Thanks to grassroots organizing and a lawsuit by a coalition of community groups, the city of Worcester, Massachusetts has agreed to change the way it elects its school committee members. As MassLive reports:

The city of Worcester has agreed to change the way it elects members to the school committee after a lawsuit alleged the current practice dilutes the vote of Latino and Black residents.

Officials have announced that the city will not fight the lawsuit and instead will change to a system that is viewed as more equitable, according to a news release. Currently, school committee members are elected via an “at large” method.

Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty announced the city would change its method Tuesday night after a discussion of the lawsuit by the City Council in an executive session, according to Lawyers for Civil Rights.

The suit was filed earlier this year in U.S. District Court by Worcester Interfaith, the Worcester branch of the NAACP and eight individual voters of color. Though communities of color make up nearly half of Worcester’s population, and even more of the Worcester Public Schools student body, the school committee has been all-white for most of Worcester’s history.

Worcester is the second-largest city in Massachusetts and the second-largest in New England, with communities of color comprising 44% of the population. It is also the largest city in the commonwealth to elect its school committee through an entirely at-large electoral system. The town of Lowell settled a similar lawsuit against at-large elections to its school committee in 2019, agreeing to make an overhaul to address racial justice concerns.

Worcester Interfaith, a Schott Foundation grantee partner, has been a key convenor and participant in the organizing and advocacy that led to this victory. Working to stop unaccountable and unrepresentative school boards has been a pillar of racial justice organizing in education since long before Brown v. Board. As Worcester Interfaith Executive Director Isabel Gonzalez-Webster said at the launch of the lawsuit in February, “We have serious disparities in the Worcester Public Schools impacting our students of color who make up 70% of the schools’ population. These disparities are directly linked to policies that fall under the purview of our all-white School Committee, which is not accountable to communities of color. The current all at-large School Committee structure makes it impossible to have fair representation and policies and infrastructure needed for our students to thrive.”

Schott has supported the education justice movement in Massachusetts for decades, encouraging long-term growth and convening multi-sector coalitions to advance issues like equitable funding, school discipline reform and making boards more responsive and accountable. This victory, along with major wins at the local and statewide level, show that incredible change is possible when communities come together and mobilize.

The lawsuit, filed in partnership between Worcester Interfaith, NAACP Worcester, Lawyers for Civil Rights and Brown Rudnick LLP, will now conclude as a consent decree between them and Worcester is negotiated spelling out the reforms that will be taken. Holding the city to that consent decree will be the next task for advocates.

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