Kyrene district ordered to make changes after girl harassed for months over Jewish heritage

The Kyrene Elementary School District is required to put in place a series of equity measures after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights determined the district violated the Civil Rights Act by allowing a young girl to be harassed about her Jewish heritage.

The Office for Civil Rights found that a district principal failed to address "what was clearly a school-wide problem" with antisemitic harassment after nine eighth-grade students harassed a classmate for a period of five months in 2018 and 2019, according to a letter sent Tuesday to Kyrene Superintendent Laura Toenjes.

The students called her antisemitic slurs, made jokes about the Holocaust and sent her a video on social media that showed a student carrying a rifle while pretending to speak German and intimating a Nazi soldier, according to the letter from the office.

The specific Kyrene school and the principal were not identified in the letter.

Despite these incidents occurring multiple times, the principal failed to provide timely and clear communication to staff about the harassment, which resulted in staffers being ill-informed to monitor the situation or identify ongoing harassment, the letter said.

The principal also was delayed in addressing the student's schedule, which resulted in her attending classes with the nine students who had been harassing her until her schedule, not theirs, was changed, according to the letter.

The Office for Civil Rights determined that since the district failed to provide the student with a safe environment, it left her with no choice but to be home-schooled to assure her safety for a portion of the school year. The student fell behind academically and socially as a result.

History of antisemitic views: After backlash to controversial endorsement, Lake changes course while Finchem and Rogers stay quiet

The office also concluded that after the principal determined "that nine students had engaged in anti-Semitic harassment over a period of several months, the remedial measures he undertook were narrow and focused primarily on the punishment of the individual perpetrators."

The principal also failed to interview teachers who had oversight of the classrooms where some of the harassment happened and by failing to do so, "the district disregarded its obligation to assess whether the verified widespread conduct negatively impacted other students."

The education department announced Tuesday it had reached a voluntary resolution agreement with Kyrene. As a result, the district has committed to:

• Address the student’s academic and counseling needs resulting from the harassment.

• Review and revise its policies and procedures to address the prohibition of harassment based on race, color, or national origin, including shared ancestry, including by clarifying in its policies and procedures that the ban on harassment includes harassment based on Jewish ancestry.

• Provide training to district staff regarding the district’s obligation to respond to complaints of harassment based on race, color, or national origin.

• Provide age-appropriate information programs for students to address harassment based on race, color, or national origin.

• Conduct a climate survey to assess the prevalence of harassment in the student’s former school and provide suggestions for effective ways to address harassment.

Kyrene spokesperson Erin Helm released a statement in response, saying the district holds the safety of students, including physical and social-emotional well being, as the highest priority.

“As a person of Jewish faith, I was deeply affected by this investigation,” Superintendent Laura Toenjes said. “I will work very closely with our Board to ensure every student of every faith, every race, and every background feels safe, valued, and respected inside our schools.”

Helm also said the district strives to strengthen its commitment to non-discrimination, and much of the work required in the resolution is underway in Kyrene. In May of this year, the school approved its first diversity, equity and inclusion policy.

“This work would happen regardless of the resolution in front of us today, but we are grateful for the opportunity to reflect, and we appreciate the guidance that will be offered by the Office for Civil Rights,” Toenjes said.

The district has begun developing a plan to directly address the resolution, and later this year, Kyrene will begin a review of all policies with an equity lens to ensure commitment to inclusion is consistent throughout its practices, Helm said.

Renata Cló is a reporter on The Arizona Republic's K-12 education team. You can reach her at rclo@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @renataclo. 

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kyrene district ordered to make changes after girl harassed for months