legal defense fund believes they have a case even if the principal says she was trying to do the right thing. the concerns about one s child being the lonely only are sincerely felt concerns. um, but be that as it may, the law is what it is and does not permit children to be assigned to classrooms based on race. reporter: in a statement to cnn, brisco s attorney said she was extremely concerned about the recent allegations of wrongdoing. given that this is an active investigation, however, ms. brisco is limited in what information she can share right now but is looking forward to telling her side of the story at the appropriate time and place. in her response, she is saying she wanted to build community. do you think that this was done in good faith on her part? um, i don t know because, for me, full stop, it s illegal. so i can t really get past if it was in good faith because it really doesn t matter at that
they believe brisco acted in good faith if their child s race was allegedly used as a factor in the class placement, they say they re in full support. i grew up where i was the only black child in the honors classes in my high school for four years. and when i say that i still have, you know, trauma based on it, i still have trauma based on it. it was very isolating. principal brisco. she is, you know, is a black woman. she went to a black college. she raised two black sons. there is no one on earth who can say that she does not care about black children. even the complainant, herself, has said that, you know, that her that brisco supposedly admitted to doing it to build community and so that no one black child is isolated in a classroom. reporter: but the posies say the principal violated the civil rights act of 1964 in using race to designate classes for black students. posy also alleges an after-school program she ran at the school was threatened to be cut in retaliation for h
can be comforting. reporter: clinical psychologist kyra banks says there is psychological research suppor supporting the idea of critical mass in the classroom for minority groups, especially at a school like mary lin, where black students make up an estimated 10% of the 599 students. now, to frame those classes as the black classes that i think is problematic in the sense of how you frame it and how you articulate the intention and why it s happening. but i think that the the desire to make sure that kids don t feel tokenized, that they can go to school and just focus on being in school and being a kid. i would never, ever want my child to be the one black child in a classroom. i wouldn t wish that upon my kid. reporter: shortly after the posies came forward, these mothers were part of a group of concerned black parents at the school who wrote a letter in support of brisco. they asked us to conceal their identities because of ongoing threatening phone calls to the school i
above um water fountains in rooms but it s the same thing. reporter: atlanta public schools investigated the posy s claim saying in a written statement that atlanta public schools does not condone the assigning of students to classrooms based on race. as such, the district conducted a review concerning allegations of this conduct at mary lynn elementary school. at the conclusion of the review, appropriate actions were taken to address the issue and the matter was closed. a spokesman for aps would not disclose the specifics of the actions it took against the school. telling cnn, they do not share details of personnel decisions. brisco, who is black, remains the school s principal. and i asked her why was she doing it? and she said because she was building community and that s what she was doing. and i kept telling her that she was wrong. reporter: not everybody agrees with posy. some race-relations experts believe that grouping students by race actually could create a healthie