Tennessee school district failed to properly report sexual abuse for years, OCR says

MEMPHIS, Tennessee. – The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has found that Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) violated Title IX by failing to report and adequately respond to numerous incidents of sexual abuse and sexual harassment involving teachers, substitutes, and students.

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According to the study, teachers or substitutes sexually abused students in seven incidents over three school years at all school levels in the district: elementary, middle, and high school. In addition, there were 53 cases of reported staff-on-student sexual harassment, excluding sexual assault, and a total of 88 cases of student-on-student sexual harassment during the same period.

OCR cited as an example the case of an elementary school teacher who was ultimately convicted of soliciting the sexual exploitation of a minor and who allegedly encouraged boys and girls to inappropriately touch each other during class, among other alleged misconduct. The report says the Title IX coordinator for MSCS did not investigate the teacher’s conduct, nor did the district provide any support to the affected students to ensure their equal access to education. OCR also found that no notice was given to the parties regarding any determination under Title IX by the district.

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MSCS was found to have approached Employee Relations matters between staff and students primarily as human resources matters, focusing on whether the accused employee had violated a school board ethics policy or acted in a manner inconsistent with state education laws, rather than on whether there was a potential violation of Title IX or the impact of an incident on the student.

OCR found that MSCS violated Title IX by:

• Failure to designate a Title IX Coordinator for a significant portion of OCR’s compliance review period.
• Failure to coordinate the response to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, through the Title IX Coordinator as required during the period when a Title IX Coordinator was designated.
• The Title IX coordinator was not involved in most of the sexual harassment cases reviewed for this investigation, nor was a Title IX coordinator involved in incidents involving employees.
• Failure to comply with a non-discrimination statement and failure to adhere to an anti-harassment policy that complies with Title IX.
• Failure to comply with the Title IX requirement to maintain sufficient records for the District or for OCR to make compliance decisions, including inconsistent reporting to OCR for the collection of civil rights data and for this compliance review.

OCR outlines steps MSCS must take to improve response to sexual abuse

According to OCR, MSCS must take the following steps to complete the investigation:

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• Prepare and publish a compliant non-discrimination notice.
• Designate, train, and publicly disclose a Title IX coordinator(s).
• Review all policies describing the district’s response to sexual harassment to ensure that the policies meet the requirements of Title IX and are consistent with each other.
• Review all student and staff complaints of sexual abuse during the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years to ensure that each complaint has been resolved in accordance with Title IX. If not, provide appropriate remedies.
• Provide training on the Title IX process and revised grievance procedures for district employees.
• Develop or revise the procedure for documenting and tracking complaints of sexual abuse, including the steps taken as part of the district’s investigation of such complaints.
• Conduct a survey of students and parents to determine if the district needs to take additional steps to address sexual harassment in schools. Obtain approval from the OCR for any subsequent steps.
• Develop a plan to ensure that complete and accurate data are submitted to the CRDC in the future, and ensure that all employees responsible for reporting data to the CRDC are instructed on how to report data to the CRDC in accordance with the plan.

On Friday, MSCS released a statement saying it is “committed to ensuring the safety, dignity, and equal educational opportunity for all students” and recognizes the importance of Title IX compliance. The administration is addressing issues identified by OCR while “actively working together to take corrective action on past reports,” Chalkbeat reports.

The letter to the Memphis-Shelby County School District is available here and the resolution agreement is available here.