PORTLAND, Ore. – Portland Public Schools board member Paul Anthony thinks the district is racist towards minority students, so he filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education.

The complaint comes amid extensive efforts to eradicate alleged systemic white supremacy in the district through staff training and school restructuring. Despite more than $500,000 the district paid to the controversial Pacific Educational Group for white privilege training for educators, Anthony alleges the district discriminates against “students of color” by limiting educational options tied to “long-term academic achievement,” The Oregonian reports.

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“Superintendent (Carole) Smith permits her staff to discriminate on the basis of race, color and national origin in access to educational course offerings and programs,” Anthony alleged. “PPS data proves that students of color cannot access courses tied to long term academic achievement. For example, they disproportionately are not offered access to foreign language, academic supports, and electives that white students access.”

The access is tied to an achievement gap between white and minority students the district has failed to close despite PEG’s specialized teacher training. The district paid PEG consultants $526,901 in the 2010-11 fiscal year to explain to educators that only way to reach minority students is by acknowledging their own “white privilege” and repenting.

PEG consultants promoted the notion that “rugged individualism” and “adherence to rigid time schedules” as well as the belief that “hard work is the key to success” belong to dominant white culture, and encourages educators to embrace minority values of “color group collectivism,” “interdependence,” shared property and life decision based on “what will be best for the family or group,” EAGnews reported in 2012.

The training prompted one high school principal to declare peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as racist incarnations of the white supremacist culture.

“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” principal Verenice Gutierrez said, according to the Portland Tribune. “Another way would be to say: ‘American eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat tortilla. Or pita.”

Yet despite the shift to a more racially sensitive school culture, Anthony claims district data illustrates that officials are as racist as ever. He prepared spreadsheets pointing out the problem with minority students who do not have access to higher level class because of their poor academic performance, and presented his findings to Smith, but alleges his concerns were swept aside, The Oregonian reports.

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Anthony contends Smith told him “I know all about that” and he assumes that means she’s ignoring the issue. The news site points out that Smith has made educational equality her “signature issue during her long tenure, which is set to end after the 2016-17 school year.”

She’s worked to redraw the district’s school boundaries, and worked to revert to traditional middle schools from her predecessor’s K-8 school structure that allegedly blocked minority students from some electives.

District spokeswoman Courtney Westling told The Oregonian the district had not received notice of Anthony’s federal complaint, and reiterated that “Smith has made access to equitable programing a priority.”

“It was the driving purpose for district-wide boundary review, the return to middle schools and enhanced budgets to bolster programing in smaller K-8 schools,” she wrote to the news site.

Tania Lopez, attorney for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, confirmed that the office received Anthony’s complaint and said officials are evaluating it for jurisdiction.