The U.S. Department of Education is charging Memphis-Shelby County Schools with failure to adequately respond to allegations of sexual assault of students. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)
Memphis-Shelby County Schools violated federal civil rights law by not adequately responding to complaints of sexual harassment and assault of students over a three-year period, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced on Friday.
The office said that the state’s largest school district has agreed to a number of corrective steps to resolve the office’s compliance review, which began in March 2020.
According to the agency, district documents reflect reports that teachers or substitute teachers sexually assaulted students in seven incidents across three school years at all school levels in the district: elementary, middle, and high school. District documents reflect 53 more cases of reported staff-to-student sexual harassment, not including sexual assault, as well as a total of 88 cases of student-to-student sexual harassment during the same time period, the OCR said.
The violations occurred over three years starting in 2017-18, according to the OCR’s letter to Superintendent Marie Feagins, who took the helm of the district earlier this year.
Those records and witness interviews “reflect clear district violations” of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, and raise “serious concerns” about the district’s response, which is subject to the same law, the OCR said.
“Students in the Memphis-Shelby County School District deserve the safety and freedom from discrimination that Congress promised them in Title IX, and the District now commits to fulfill its Title IX obligations to these students,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon said in a statement. “The Office for Civil Rights will monitor the school district in the coming years to be sure it complies with Title IX.”
A statement issued later Friday by the MSCS media relations department said the district is “committed to ensuring the safety, dignity, and equal educational opportunities for all students” and recognizes the importance of Title IX compliance. The administration is addressing issues identified by OCR while “actively collaborating to establish corrective actions regarding past reports,” it said.
The school board, meanwhile, is in transition and without a chairperson as four new members were sworn in on Thursday.
“Any time a person is violated, the school board is very concerned,” Stephanie Love, who was reelected to the board this month, said Friday. “I want to talk to the superintendent and our general counsel to see what we can do to right the ship.”
The Office of Civil Rights, which according to its letter to the district began its investigation in March 2020, determined that the district violated Title IX by:
Not having a designated Title IX coordinator for substantial portions of the office’s compliance review period.
Not coordinating its response to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, through its Title IX coordinator as required during the time that a coordinator was designated.
Not involving the Title IX coordinator in the majority of sexual harassment files reviewed for the investigation, including not involving a Title IX coordinator in any of the incidents involving staff.
Not maintaining a nondiscrimination statement and harassment policies that comply with Title IX.
Not fulfilling the Title IX obligation to maintain records sufficient for the district or for the Office of Civil Rights to make compliance determinations, including inconsistent reporting to the office for its Civil Rights Data Collection and for the compliance review itself.
The OCR’s 20-page letter to the district says files generally showed that staff members overseeing employee relations approached the cases primarily as personnel matters, focusing on whether the accused employee violated a school board ethics rule or engaged in conduct that implicated state laws regarding education, rather than on whether there was a potential Title IX violation.
The OCR spotlighted one case in particular involving an elementary school teacher who was ultimately convicted of soliciting sexual exploitation of a minor and who was reported to have encouraged boys and girls to touch each other inappropriately during class, in addition to other alleged misconduct.
The agency said the record does not reflect any involvement of the Title IX coordinator in investigating the teacher’s conduct, any support provided by the district to affected students to ensure their equal access to education, or any notice to the parties regarding any district determination under Title IX.
The resolution agreement requires the school district to take a number of steps, including: to adopt and publish a compliant notice of nondiscrimination; revise its policies; review all sexual assault cases from the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years to make sure each were resolved or, if not, take steps to do so; conduct district staff training; survey parents and students on how sexual harassment in schools is handled; and “designate, train, and publicize the contact information” for its Title IX coordinator.
The district has taken some steps already. In the budget for the 2024-25 school year, the district general counsel’s list of priorities start with two bullet points.
One is to “establish a strong team” to handle Title IX issues and revise policies and workflows as appropriate.
The second: to implement training in student and employee civil rights “to ensure compliance with duties to respond to, investigate, and decide complaints” concerning federal laws.
Eric Gorski is Chalkbeat’s managing editor for local news. You can reach him at egorski@chalkbeat.org.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
(Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.)