School district from hell

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Isabella "Izzy" Tichenor, a 10-year-old Black and autistic student in Utah, died by suicide last Saturday after allegedly being bullied by classmates and her family's complaints were ignored, the family's lawyer tells CNN.

The tragedy comes just weeks after the Justice Department publicly detailed a disturbing pattern where Black and Asian American students at the Davis School District in Farmington, Utah, were harassed for years, and officials deliberately ignored complaints from parents and students. The DOJ detailed the pattern in a report and settlement agreement released in October. The agency had been investigating the school district since July 2019.

"Izzy was a happy child. She was a happy little girl, she did well in school ... All she wanted was to be connected with family and friends," attorney Tyler Ayres tells CNN ahead of the private funeral planned for Saturday morning.

Izzy's mother and stepfather, Brittany Clark Tichenor Cox and Charles Cox, said they became aware their daughter was being bullied around September, Ayres told CNN.

"They found her taking a bottle of Febreze to school, and when they asked her why they said she said because the kids said she stank," Ayres told CNN, adding her teacher instructed her to sit away from other students in the back of the classroom.

Ayres also said the kids allegedly used the n-word and teased Izzy repeatedly.

According to Ayres, Brittany and Charles sought out Izzy's teacher to lodge their complaints, but "when they realized that they weren't making any progress ... they went to the principal. The principal turned them to the vice principal and with the vice principal they felt very unheard and just very disregarded."

Black and Asian American students are each roughly 1 percent of the approximately 73,000 students enrolled in the district, according to the DOJ report.

Representatives from the Foxboro Elementary School PTA joined the Tichenor family at a Monday morning press conference about Izzy's death, according to CNN affiliate KUTV.

On Thursday, the NBA's Utah Jazz held a moment of silence during their game against the Indiana Pacers to mourn Izzy's death.

Several players on the team are supporting Izzy's family and offering their assistance during this time, according to Ayres.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the United States Attorney’s Office for Utah announced a settlement agreement with Davis School District in Utah to address race discrimination in the district’s schools, including serious and widespread racial harassment of Black and Asian-American students. The department opened its investigation in July 2019 under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The investigation revealed persistent failures to respond to reports of race-based harassment of Black and Asian-American students by district staff and other students. The department’s review, which focused on 2015-2020, found hundreds of documented uses of the N-word, among other racial epithets, derogatory racial comments, and physical assaults targeting district students at dozens of schools. The department concluded that for years, Davis’s ineffective response left students vulnerable to continued harassment and that students believed the district condoned the behavior. The department also found that Davis disciplined Black students more harshly than their white peers for similar behavior and that Davis denied Black students the ability to form student groups while supporting similar requests by other students. Black and Asian-American students are each roughly 1 percent of the approximately 73,000 students enrolled in the district.

“Pervasive racial harassment and other forms of racial discrimination in public schools violate the Constitution’s most basic promise of equal protection,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division. “This agreement will help generate the institutional change necessary to keep Black and Asian-American students safe. We look forward to Davis demonstrating to its students and school community that it will no longer tolerate racial discrimination in its schools.”

“The Justice Department thanks the many parents and students who came forward and shared their experiences and the Davis School District for its cooperation with our investigation,” said Acting United States Attorney Andrea Martinez for the District of Utah. “As the federal partners who work and live in this community, we are hopeful that this agreement is the start of a new chapter in which Black and Asian-American students will attend Davis schools without fear.”

Under the agreement, Davis will retain a consultant to review and revise anti-discrimination policies and procedures and support the district as it undertakes significant institutional reforms. Among other steps, Davis will:

create a new department to handle complaints of race discrimination;

train staff on how to identify, investigate, and respond to complaints of racial harassment and discriminatory discipline practices;

inform students and parents of how to report harassment and discrimination;

create a centralized, electronic reporting system to track and manage complaints and Davis’s response to complaints;
implement student, staff, and parent training and education on identifying and preventing race discrimination, including discriminatory harassment;

analyze and review discipline data and amend policies to ensure non-discriminatory enforcement of discipline policies; and
develop a districtwide procedure to assess requests for student groups and treat such requests fairly.

There was even a patrician set up behind me as I recall.

I believe you meant partition.

When I read "teacher instructed her to sit away from other students in the back of the classroom." I recalled how when I was 7 or 8 my teacher had me sitting at the back of the classroom away from the other students. There was even a patrician set up behind me as I recall. The next year I was farmed out to a different public school that had a prefab classroom that was on the other side of the grounds, which had about a dozen students who probably were all on the spectrum. This happened in the Los Angeles County school district back in the 70s.

That sounds unbelievably cruel. And no one did anything about it?

That sounds unbelievably cruel. And no one did anything about it?

They put me in a special classroom with my own kind where I fit in much better.
I don't have any hard feelings about being put off in a corner like that. I realize I was a disruptive handful and way behind the others. And I liked having my own personal office away from the others I didn't get along with. The only time I remember being bothered by it, is there was some class science project I wanted to take part in but wasn't allowed to.

I was in a Special Ed class for the first few years of my schooling, then I got mainstreamed. At the time, they had diagnosed me as "hyperactive," because they had no idea what Asperger's was in America at that time.

^^^
They did, but my dad had me taken off of it for fear of the social stigma he thought I'd face.

You mean if it was discovered you were taking it? I got taken off it because I said it made me feel like a robot.