‘I had to shut down’: Student who endured persistent racism at Woodstock school wins settlement against district, supervisory union

He was called the N-word. His head was compared to a chimpanzee’s skull. A banana was waved at him with comments about him looking like he needed it. His arm was drawn on with a dark marker with remarks about how it could not be seen on his skin. Comments and memes about fried chicken and his ancestors picking cotton, and references to slavery, persisted for months.

These are some of the instances of racial harassment described in a complaint filed with the Vermont Human Rights Commission in August 2022. The victim was then a 13-year old Black student, who faced repeated racist harassment from his peers at Woodstock Union Middle and High School.

After a months-long investigation, the commission in a unanimous vote early last year, found there were reasonable grounds to believe the school and supervisory union had discriminated against the student based on race, color and national origin by failing to adequately intervene on the student’s behalf.

The Woodstock school and the Mountain Views (formerly called Windsor Central) Supervisory Union — a consolidated seven-town district in central Vermont — denied any wrongdoing but agreed to a $175,000 settlement. It’s the largest individual settlement for a school-based discrimination claim in the commission’s history, officials said.

Big Hartman, executive director and general counsel of the Human Rights Commission, called the settlement “a significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to ensure every student can learn and thrive in a safe and inclusive environment.”

“Unfortunately,” Hartman continued, “this case presents a set of facts that is all too common in Vermont with a student of color, who is one of very few in their school or their class — if any — who endures a series of incidents that the school fails to properly and effectively stop.”

Despite a state policy in place to address hazing, harassment and bullying in Vermont, Hartman said the commission often finds that schools don’t understand their duty to address such incidents.

The school district and supervisory union, for their part, denied any wrongdoing, according to the settlement agreement. Superintendent Sherry Sousa said in an email last month that she disagreed with the commission’s findings and that she “decided to settle the dispute to avoid the time and expense of litigation.”

“Although we settled the complaint, I stand behind my staff and administrators who worked tirelessly to meet this student’s needs, and who responded immediately and appropriately to any complaints of harassment reported to the school by the student or their parents,” she wrote. 

 Sousa did not respond to follow-up questions. 

‘White misconceptions’

As a white woman advocating for her Black son, Jaya Holliman said she has seen how living in Vermont is hard for people of color. “I know that the blowback is always on the people that are trying to change the system or that have been harmed so profoundly by the system,” she said.

That is why she chose Woodstock, the town where she grew up, for her son to return to school in the fall of 2021.

Born in Rwanda and adopted as a baby, her son had been homeschooled after the pandemic disrupted his education.

They were living in a small town in Rutland County that allows school choice. “​​We chose to leave specifically because of school opportunities and because of what we anticipated to be a lack of racial fluency and literacy in the district where we live,” Holliman said.

The Woodstock school is overwhelmingly white — last year it had one American Indian or Alaska Native, two Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders, two Asian, five Black, 11 Hispanic and more than 400 white students enrolled, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Even so, a conversation with Sousa left Holliman impressed by the school’s equity and diversity efforts, and she decided it would be a good place for her son to attend middle school. VTDigger is not naming the student because he is a minor who has been the victim of harassment.

Problems surfaced on his second day in 7th grade when school officials told Holliman that another student had called her son the N-word on the bus. After investigating, Principal Garon Smail concluded the comment, if made at all, hadn’t been directed at Holliman’s son.

According to the Human Rights Commission’s investigation, Holliman’s son knew nothing about the incident until he was pulled aside at lunch and told about it by a teacher checking up on him. The experience left him ​​“shocked and confused,” he said in an interview with the investigator. 

Holliman told school officials she was concerned that informing him about something he hadn’t heard firsthand had caused unnecessary harm. She also informed Smail that he should not use the entire word, even in reference. Smail said he wasn’t aware of that, according to the investigative report.

In an email to Holliman, Sousa wrote that she appreciated Holliman’s willingness to engage, “exposing for us our white misconceptions and asking us the hard questions that will allow us to become antiracist educators and leaders,” according to the commission’s investigation.

That first investigation involved multiple educators meeting, a review of the district’s harassment policy with the staff and Smail discussing with Holliman’s son the harm the student experienced, according to the report.

But the relationship between Holliman and school officials would grow increasingly strained as her son became the victim of repeated acts of racism in months that followed. 

‘Failure to respond’

In the complaint she ultimately filed with the human rights commission, Holliman claimed the school and the district discriminated against her son and “failed to adequately prevent, investigate, and respond to instances of harassment and bullying.”

In her complaint, Holliman described six incidents of racism her son faced while in school that year. Racial harassment and bullying pertaining to her son’s race, skin color and national origin continued between December 2021 and March 2022, she wrote, some of which was witnessed by school staff and administration.

“Starting around December, students made comments to [Holliman’s son] about his race almost every day,” the report states. “Students talked about how his clothing was made of cotton. They said he must be good at basketball because he is Black. They said he liked fried chicken because of his genes. They related his foot speed to runaway slaves. Many of the comments happened in the hallway or during lunch.” 

After sending a student to lunch detention for a week, Smail sent letters notifying parents about the harassment and his investigation that December. The same student made a gun gesture at Holliman’s son and was sent out of class for 15-20 minutes, the report notes. But the student‘s behavior toward him did not change, Holliman’s son reported. Instead the student repeatedly started to say the first syllable of the N-word to him, according to the report. 

On March 21 and March 22, 2022, Holliman wrote to Sousa and Smail reporting that her son “was being harassed with ‘jokes’ about his race nearly daily in the hall” and asked for a safety plan to be put in place, according to the report. 

“I was so overwhelmed with all the comments and … constant, day-to-day harassment that I didn’t know how to feel,” her son would later tell the commission’s investigator. “I had to shut down.”

On March 30, Holliman wrote to say her son would not return to school without a safety plan. On April 4, according to the investigation, the district emailed Holliman a finalized copy of that plan, which stated that her son “will not be in classes, advisory, lunch, or clubs with students found to have engaged in harassment.” 

“The three students who had made race-based comments or sent race-based memes to [Holliman’s son] participated in a restorative circle,” according to the investigation. 

But Holliman’s son told the commission investigator that a week after the plan had been implemented it was no longer enforced and the offending students were no longer being kept separate from him at lunch.

On May 3, in a science class that was discussing human evolution and race and racism, a student equated Holliman’s son’s head to a chimpanzee’s skull, according to the complaint Holliman filed. After school officials told Holliman about the incident, she wrote in a May 6 email to Smail and Sousa that her son would not be able to be “safe in the classroom under these circumstances” and “until the harassment has been adequately addressed by the school” her son would have to remain in “an alternative location.” She suggested the library as a temporary measure and asked that he be provided assignments there for the remainder of the unit on evolution.

In his May 10 emailed response, Smail stated he and a teacher had already addressed the “ignorant and offensive comment.” While he wished things were different, he wrote, “I know that it is likely that students will make more statements of this nature during the unit.” He would be reaching out to a consultant “to discuss ways to approach these challenges safely and respectfully,” he added.

Seven days later, Holliman once again wrote to Smail and Sousa seeking a better solution than having her son continue to sit out the unit in the library, with no instruction. “Is there an HHB [a hazing, harassment and bullying investigation]? What is the plan for his return to the classroom? When is the unit complete?” she wrote in the May 17 email. 

Those questions were never answered, Holliman said.

In her May 17 email, Holliman wrote that her son “needs respite time as he has been having physical and mental wellbeing challenges resulting from the ongoing racial harassment.” In the absence of an alternative learning plan, she wrote she would use the next five days to give him a break. She asked for guidance on how to handle the respite absence.

On May 19, Smail wrote back to say he “disagreed” that the current curriculum and science classes “create an unsafe environment” for Holliman’s son, nor was it a reason for students to miss class. However, he acknowledged the break and said teachers would help create “alternative assignments” to support his working from the library.

Holliman said the incident still leaves her stunned. “At the height of very concerning, escalating and ongoing harassment, while he was still sitting alone in the library receiving no educational instruction, not one adult in the building — educator, therapist, staff — no one came to check on him,” she said.

In her view, school officials both failed to support her son and to put a stop to the behavior. “This is the culture that the school, that the district, allowed and supported, that then became this egregious because of their failure to respond.”

In a brief email on Jan. 7, Smail, who is currently director of curriculum at the Windham Southwest Supervisory Union, declined to comment.

“It would not be proper for me to speak independently about a situation and mediation process that included many people and sought to restore relationships,” he wrote.

An unanimous verdict

In January 2024, the Human Rights Commission’s investigator concluded the student did face unwelcome racial harassment, that the severe and pervasive conduct “substantially and adversely” affected his access to education, and that the student and his family had exhausted their administrative remedies.

By failing to follow the process laid out by the state’s Title 16, the district’s own hazing, harassment and bullying policy, and the safety plan implemented in April, the supervisory union and the school district, the investigation concluded, “failed to take prompt and appropriate remedial action reasonably calculated to stop the unwanted conduct [the student] experienced related to race, color, and national origin.”

The report outlines that even as incidents of harassment continued, Smail “failed to investigate each incident” as required by state statute and the district’s policy. Although several such incidents took place in 2022, he only investigated one of them, according to the report. And even when he did look into it, “he did not do so within the required five days,” the investigation noted.

The report also noted that while school officials “took action including warning and educating students” after verifying certain instances of harassment, “statements from Principal Smail and Superintendent Sousa support that the school knew the actions they had taken were ineffective in stopping the harassment.” 

In a 4-0 vote, the commission found there were reasonable grounds to believe the school and the district had “illegally discriminated” against Holliman and her son in violation of Vermont’s Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act.

In addition to the financial settlement, the commission and the supervisory union agreed on a series of training sessions aimed at preventing future incidents of hazing, harassment and bullying within the school system. “And we have already seen from that initial round of training that there are too many staff members who don’t realize what their duties are,” Hartman said.

In her December email Sousa wrote that “While we may not agree with the HRC’s findings, and in large part, reject their findings, we agree that as educational leaders, work remains to be done to combat racism in our schools and community.” The district, she continued, “is committed to continuing our anti-racism work, to do our part in addressing the harm that results from the sometimes insensitive and inappropriate remarks of children.”

It’s not the only time the district has settled a case alleging it failed to stop harassment on school grounds. Last year, it also signed a $100,000 settlement with no admission of wrongdoing in a civil lawsuit filed over claims of another student being harassed for at least four years “based on their perceptions of his sexual orientation and gender conformance,” the Vermont Standard reported in a story posted by Vermont Daily Chronicle. 

Mia Schultz, president of the Rutland Area National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said she sees too many cases of what she calls “racial violence” against children in Vermont schools, which can have a lasting impact on their lives. Hartman said the commission does, too. Both organizations are currently dealing with several cases involving racial harassment in Vermont schools, and they’re not the only ones. 

On Jan. 8, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had reached a settlement with the Elmore-Morristown Unified Union School District, which faced allegations it had failed to address racial harassment among students.

Schultz called Holliman’s complaint an “egregious case” and said it highlights systemic failures in school policies, the lack of training and understanding of administrators and the need for legislative changes to ensure every child can have a positive learning experience in school.

It’s not about one Black kid in a class, it’s about preparing all children for a world in which the global majority is black and brown people, she said. 

“When you move outside of Vermont, you’re going to experience different people of color, different religions, different cultures,” Schultz said. “And if you’re so isolated and don’t learn how to navigate and understand other cultures and people, then you become fearful and it just leads to detriment for even white kids.”

While there are a number of reasons why hazing, harassment and bullying cases are handled badly, Schulz identified bias as the “number one” reason. “Bias within the folks and the people who are administering policies like the hazing, harassment and bullying policy and not really understanding how to protect victims of racial discrimination in the moment because they don’t necessarily relate to those issues.” 

Unfortunately, she said, the onus in the current system remains on the victim to have to prove these failures.

‘They just willingly didn’t step up’

For the Hollimans, the settlement is a bittersweet victory.

The experience at Woodstock Union has changed her son, Holliman said. He is withdrawn, has social anxiety coupled with bad dreams and does not trust adults outside the family. 

“They say your skin thickens but not really with trauma, right? It just makes it so that it’s like an open wound. So he doesn’t have the same stamina for racial incidents that he had in Woodstock,” she said.

In an interview, the now 16-year-old said thought the teachers who saw or heard about what had happened chose not to get involved. He spoke contemplatively about how he thought they failed in their job of protecting him.

“They just willingly didn’t step up to the challenge and didn’t live up to their duties as a teacher. Honestly, I implore them to rethink their career decisions,” he said.

The student has since moved to a private high school where he is finishing 10th grade. He plays football, takes art history and government as electives, participates in leadership extracurriculars like model United Nations, and is interested in studying politics and communications in college — but his trust in community is broken, he said. 

Taking his cue, the family refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He hopes speaking out will lead to change in the district and prevent instances of racism from happening to others in the school.

“I think my biggest takeaway was that the only person you can count on, completely and unequivocally, is yourself,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘I had to shut down’: Student who endured persistent racism at Woodstock school wins settlement against district, supervisory union.