Discrimination should have no place in America’s schools.

A provision in a teachers’ contract in Minneapolis tries to flaunt what should be a bedrock principle, hard-won over decades of the U.S. falling short of that ideal.

The provision, as reported by the Associated Press, exempts “teachers who are members of populations underrepresented among licensed teachers in the district” from seniority-based layoffs.

While the seniority-based layoff concept is troubling itself and, as we have editorialized in the past, districts should explore ways of incorporating objective measurements of success in teaching into its criteria for avoiding faculty cuts, considering whether a teacher is a racial or ethnic minority makes the process far worse.

It fosters resentment. It neglects the importance of merit in such decisions. It contradicts the lessons that our schools should be teaching — that the ideal we strive for is that hard work and merit are how one should forge their career and life and that, again, discrimination based on race or ethnicity is wrong and un-American.

That our country spent much of our history falling short of these ideals — and still today falls short too often — does not justify this provision. Rather this provision, again, is an example of Minneapolis falling short.

Leaders of the Minneapolis teachers’ union told the Associated Press that layoffs are not on the table right now. That’s not only good news in and of itself, but is good news because it affords the union and the district’s leadership an opportunity to correct this offensive mistake.