After Watchdog Complaint, Wisconsin School District Drops DEI Hiring Quota from Strategic Plan

Washington, D.C. – Following a federal civil rights complaint filed by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), Wisconsin’s West Allis-West Milwaukee School District has quietly removed diversity hiring quotas from its 2025-2030 Strategic Plan.

In January, PPT filed complaints with the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services after a whistleblower alerted the organization to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) provisions in the school district’s strategic plan that appeared to violate federal civil rights laws. Among other concerns, the plan’s “Talent Acquisition and Employee Management” section on the final page included a “Diversity” bullet point with a numerical hiring target goal to increase “diversity in the workforce across key demographic categories from 10% in August 2025 to 25% in August 2030.”

PPT alleged the district’s plan violated Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act, arguing, “[B]y creating a goal of an increase of ‘diverse’ teachers, the implied, and logical, goal is to reduce the number of teachers that are not ‘diverse.’ This is discriminatory. Furthermore, assigning a numerical value to the goal for race-based hiring, as the District has done … represents an even more direct and egregious affront.”

At some point after the complaint was filed, the district uploaded a revised version of its strategic plan. While the document is nearly identical to the original, it removes the bullet point establishing numerical diversity hiring quotas.

However, the rest of the plan continues to emphasize DEI in both its hiring practices and student policies. As before, it states that for the 2027-2028 school year, the district plans to “deepen our impact by focusing on increasing staff diversity and school climate” and “prioritize hiring and retaining a diverse workforce that better reflects our student population.” Elsewhere, the plan pledges to “recruit, retain, and develop a workforce that is culturally competent, inclusive, and committed to equity.”

PPT has also filed complaints against school districts in Ohio and Vermont, and universities in Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah over similar allegations.

“After PPT exposed West Allis-West Milwaukee School District’s diversity hiring quota and filed a federal civil rights complaint, the district was forced to quietly scrub it from its strategic plan,” said PPT Communications Director Alexa Moutevelis. “This is welcome news.”

“But while the school district attempts to memory hole its most blatantly unlawful policy, it continues to push DEI, which is inherently discriminatory. Teaching that immutable characteristics should play a role in educational and hiring decisions is a terrible lesson for our school children and an abuse of taxpayer money. We urge federal officials to investigate the rest of the strategic plan for Civil Rights Act violations.”

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