Some parents, teachers and staff are seething at John Ritter Elementary School in Watts over a situation not seen since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1954 landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision integrating the country’s public schools.

But here it is, 2009, and some people see the shadow of Jim Crow looming over Watts and they’re mad about it. Why? Because Ritter — a public school — began a summer session for its students Monday in which all the subject matter is taught in Spanish. No child who does not speak Spanish (read: no Black child) is in it.

This separate thing at Ritter is far from being equal because the Los Angeles Unified School District has canceled summer school this year for all of its elementary and middle school children, so no child speaking any language is receiving summer school instruction, except at Ritter.

You see, Ritter is one of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s 10 Partnership for Los Angeles Schools that he runs with private funds he’s obtained from somewhere. Ritter is in Villaraigosa’s “school district.” The LAUSD has no real control over the mayor’s schools and, in fact, did not even know that Ritter was providing a summer school of any kind — let alone a segregated kind — until I told them and provided the documents to prove it.

Charlene Green, principal of Ritter, wrote a June 23 letter to the school’s parents (in Spanish and English) announcing the July 6 start of a Spanish language arts summer program at the school that would take place from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. each weekday for four weeks.

In her letter, Green advises that enrollment in the program would be on a first-come, first-served basis, and she stressed, in underlined, boldface type that: “This summer program will strictly focus on Spanish language arts. There will be NO (the capitalization is Green’s) English language development or English language arts component during this session. All subject matter will be taught in Spanish.”

Ritter teachers told me they were aghast by this and spoke against it in a meeting when they were informed of it. “Are you serious?” they asked. “It’s ridiculous!” they declared upon realizing the Villaraigosa School District was, indeed, serious. I was told that one of the teachers was really angry and raged: “My kids are low-performing too and they need all the help they can get! Why is it that only Spanish-speaking kids can get extra help?”