Future Title IX investigations won’t be in hands of Charlotte school staff
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Title IX complaints in CMS
From lawsuits at Myers Park High to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools reassigning administrators amid controversy, this is the latest on sexual assault cases and Title IX issues in the district.
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Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will take investigations of sexual misconduct allegations out of the hands of principals, Superintendent Earnest Winston said Friday morning during a news conference.
To do that, Winston will add staff in its central Title IX district office — a step that comes as CMS has faced intense scrutiny for months related to how the district has handled past reports of sexual assault and harassment on its campuses.
In the last three months, three CMS administrators (two principals, one assistant principal) have been suspended after complaints of how they handled Title IX cases prompted internal investigations. Title IX is part of federal education law that prohibits discrimination based on sex and requires schools thoroughly investigate harassment or sexual violence reports from students or staff.
Until Friday, CMS has focused its response to widespread criticisms with assurances that schools are safe, district leaders take the issue seriously, and announcements that annual Title IX training would be enhanced, along with sex education courses and the addition of a student-centered task force on the issue of sexual misconduct.
Problems, as the Observer has previously reported, ranged from allowing a football player accused of sexual assault at school to play while wearing an ankle bracelet to a Title IX investigation that concluded a female student lied about being groped, and then punished here for making a false report.
Winston’s update comes less than a week since an Observer investigation revealed how the attempted suspension of a high school student who’d reported being assaulted in a bathroom broke best practices — and potentially runs afoul of federal regulations meant to protect victims’ rights. The case at Hawthorne Academy of Health Sciences was first reported by WBTV. As a result of media reports and client complaints, nationally-known attorney Laura Dunn asked the federal government to open an investigation into the way CMS responds to reports of sexual misconduct.
Dunn also is requesting the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to contemplate sanctions against CMS because of “its ongoing failure to come into compliance with Title IX after repeated opportunities to do so from OCR.” Dunn represents multiple CMS students who have reported being sexually assaulted on campus.
Winston said Friday: “Our goal, my goal is to take the responsibility of investigations of sexual misconduct allegations out of the hands of our school-level staff, and put that with our additional staff that we will hire.”
“We have a commitment to fund these additional positions through the rest of this school year,” said Winston, who could not define the exact number of positions the district will add nor when those new employees will be in place. “These positions would be prioritized in our upcoming budget request.”
CMS Title IX Task Force
In August, Winston announced the creation of a task force to evaluate how the district handles issues related to Title IX. The task force met for the final time this week. Winston said he will review a report from the student-driven group and share it publicly.
Aidan Finnell, a junior at Myers Park High, was a part of the task force.
“The students did excellent work and came up with great recommendations,” Finnell told the Observer on Friday. “My issue lies with how I don’t think the district will implement any/most of them unless there is a mandate federally (or) through the state to do so.
“The most important to me is a change in the curriculum/content being given to the students because the information being given now is so lackluster and not useful whatsoever.”
‘Hardly the progress community needs’
Principals and Title IX liaisons in schools — personnel who often juggle multiple other responsibilities — have been at the center of complaints and controversy in CMS for months.
▪ At Myers Park High School, former principal Mark Bosco maintained he followed rules and federal law regarding response to reported harassment and assault after former students sued, and others came forward with similar cases. Still, he was placed on a three-month paid suspension which ended with CMS reassigning him in October to another job away from the high school.
▪ In early October, an athlete was allowed to play football for Olympic High School after being criminally charged with a felony sex offense. When students walked out of class for a peaceful protest, members of the school’s volleyball team were suspended. Olympic High’s principal Casey Jones never responded to questions regarding why the athlete was allowed to compete, who knew he was criminally charged and why volleyball team members were singled out when hundreds of students protested.
On the same day of the protest at Olympic High, CMS Athletic Director Ericia Turner announced that “moving forward,” any student athlete arrested or charged with a criminal offense would be barred from playing while the charges are pending.
“We did not make the right call,” Turner said at the time. “We will make it clear to our coaches and our athletic directors that we must uphold standards aligned to our student code of conduct.”
▪At Hawthorne Academy, officials attempted to suspend a 15-year-old female student who principals judged was lying about a sexual attack in a campus bathroom. The student was subsequently handed a 1-day suspension and told to take a Sexual Harassment Is Preventable, or SHIP, class. The 17-year-old male suspect in the case was criminally charged, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police.
The district suspended the principal and assistant principal involved in the investigation, reopened the case and put the female student’s suspension on hold.
Title IX regulation has required school districts to designate a Title IX coordinator to oversee compliance, including investigations into sexual misconduct complaints, since 1975. In 2015, the OCR found CMS out of compliance with the requirement and the district subsequently hired a Title IX coordinator, the Observer has reported previously. The district also had to shore up its grievance procedures, along with its education and training of staff.
As years-old cases at Myers Park brought to light some of the same Title IX issues the OCR addressed with the district decades ago, Winston renewed a commitment for more training not only for district employees, but students, as well.
“Forty-six years later, CMS (announced) that it will take one small step towards partial compliance with this provision,” Dunn told the Observer on Friday. “Though it is a helpful step to have properly trained and supervised investigators handling sexual misconduct complaints involving minor students, this is hardly the progress that the community needs after the systematic failures demonstrated within CMS under Title IX.”
Dunn, who listened to the press conference, said she has yet to hear any commitment from CMS to end the “boys will be boys” attitude that has resulted in rampant sexual misconduct and officials silencing survivors through victim-blaming and retaliation.
“Parents entrust their children to CMS every day,” she said. “CMS must do much more than what it announced today to be worthy of that ongoing trust.”
Caleb Holloway, the president of the board of directors of Brave Step, a nonprofit that empowers individuals who have been impacted by sexual violence, said they have been disturbed by stories CMS students have told about being shamed and silenced after sharing their sexual assault.
“Their experiences magnify the need to educate everyone on sexual violence prevention and response,” Holloway said in a statement.
“We also support the steps announced today by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superintendent Earnest Winston. It is important that students have a safe place to report their concerns and receive informed support. There is a lot of work to be done to create a strong, supportive community, but we applaud this first brave step.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 10:15 AM.
