A new investigative report has confirmed that Isabella “Izzy” Tichenor’s school shrugged off her mother’s complaints about bullying months leading up to the fifth grader’s suicide.
The report commissioned by the school district found that the staff at Foxboro Elementary School in Farmington, Utah, did not do enough to protect Tichenor after students and a teacher told her that she smelled and needed to wash her hair and bathe. Izzy sprayed herself with air freshener as a result.
Tichenor’s mother, Brittany Tichenor-Cox, said she believed her daughter was bullied because of race and disability. However, it took months for staff to create an official record, and it was only created after the girl attempted suicide, the report says.
The 10-year-old died in November while her mother was still waiting on the results of her autism evaluation. Tichenor-Cox complained to the school’s administration as early as September 2021.
Investigators said there was no “direct evidence” that the girl had been bullied based on her race or disability, but they have not ruled it out.
“When a student told Izzy she needed to wash her hair, this comment could have been borne out of racial animus, could have been an innocuous observation, or could have been a cloaked insult about poverty,” the report says.
Izzy’s suicide death came weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice found widespread racial bullying and harassment in the mostly white school district that had gone unchecked for years. The DOJ released the report in October and had been investigating the district since 2019.
The report on Izzy’s death found that Foxboro Elementary staff did not know the district’s official definition of bullying. Therefore, the school fostered an atmosphere “in which bullying … could go underreported, uninvestigated, and unaddressed.”
The independent investigators interviewed more than 40 school employees and students. Tichenor-Cox did not agree to an interview, CNN reports.
Tichenor-Cox told school officials that a student threatened her children and told them he had a gun. After checking surveillance and the student’s backpack, the school could not confirm the allegations.
A week later, the mother reportedly complained that the same student called Izzy’s sister the N-word and touched her. The school again said it could not confirm that the incident happened, but it was “more likely than not.” School staff suspended the student and banned him from eating breakfast in the school cafeteria. The student and Tichenor-Cox’s daughters signed an agreement to stay away from each other.
Tichenor-Cox complained to a teacher that another student in Izzy’s class told her she smelled and that she needed to wash her hair, the report says. She also said Izzy sprayed herself with Febreze before school after a teacher told the class they “smelled,” the report said.
A special education teacher admitted to investigators that she told Izzy she smelled and asked her if she had taken a shower.
“Issues relating to race, disability and poverty sometimes intersect, and when they do, they can further complicate already challenging situations,” the report said. “It can be very difficult to extricate one from the others.”
The report also describes an incident where a staff member “used offensive gestures to describe Izzy following her death” and “refused to acknowledge that it was offensive and refused to sign (a letter) of discipline that administration placed in her file,” The Standard-Examiner reports.
Tyler Ayres, Tichenor-Cox’s attorney told reporters that he is doing his own investigation.
“Even though my baby is gone, I’m going to make sure that I stand for Izzy,” Tichenor said in a press conference in November.
The report also found that the school told the district to look into racial bullying at the school at some point. Officials did not specifically mention Tichenor-Cox’s children.
The DOJ investigation of the Davis School District found hundreds of documented uses of the N-word, other racial epithets and derogatory racial comments.
“Peers taunted Black students by making monkey noises at them, touching and pulling their hair without permission, repeatedly referencing slavery and lynching, and telling Black students ‘go pick cotton’ and ‘you are my slave,'” the DOJ investigation found.
The new report directs the school to create clear protocols for record-keeping and reporting bullying. Davis should train its staff on how to identify and address bullying, provide diversity and equity sessions, and “trauma-informed, poverty training,” the report says.
The school district said it was reviewing the report’s recommendations and will issue an apology to Izzy’s family.
“We are taking it seriously. We vow to continue our ongoing and extensive efforts to foster a welcoming environment for all students in the Davis School District,” the statement said.
