A Utah school district recently resolved a case with the Department of Justice, acknowledging racial discrimination and harassment.
The settlement comes years after evidence indicated that Black students were not adequately safeguarded by school officials when facing race-based targeting from their white peers.
The Davis School District, which reached the settlement with the Justice Department, comprises around 82 percent white students, with a Black population of 1.1 percent. Throughout the case, it became evident that students of African descent were subjected to repeated victimization by their white peers, with little support or protection from teachers, principals, or other staff members on their respective campuses.
“Some of the findings in the letter include pervasive use of the N-word and other racial epithets, Black students being called apes or being told their skin was dirty or looked like feces,” Heidi Alder, the district’s legal consultant, said, according to FOX 13 Now.
She added, “The DOJ also determined that the district had not trained administrators and teachers properly on how to identify and respond to incidents of harassment.”
The ruling has sparked the interest of many, including Republican state Rep. Kera Birkeland.
“This is something that’s really important to me. My son has been called a monkey. He’s consistently hearing the N-word. It’s all over his school in front of teachers, administrators,” the politician and mother of six said during of the Utah Legislature’s Administrative Rules Review and General Oversight Committee hearing.
“Nothing happens. Jokes are constantly made. I’ve seen a text saying ‘We need some money We decided to sell you.’ These are deplorable comments and something has to change.”
One young girl, Isabella “Izzy” Tichenor, died by suicide in November 2021 after she reportedly told her teachers at the Foxboro Elementary School that she was being bullied by white students that her mother says lasted for at least 10 weeks straight. Despite her mother’s belief that the bullying was racially motivated and linked to an undiagnosed developmental disability, investigators concluded that the comments about her hair being dirty were not racially motivated but possibly related to her family’s economic status.
“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 states, further iterating that there was no “direct evidence” between the bullying and her race or disability.
Izzy’s death occurred shortly after the U.S. Department of Justice revealed its conclusions from an investigation into the district it started in 2019, which showed extensive unchecked racial bullying and harassment in the predominantly white school district. This report is at the source of the 2023 settlement.
Birkeland believes one way to address the finding is by stationing an ombudsman outside of Utah’s public education system as a resource to students, parents and family members on cases such as this.
The district submits it is actively addressing racial harassment and discrimination within its community and on campuses. Concrete steps taken include establishing an office to handle reports of harassment and discrimination, formulating procedures for reporting and addressing complaints, disseminating notices to parents, students, and staff regarding anti-harassment and non-discrimination, as well as providing training, professional development, and other measures.
“We want to make sure that first and foremost that we’re educating them, and then to the children who experience harassment, any type of harassment, not just racial, we want to make sure we support them,” said Assistant Superintendent Fidel Montero.
While the district never acknowledged that Izzy’s bullying was racially motivated, they did admit that she was bullied and not adequately protected by school adults. In September 2023, the district and the Tichenor family reached a settlement in a lawsuit alleging the violation of the 10-year-old’s civil rights at the school, with the family receiving $2 million.
Around the same time, three sets of parents — Nicole Seiger, Alonzo Liddell, Lisa Liddell, and Kimberly Olsen — settled with the same district. They claimed and were able to show enough evidence that their children were victims of racist taunts in 2021 and collectively received a settlement of $200,000.
