U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

Racial Harassment in Vermont Public Schools: A Progress Report

Chapter 2

Progress and Problems in Addressing Racial Harassment in Vermont Schools

Taking recommendations of the 1999 Report as points of departure, this section summarizes remedial efforts, both past and current, to address harassment in Vermont schools. It also summarizes the extensive written and oral testimony the Committee received regarding the 1999 recommendations.[1]

Update information is organized around six topic headings as in the 1999 Report. Under each heading, recommendations from the 1999 Report are briefly described, and update information and analysis are provided.

1. Planning

Government, advocacy, business, and religious organizations statewide must develop a long-range, coordinated plan to deal with the problem of racial harassment in schools.

• There is no coordinated, statewide plan for dealing with racial harassment in schools. In 1999, a subcommittee of the Vermont Education Coalition was formed to address issues raised in the 1999 Report. This subcommittee, which took the name Vermont Leadership for Equity, Anti-Racism, and Diversity in Schools (VT LEADS), included the leadership of the Vermont Department of Education's Safe Schools Program, the Vermont NEA, the Vermont Human Rights Commission, the Vermont Superintendents Association, the Vermont School Boards Association, the Vermont Institutes Equity Initiatives, and other education organizations from around the state.[2] VT LEADS developed a five-point plan for addressing equity, anti-racism, and diversity issues that included (1) obligations and responsibilities of school leaders; (2) training for teachers and other school staff; (3) student-led efforts; (4) community outreach and engagement; and (5) public media campaign and Web site.[3]

VT LEADS ambitious plan was not carried out fully, due largely to the organization's lack of staff and funding and limited participation of members from outside the Montpelier area. The group met regularly during the 1999 2000 and 2000 2001 school years and sporadically after that. However, the work of VT LEADS led to a number of significant initiatives, including a teacher-training program organized by the Vermont Institutes, the Vermont Department of Education, and other collaborating organizations. The Vermont Institutes Equity Initiatives Web site and Schools Striving for Equity, Anti-Racism, and Diversity recognition program grew out of the planning work of VT LEADS.[4]

2. Publicity

State officials, civil rights and civic organizations, business leaders, and concerned citizens must join forces to raise public awareness of the problem of racial harassment and its debilitating effects on minority and nonminority students alike.

• Although there have not been coordinated, statewide efforts to publicize the problem of racial harassment, many local initiatives have been well publicized and have received substantial media coverage. For example, a march in Montpelier on January 15, 2003, commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. s birthday and brought more than 100 people (including approximately 50 students and 30 general assembly members) to the Vermont State House to hear public comments in support of anti-harassment legislation (House Bill 113). A very well-organized program developed by the Burlington Anti-Racism Coalition attracted participation by nearly 300 Burlington residents in 20 study circles that formulated plans to address racial harassment and related problems, such as racial profiling and housing discrimination.

• Three major conferences on diversity and anti-racism issues have been staged since the release of the 1999 Report. On November 12, 2001, Human Rights: How the Changing Face of the World Affects Vermont, sponsored by the Burlington Peace and Justice Center and its Racial Justice and Equity Project, drew approximately 300 participants to presentations and workshops on racism and related topics. A conference on Embracing a World of Diversity, held in Burlington on April 9 and 10, 2002, focused on the state's diverse and growing immigrant population and the problems it faces in making a home in Vermont. On May 14, 2003, Closing the Gap: Fulfilling the Promise of Student Success through Equity, Diversity, and Character Education attracted over 150 educators from around the state to sessions dealing with race, class, and gender issues in K 12 education. Of particular note was a May 13 pre-conference training, Investigating Incidents of Harassment, that brought representatives of 30 school districts to one of the few such trainings offered to date in Vermont. The training was coordinated by the Vermont Institute s Equity Initiatives and Region 1 of the National Association for Multicultural Education. The Vermont Department of Education provided financial support for the conference and training, with additional sponsorship or participation by 16 Vermont organizations.[5]

3. Training

The Vermont Department of Education should allocate resources to ensure that all teachers receive training to prevent harassment incidents, respond effectively when they occur, and select curricular materials and instructional activities that are free of racial bias and stereotypes.

• Some schools and school districts have implemented promising programs for raising awareness of diversity issues and involving students in addressing harassment in schools, but most school administrators, teachers, and staff do not have adequate training to identify and respond to racial harassment incidents. Organizations such as the Vermont Institutes and the Brattleboro ALANA Community Organization have made significant efforts to monitor school responses to racial harassment and to disseminate best practices in fostering respect for diversity. The Vermont Department of Education has collaborated with representatives of educational associations, schools, and community organizations to offer teacher training in diversity issues and, more recently, in responding to harassment incidents. The department, in collaboration with the Vermont Institutes and VT LEADS, initiated a training program in the summer of 2000, under the auspices of the department's BEST program (Building Effective Support for Teaching Students with Behavioral Challenges). The curriculum employed was A World of Difference, developed by the Anti-Defamation League,[6] and the 22 educators initially trained to be trainers brought the program to schools, colleges, and conferences. Despite the lack of central coordination of these trainings, 604 educators participated between 2000 and 2002. During summer 2003, 59 additional educators received training to prepare them to use the A World of Difference curriculum and Student Peer Training Program in their own and other Vermont schools. Thirty-three of these educators participated in a 45-hour Train-the-Trainers Institute, bringing the number of trainers to 55.[7]

• It is extremely important to distinguish between training programs that focus on diversity issues, such as the BEST Summer Institute program described above, and training for teachers, administrators, and school staff that addresses effective responses to harassment incidents. The latter is not widely available to educators in Vermont. While diversity training is important in its own right and as a context for dealing with harassment incidents, the lack of a coordinated, statewide training program for responding to racial harassment incidents in schools is a serious deficiency that must be addressed. Former Department of Education Commissioner Raymond McNulty acknowledged this deficiency in his response to the Committee's inquiry: Through training programs, we are increasing the capacity of schools to respond appropriately to harassment without our assistance, but the pace of our efforts to build capacity within the system is insufficient to bring about the magnitude of change needed [emphasis added]. [8]

The Vermont Department of Education should also provide teachers with training in racism. Current diversity training programs see racism and other isms primarily as a result of individual bias and individual actions. Their premise is that with awareness and appreciation of individual differences harmony can be advanced. Training in racism, on the other hand, considers acts of prejudice to be derived from societal, cultural, and institutional beliefs that the dominant white race has used to subordinate other races in America. Racism training aims at exposing the social, cultural, and institutional beliefs that foster racism to understand how power by the dominant race is used to subordinate others.

4. Enforcement

The State Board of Education should be given statutory authority to monitor and enforce the compliance of school districts with harassment policy and reporting requirements.

• Under the current state public accommodations statute, schools are included in the definition of places of public accommodation. [9] Vermont law provides that a person aggrieved by discrimination in such places may file a charge of discrimination with the state Human Rights Commission (which has jurisdiction over racial discrimination complaints against schools) or bring an action for injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages, and other appropriate relief in superior court.[10] If after an investigation, the Commission believes there is unlawful discrimination, it has the authority to seek a court injunction, compensatory and punitive damages, fines up to $10,000 per violation, and attorneys fees.[11]

As mentioned in part I, under Act 120, schools boards must develop administrative means to address illegal harassment in schools.[12] School boards must prohibit unlawful harassment, provide the definition of harassment in Vermont law, and present the consequences of and remedial action for violations.[13] Boards must also establish procedures for harassment complaints.[14] Students do not have a private right of action under the statute.

Legislators and representatives of the Vermont Department of Education have struggled with proposed changes to liability provisions in existing state law for instances of harassment. In the 2003 2004 legislative session, Representative Mark Larson of Burlington introduced H.113, a bill addressing racial harassment in schools (see appendix 7).[15] The bill clarified the definition of racial harassment in schools and other public accommodations, and called for each school board to appoint civil rights officers.[16]

More importantly, the bill would have allowed victims of racial harassment in a school to seek injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages against the perpetrator of the harassment and hold the school and school district jointly and severally liable under Title 16 of Vermont s education law if it did not take prompt and appropriate remedial action to stop the conduct.[17]

In testimony to the House Education Committee, representatives of the Vermont Department of Education stated that the bill had too much stick and not enough carrot that is, more emphasis on a punitive response than prevention.[18] The House Education Committee subsequently struck the provision in the bill allowing victims to seek compensatory and punitive damages from perpetrators and the joint and severally liability portion. However, the Education Committee left untouched a provision requiring schools to take prompt and appropriate remedial action reasonably calculated to stop harassment. This obligation would arise when a school receives actual notice of an alleged incident of harassment (see appendix 6 for the revised bill).[19]

The bill was presented on the House floor for a second reading with this amendment and referred to the House Judiciary Committee to address standards for liability, an area more within that committee's jurisdiction.[20] It should be noted that provisions allowing victims to seek compensatory relief that were struck from Bill 113 were similar to provisions originally proposed in what came to be Act 120. However, as in Bill 113 this provision did not survive.[21]

• Racial harassment continues to be a serious problem in Vermont schools, according to available data and testimony of school officials, community representatives, parents, and students. Over the past four years, and particularly in the course of hearing testimony during its 2002 2003 town meetings, the Committee learned of several instances in which school officials evidently did not respond appropriately to racial harassment complaints. One case was litigated by the Vermont Human Rights Commission on behalf of harassment victim Peter Bessette. When Bessette, a high school student at Missisquoi Valley Union High School in Swanton, reported that he was being harassed by one of his peers and feared for his safety, a school administrator responded that he should build himself up that is, defend himself physically.[22] Bessette was later harassed again and suspended for hitting the perpetrator with a crutch. The incident highlighted the need for harassment and diversity training at the high school.[23] The school subsequently held harassment training and used the study circles approach with staff and students.[24] It plans to continue similar staff development activities this school year.[25]

• According to a complaint filed in Washington County Superior Court in September 2001, a female student at Harwood Union High School was subjected to an educational environment in school which was pervasively intimidating, hostile and offensive by reason of unwelcome racially based, ethnically based and gender based conduct towards her as a student and other students similarly situated. [26] The complaint further asserts that, pursuant to state law, school officials had an affirmative duty to promulgate, publish, implement and enforce a procedure for investigating reports of violations and complaints relative to the abusive and harassing behavior . . . and that [they] failed to comply with this duty. [27] The complaint was ultimately dismissed on September 30, 2003.[28]

(It should be noted that according to newspaper accounts, in June 1997 Mary Williams, the school's principal, and middle school principal Marta Cambra sent a letter to parents and guardians noting that discrimination, intolerance, harassment, and racism were appropriate labels for behaviors that continue to be too common among Harwood students. )[29]

With the assistance of the Vermont Corrections Department, Harwood subsequently developed a school justice project to train 26 students and adults to use family group conferencing skills and peer mediation. Harwood also offered training to more than 30 students and adults in the use of study circle techniques developed by the Study Circles Foundation. Lastly, school justice project members participated in student exchange activities at Harwood and Twinfield Union High Schools. Harwood Union High School plans to continue the school justice project in the 2003 2004 school year.

• At the Committee's first town meeting in Burlington, several parents reported that their school officials or school boards did not respond to complaints of racial harassment directed at their children. One parent noted that her school board responded to her complaint by observing that a response was unnecessary, since her children would soon be leaving the school system.[30] The Committee recognizes that such allegations of school inaction in the face of harassment complaints as documented in the present report and in its February 1999 report are not legal testimony subject to cross-examination or independent verification. The Committee further recognizes that, in many cases, school officials are not at liberty to reveal detailed information about harassment complaints or their disposition, due to confidentiality strictures.[31] At the same time, the dozens of racial harassment incidents painfully recounted to the Committee over the past four years by aggrieved parents and students simply cannot be dismissed as anecdotal or not credible for lack of responses from school officials.

5. Reporting

The commissioner of the Vermont Department of Education should require all schools to report annually on racial harassment incidents and their resolution, and he or she should report annually to the governor and legislature on systemwide compliance with the 1993 Anti-Harassment in Education Act.[32]

• Under Vermont law, schools must develop and implement a comprehensive plan to meet school quality standards, including plans to ensure a safe, orderly, and civil environment that is free from harassment.[33] School boards are also required to report annually to their communities on how well individual schools meet this standard.

• The Vermont Department of Education does not yet have comprehensive, reliable data on racial harassment incidents. The department, which monitors school board reporting to their community, stated that 93.4 percent of schools reported that they were in compliance with the requirement in 2001. However, the department also noted that, since it does not collect annual school reports, the data cannot be confirmed. Furthermore, the same statute requires school boards to adopt and enforce anti-harassment and hazing policies, but it appears that the department does not track the number of schools that have adopted anti-harassment and hazing policies and only confirms the existence and enforcement of such a school policy when it receives a parental complaint regarding the failure of a school to respond adequately to a harassment situation.[34]

• In response to requirements of Act 120, the Vermont Department of Education began collecting data on hazing and harassment incidents. The data categorizes incidents by the type of incident (student-on-student or staff-on-student harassment, hazing, and bullying) and by the ostensible motivation (creed, disability, gender, national origin, race, sexual orientation, other). In the first year of reporting, some definitional confusion around the categories of harassment and hazing and misunderstanding about which schools were subject to the reporting requirement produced data that was both unreliable and unverified (47 percent of incidents reported in the 2000 2001 school year were classified as other ). For the 2001 2002 school year, more schools reported (304 versus 217 in the previous year), and incidents were more carefully categorized. The resulting data, which indicates that 25 percent of 2,551 reported incidents of harassment, hazing, and bullying were race related, suggests the magnitude of the specific problem of racial harassment to school officials, who sometimes dismiss incidents as teasing, according to reports by parents of children of color.

• In its response to the Committee's 2002 request for information for this project, the Vermont Department of Education noted that current legislation requiring hazing/harassment data collection should be improved to clarify what data should be collected. [35] In its 1999 Report, the Committee already made two recommendations related to reporting requirements: (1) that the department should develop a standard incident report form that allows parents and victims to communicate formally instances of racial harassment to school personnel, record their understanding of the incident (including responses by school staff), and suggest ways to ameliorate the situation ; and (2) that school boards should be required to report annually on the number of minority students, the number of racial harassment incidents in each school, the type of disciplinary action imposed upon the perpetrators, and the victim's satisfaction with the resolution process. [36] In its 1999 Report, the Committee recommended that the department be given enforcement oversight authority to improve data collection and reporting. With the exception of victim's satisfaction with the resolution process, the department collects this data. In its response to this report, the department noted that an understanding of the victim's satisfaction would be difficult to obtain given state and federal laws that make the outcome of student disciplinary matters confidential. [37]

6. Staffing

The commissioner of the Vermont Department of Education should create at least one full-time position within the department solely to address racial harassment in schools. The Vermont Human Rights Commission should request funding from the Vermont legislature to increase staffing in order to effect more timely resolution of complaints of racial harassment in schools.

• In line with the Committee's recommendation, the Vermont Department of Education created the position of safe schools coordinator in 2000 and hired one person to fill that position to respond to harassment incidents and to develop statewide prevention programs. However, one staff member cannot accomplish these duties. The staff person intervenes in harassment incidents reported to the department, but there is widespread recognition and dismay even from educators that one person, however skilled, cannot possibly respond to all racial harassment incidents, much less coordinate statewide programs and activities aimed at preventing harassment.[38] The department itself acknowledged that it is difficult to provide prevention services when the demand for intervention services exceeds available resources. That is the case with hazing and harassment. [39]

• To obtain more timely resolution of complaints, investigators with the Vermont Human Rights Commission maintain a reasonable caseload that allows them to complete most investigations within six to 12 months. Because of the ongoing relationship and contact between parties involved in school-based cases, the commission gives priority to harassment complaints and makes referrals to professional mediators when possible. Director Appel acknowledges that increased staff would shorten time frames for investigations, but he doubts that increases are possible, given current fiscal constraints.[40]

• House Bill 113 introduced in the 2003 2004 session called for the creation of the position of school civil rights officer in each school as a means of mitigating the shortage of staff that adversely affects the completion time of commission investigations. Under the bill, two officers would be appointed and trained to investigate harassment complaints. Unfortunately, the House Education Committee struck that provision from the draft legislation.