U.S. Department of Education Office Resolves MSCS Sexual Harassment Compliance Review

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on Friday concluded a compliance investigation into the Memphis Shelby County School District with a settlement agreement to address the district’s handling of sexual abuse cases, including those involving student and staff misconduct.

MSCS documents show that between 2017 and 2020, teachers or substitutes sexually abused students in seven incidents across all school levels in the district: elementary, middle and high school.

District documents show that during the same period, there were 53 additional reported incidents of staff-to-student sexual harassment (excluding sexual assault), and a total of 88 incidents of student-to-student sexual harassment.

These documents and testimony demonstrate that the District has clearly violated Title IX. Furthermore, these documents raise serious concerns about the effectiveness of the District’s response to comply with Title IX, OCR said.

One example given by the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR involved 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.

Based on the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR data, the district’s documents suggest that MSCS failed to respond promptly or fairly to complaints of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, from students. Additionally, OCR found that the district 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.

The Resolution Agreement between MSCS and the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR requires the district to take the following steps to resolve this investigation:

• 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.

Following this investigation, MSCS has issued the following statement:

Memphis-Shelby County Schools is committed to ensuring the safety, dignity, and equal educational opportunity for all students. The district recognizes the importance of Title IX compliance. The administration is addressing issues identified by the Office of Civil Rights during the 2017-2020 academic year evaluation, while actively working together to take corrective action on prior reports.

Memphis Shelby County Schools