Chicago Public Schools has agreed to a “substantial overhaul” of how it handles sexual violence cases after a federal investigation found “glaring and heartbreaking” problems in the district.
Federal officials at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on Thursday called its investigation of CPS the largest of its kind in department history.
The situation “is one of the worst that we have seen in the elementary, secondary school context,” Kenneth Marcus, the department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said in a conference call with reporters. “The findings were deeply disturbing. The incidents that formed the basis of OCR’s investigation are tragic and inexcusable, so too was CPS’ response to the incidents.”
In an email to parents, CPS CEO Janice Jackson vowed to correct the district’s mistakes.
“These were tragic incidents in which some students did not receive the comprehensive support they deserved,” she wrote. “As a district, we have been working to ensure no student ever goes through that again.”
The legally binding agreement between the Department of Education and CPS includes federal monitoring of the district’s changes for three years, and possible withholding of federal funding if the district doesn’t adequately follow through with the plan.
‘Substantial overhaul’
“We’re not talking about minor tweaks to policy,” Marcus said. “We’re talking about a substantial overhaul.”
As part of the agreement, CPS is required to: provide people who feel their complaints were mishandled the opportunity for a new investigation; force attorneys involved in a Title IX investigation to recuse themselves from handling the same case in litigation against the district; develop a comprehensive process for responding to complaints; review the actions and enact discipline against current and former employees who mishandled cases.
“It is developed to ensure that this will not happen again,” Marcus said. “This is something that we will not stand for, we cannot tolerate.
“When parents send their children to school they must be able to have confidence that their children are safe,” Marcus said.
The yearslong federal investigation started with two “significant” complaints made on behalf of CPS students — one in May 2015 and the other in November 2016 — who said the district “failed to properly respond” when told of sexual harassment and assault incidents.
The earlier complaint involved a former high school student who said she was sexually harassed by one of her teachers during the 2012-13 school year. The second incident involved a student at the time who said she was sexually assaulted by a group of 13 male students — 7 of whom were her classmates — on her walk home from school.
In the ensuing look into CPS’ troubled handing of sexual violence cases, including “teacher-on-student” and “student-on-student” incidents, the department found “widespread and systemic” mishandling of thousands of incidents.
Among the findings, Marcus said, was that from 1999 to December of last year, CPS “did not even have a Title IX coordinator,” a federally mandated position that oversees schools’ enforcement of sexual discrimination laws.
“This is a basic requirement of federal civil rights law,” Marcus said.
Even when CPS hired an interim Title IX coordinator in December and a full-time one in March, they didn’t have the full authority to handle sexual violence cases, instead being overruled in some cases by CPS attorneys, Marcus said.
He noted federal officials have been “pleased” that CPS has begun to take steps to correct its problems recently — measures that Jackson noted in her letter to parents — but it still isn’t enough.
“It’s clear that there is a great deal more that they need to do, and this resolution agreement explains that,” Marcus said. “There is an enormous amount that still must be done.”
