There are major changes ahead for the San Diego Unified School District. It’s changing how it handles sexual harassment complaints by students. The move comes after a federal investigation into more than 200 complaints over a span of three years. NBC 7’s Kelvin Henry explains.
The San Diego Unified School District failed to properly respond to sexual harassment complaints brought by its students, the U.S. Department of Education said Friday, resulting in an agreement reached between the department and the school district to revamp its response to harassment claims in the future.
Education officials examined 253 reports and complaints made by students over a three-year span and found "that the district more often than not did not fulfill its Title IX regulatory requirement to equitably respond to allegations of sexual harassment of its students."
The complaints — which involved reports of misconduct by both district employees and students — covered the school years from 2017-18 through 2019-20, when U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten served as SDUSD superintendent.
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The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights concluded the school district failed to fulfill its obligations to provide an equitable response to allegations of sex discrimination regarding sexual harassment and sexual assault, failed to coordinate its response through its designated Title IX coordinator, and failed to adopt prompt and equitable grievance procedures for complaints.
In its resolution with the Department of Education, SDUSD has agreed to a number of steps aimed at improving its response to sex harassment complaints, including reviewing prior complaints in order to see if further action is needed to resolve the incidents, providing annual age-appropriate training to students in grades 3-12 about how to recognize and report sexual harassment, and annually training district employees on their obligations to respond to sexual harassments reports.
"Through today's resolution, San Diego Unified commits to overhaul its response to allegations of sexual harassment to ensure all its students learn safely and without sex or disability discrimination," said Catherine E. Lhamon, the Department of Education's assistant secretary for civil rights. "OCR looks forward to working with the district to redress serial perpetration, protect students with disabilities from being preyed upon, and ensure that district students can expect to focus on learning without unlawful sexual harassment."
