Credit: Susan Frey/EdSource Today

Fremont High School in Los Angeles.

A California guess has denied a asking for land intervention at six California high schools where students said they had been assigned to multiple contentless classes, were told to go home, or sit idly in classrooms or perform menial administrative tasks.

In denying a motion for a preliminary injunction, Alameda County Superior Court Judge George Hernandez Jr. delivered a setback for the plaintiffs in the ongoing Cruz five. California lawsuit. The suit accuses the state of failing to accost the factors that reduce learning time in some high-poverty schools, despite knowing of their existence and negative impact on students.

The adjust was filed in May 2022 on behalf of Jessy Cruz, a student at Fremont High School in Los Angeles, and other students, by public interest law house Public Counsel, the American Civil Liberties Union and the firm Carlton Fields Jorden Burt.

In Oct, Hernandez ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and issued a preliminary injunction that ordered the California Department of Educational activity to intervene at Thomas Jefferson High Schoolhouse in Due south Los Angeles, where scheduling bug and inadequate grade offerings resulted in some students spending eight weeks in classes during which they received no educational activity.

In February, lawyers filed a follow-up motion for a preliminary injunction to remedy conditions at Jefferson and an additional five loftier schools: Castlemont and Fremont high schools in the Oakland Unified district; Dorsey and Fremont loftier schools in the Los Angeles Unified district; and Compton High School in the Compton Unified district.

"If, at this stage, plaintiffs cannot supply reliable bear witness … (the court) cannot determine, fifty-fifty preliminarily, whether plaintiffs have some possibility of prevailing on their claims," wrote Alameda Canton Superior Court Judge George Hernandez Jr.

In his April 17 ruling, Hernandez said the plaintiffs had not given enough specific testify to prove that the corporeality of learning time at the vi loftier schools was substantially less than the "prevailing statewide standard" of instructional fourth dimension at similar California high schools.

He added that he was not suggesting that the claims of lost learning fourth dimension had no merit.

"The courtroom does not mean to suggest that the policies, procedures and professional norms described in the to a higher place-cited declarations, submitted on behalf of the plaintiffs, practise non in fact be. Nor does the court imply that these standards should be ignored."

But he wrote, "If, at this phase, plaintiffs cannot supply reliable evidence regarding the bodily practices of nearly California high schools with regard to the use of contentless classes and the timely implementation of appropriate main schedules, the court lacks a fair standard confronting which to measure the performance of plaintiff'south own loftier schools and cannot determine, even preliminarily, whether plaintiffs have some possibility of prevailing on their claims."

California Department of Education said information technology could not annotate on the ruling considering the affair is still in litigation.

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