Equity & Diversity

District Failed to Protect Nonbinary Student From Harassment, Federal Investigation Finds

By Eesha Pendharkar — August 04, 2023 5 min read
Illustration of person sitting with knees to chest and hands pointing at them and one have reaching out and open to offer help.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

A Wisconsin district has voluntarily settled a federal investigation into how it responded to the harassment of a nonbinary student. But for the student in question, it’s a bit of a hollow victory—they’d already left the district.

An investigation conducted by the office for civil rights within the U.S. Department of Education into the Rhinelander School District’s treatment of a nonbinary high schooler in the 2021-22 school year found several incidents of sex-based discrimination that the district knew about and failed to take action against. OCR released the results of the investigation on July 6.

The district required the student to only take in-person classes with “teachers who are allies,” after the student reported several incidents of misgendering, discrimination, and sex-based harassment, according to the investigation. That meant the student could only take three classes in person, and do their other schoolwork through independent study.

The district “burdened the student for their own harassment,” according to Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon, who heads the OCR.

In many instances nationwide, bullying and harassment of LGBTQ+ children by students in schools spill over into communities, leading to a severe decline in students’ mental health and well-being.

This leads the families of these students to have no choice but to relocate and move away from these school districts, according to Michael Garrett, communications manager for the Rainbow Youth Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.

Over the last eight months, the Rainbow Youth Project has received three to five calls every day from families of LGBTQ+ students, asking for relocation assistance, because of the bullying and harassment their children are facing bullying in schools.

“When you have parents who are supportive, and their child is texting them and calling them from school crying because of everything that’s going on, it makes life very difficult,” Garrett said.

“So even if you end up filing an OCR complaint, the damage is done before those complaints are even filed.”

Student’s mom was worried about their well-being

In the Rhinelander case, the student’s mom told USA Today that she had been worried for her child’s well-being and mental health after years of being called derogatory terms at school. The family felt “ostracized and pushed out by our community,” she said.

The family declined requests for an interview with Education Week.

The family briefly moved out of state after filing the OCR complaint in 2021, but returned to a different town in Wisconsin, not returning to Rhinelander schools. After almost two years, OCR’s conclusion that her child had been regularly harassed at school without redress made her feel vindicated, the mom told USA Today.

Lhamon says it is not common for a school to exclude a student entirely when they are experiencing harassment.

“As a mom, and as a chief civil rights enforcer in the nation’s schools, I am sick that the student experienced, for the length of time that the student did, ongoing harassment without redress,” she told EdWeek.

The district said that it was committed to “providing a benefit to all students instead of fighting over the merit of the allegations in the complaint,” according to an emailed statement to EdWeek from Superintendent Eric Burke.

“We continuously provide training to our students and staff, so agreeing to provide more training was a commitment we have already embraced,” Burke said in the statement.

The agreement includes a meeting with the former student and parent to determine whether compensatory instruction, such as grade adjustments or tutoring, is needed for the in-person time they had to miss, even though they’re no longer part of the district.

The district did not respond to questions about the meeting and its outcome.

The district will also conduct staff and student training on sex-based harassment, and develop a reporting system for all incidents of sex-based discrimination or harassment, according to the agreement.

OCR: Trans and nonbinary students face discrimination

This case is part of a more significant problem of protection from sex-based discrimination for trans and nonbinary students at school, Lhamon said.

“We see a variety of ways that discrimination can manifest for students in school who are nonbinary or transgender,” she said.

Some trans and nonbinary students have had their rights restricted through several district policies and state laws that limit their bathroom use and athletic participation. Some district policies and state laws also bar teachers from using affirming pronouns for these students.

The Rhinelander district has policies banning sex-based harassment, but failed to enforce those to protect the nonbinary student, and therefore violated the student’s Title IX rights, the OCR investigation found.

Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination within a school or any other educational program that receives federal funding.

“I think it’s important to be clear that existing federal civil rights law, including Title IX, and the regulations, protect nonbinary students from harassment and discrimination,” Lhamon said.

“And this is an example of robust protection available under the law.”

Frequent harassment and misgendering at school

Before the nonbinary student returned to in-person school in the 2021-22 school year, the associate principal had emailed all teachers notifying them of the new name and pronouns that would affirm the student’s identity, according to an OCR letter to the district.

Within the first two days of returning to school, the student faced several incidents of other students name-calling, mocking, and misgendering them, according to the investigation. At least one teacher also repeatedly misgendered the student in her classroom, and in email correspondences with the student and parent. That teacher eventually requested that the nonbinary student be removed from her class, because she “could not keep [the student] safe from peer harassment by the other students in the class,” according to the OCR investigation.

Two other teachers also knew about students in their classes who were harassing the nonbinary student, but did not take disciplinary action, the investigation found.

The only time the district took action was after the nonbinary student reported being “bumped” in the hallway by a male student and called a derogatory term, according to the investigation.

The two students were invited to a restorative meeting, but the district documented the misconduct as “peer mistreatment” as opposed to sex-based harassment, Lhamon said.

The district’s Title IX coordinator also told OCR that she was not aware of any incidents of discrimination except the student’s misconduct in the hallway.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Mathematics Webinar
Pave the Path to Excellence in Math
Empower your students' math journey with Sue O'Connell, author of “Math in Practice” and “Navigating Numeracy.”
Content provided by hand2mind
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Recruitment & Retention Webinar
Combatting Teacher Shortages: Strategies for Classroom Balance and Learning Success
Learn from leaders in education as they share insights and strategies to support teachers and students.
Content provided by DreamBox Learning
Classroom Technology K-12 Essentials Forum Reading Instruction and AI: New Strategies for the Big Education Challenges of Our Time
Join the conversation as experts in the field explore these instructional pain points and offer game-changing guidance for K-12 leaders and educators.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Equity & Diversity Opinion American Education Hurt Black Students. We Deserve Reparations
The value of the educational harm inflicted on my generation of Black students exceeds $2 trillion, writes Bettina L. Love.
5 min read
Illustration of a young black woman with missing pieces. Some of the slices are sliding back into place, making the figure whole again.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week + Madina Asileva/iStock
Equity & Diversity Schools Struggle to Properly Count Native Students. Some States Want Them to Try Harder
Michigan recently became the latest state to require the collection of data on Native K-12 students' tribal affiliations.
7 min read
Indigenous Navajo high school students in the hallway of a high school.
E+
Equity & Diversity School District's Anti-CRT Resolution Prompts Lawsuit From Teachers and Students
Teachers, parents, and students in a California district claim the resolution restricts their rights.
5 min read
Members of The Temecula Valley Educators Association, students and parents cheer in support of Temecula Valley Unified School District Superintendent Jodi McClay during a meeting at Temecula Valley High School on June 13, 2023.
Members of the Temecula Valley Educators Association, students, and parents cheer in support of Temecula Valley Unified School District Superintendent Jodi McClay during a meeting at Temecula Valley High School on June 13, 2023. The school board voted to fire McClay that day. TVEA and students are suing the district over its anti-critical race theory resolution.
Anjali Sharif-Paul/The Sun/SCNG via TNS
Equity & Diversity Opinion ‘Hate Is Taught’: The Lesson for Schools From the Racist Jacksonville Killings
A slew of anti-Black education policies have helped make Florida a sanctuary state for hate and violence, writes Tyrone C. Howard.
Tyrone C. Howard
4 min read
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a prayer vigil the day after three Black people were shot to death Aug. 26 in Jacksonville, Fla.
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a prayer vigil the day after three Black people were shot to death Aug. 26 in Jacksonville, Fla.
John Raoux/AP