Yakima School District Addressing Violations Regarding Bullying and Harassment

The Yakima School District is now in an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights to fix many harassment issues and complaints that came up in a recent evaluation.

Education department staff members said the results from those evaluations violated federal civil rights laws. This started after the Department of Education saw high rates of bullying and suspensions from bullying in the district, mainly for sexual harassment.

An investigation from the Office of Civil Rights found the district failed to provide non-discrimination notices, and any resolutions to student or employee complaints.

Superintendent Elaine Beraza from the Yakima School District said many of the violations were things of which faculty and staff members were not aware.

We were not tracking our victims and we were doing that to protect the privacy of the victims, but really they want us to always indicate who the victim was and actually by name. We were not doing that, we weren't aware that we should have done that.

In addition, the investigation revealed flawed district record keeping that could prevent the district and the OCR from determining whether hostile environments exist at schools, and if so, whether the district is taking appropriate steps toward solutions.

Now the district is working with the OCR to correct those issues with a list of things that need to happen.

Dr. Beraza said they're taking the issue very seriously.

If you look at the list of things they've asked us to do, some of it we're well on the way. You don't have to tell us twice.

That list includes things like investigating all incidents of harassment and taking appropriate action to prevent or end the harassment. The district also plans to hire someone to assist with its implementation of the agreement from the OCR, conduct annual school evaluations related to harassment and create a task force to come up with strategies for dealing with harassment in schools.

Since school district officials are complying with the agreement and is working to fix their mistakes, there is no further consequence. But if they fail to meet deadlines for those implementations, the Department of Education could decide to take further disciplinary action against the district.