Massachusetts Secretary of State has ordered the Amherst regional school committee to make public the report on “counselors and other staff members accused of failing to offer support to transgender students who were bullied at the middle school,” according to MassLive.com.
Reports MassLive:
[Interim Amherst Regional Superintendent Doug] Slaughter, in a report to Amherst’s regional school committee on Tuesday, said the secretary of state had ordered the reports released based on an appeal of [his previous decision that deemed them personnel records].
Slaughter said the district could appeal that decision, but that he felt after reviewing with the school district’s attorney that the reports should be released, with only redacting students’ names and the names of certain witnesses.
“This is incredibly important,” said Amherst Regional School Committee member Irv Rhodes at Tuesday’s meeting. “This is one way in which we can begin to come to closure.”
Amherst school were rocked earlier this year by the accusations involving staff members mistreating transgender students. A complaint was made in April by parent Maxine Oland, who said her child had been bullied to the point of needing hospitalization for suicidal thoughts, led to an investigation on the basis of Title IX, the federal statute that bans discrimination on the basis of sex.
In May, an extensive article detailing claims of transgender student mistreatment appeared in the student publication The Graphic, which implicated three middle school counselors.
In the months that followed, the district’s superintendent Michael Morris resigned, along with multiple school committee members, many of whom said their reasons for leaving involved community member outrage over the topic.
The district spent more than $70,000 on the investigative reports, which expanded beyond the Title IX complaint as more community and staff members chimed in with related experiences.
Read the complete MassLive.com story here.
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