four days before graduation, Brown said the district refused to accept credits for nine courses he completed at MILC this year, one of which he took as a part of a summer school program. Since early February, the district has been investigating the summer school program after allegations surfaced of academic fraud, grade scrubbing, failing to keep attendance records and student-teacher conflicts of interest.
Seven district employees remain on paid administrative leave related to the investigation.
Of the 12-person MILC senior class, Brown was one of seven who did not graduate Saturday. Another was a basketball player who was found ineligible to play in February because of a missing grade at MILC, a move that ultimately resulted in the basketball team being stripped of its one-day-old Ohio Cardinal Conference title.
A star football player taking courses at MILC also did not graduate.
District spokesman Larry Gibbs said non-graduating seniors either did not have the 20.5 credits required to graduate or did not pass all of their Ohio Graduation Tests. Their ineligibility was "not connected to the investigation," he said.
