Rutherford County School District (TN): In October 2012, OCR resolved a complaint alleging that a teacher called a student a “monkey” and then retaliated against him for filing a complaint with the school by writing a disciplinary referral for tardiness and giving him a zero on a class assignment. In addition, the complainant, who is the student’s mother, alleged that school officials subjected the student to racial discrimination and retaliated against him when they grabbed the student’s cell phone and forced him to unlock it so they could read his text messages aloud. During the course of the investigation, OCR found that a school official retaliated against the student by reading his text messages, but did not find violations with respect to the other allegations. To remedy the retaliation OCR found, the district agreed to train staff annually on Title VI’s prohibition against retaliation and to destroy any written records it created of the student’s text messages.

Read the Resolution Letter PDF (96.6K) | Read the Resolution Agreement PDF (69.05K)