A federal civil rights investigation has found that San Diego Unified School District systematically failed to protect its students from sexual harassment and sexual assault and violated federal law, officials announced Friday.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said it examined 253 reports and complaints of sexual harassment and assault of students — both by staff and by other students — from 2017 to 2020.
The investigation’s findings describe a widespread lack of coordination, improper record-keeping and insufficient investigation procedures that often meant the district didn’t investigate allegations at all.
“These failures led to serial perpetration of harassment with insufficient district response, leaving district students vulnerable to the sex discrimination in school that Title IX forbids,” federal officials wrote in a statement Friday.
In many cases, they said, San Diego Unified failed to show it had undertaken any needed follow-up action, such as taking steps to prevent further harassment or providing s and protections to the student victims.
Sometimes the district simply handed off the reports of sexual assault or harassment to other agencies, such as police or Child Protective Services, but failed to conduct any investigation itself into whether harassment had occurred and whether students’ rights under Title IX had been violated.
Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools and other education programs.
Federal officials attributed the problem partly to a general lack of coordination among the district’s Title IX coordinator, district departments and s, as well as outside agencies that were at times involved in investigating reports of sexual harassment.
For most of the cases reviewed, the district’s Title IX coordinator had coordinated no response to reports of sexual harassment, either because she was not involved in the case or because employees ignored her directions.
In every single one of the 253 case files the federal office reviewed, key information and documents were missing — including police reports and investigative notes, witness statements, interview notes, discipline records and records of follow-ups with students with disabilities. District employees said there were no set procedures for sharing information across departments on Title IX matters.
The federal investigation also found problems with San Diego Unified’s Title IX employee training.
Every district employee interviewed who was responsible for investigating sexual harassment reports said they had received no training on their duties under Title IX. Those included district police officers, whom school s frequently relied on to investigate reports of sexual assault.
The civil rights office also found that the district may have violated federal disability laws when it came to students with disabilities who were victims or perpetrators of sexual harassment.
That’s because the district’s case records did not show that it had either evaluated students whose harassing behaviors indicated they may have a disability or that it had reevaluated students with disabilities before changing their special education services as a result of discipline for harassment. It also did not appear to have evaluated whether there needed to be any change in services for a student with disabilities who was a victim of harassment.
The civil rights investigation studied incidents during the time that Cindy Marten was superintendent. Since 2021, Marten has been the deputy U.S. education secretary, in the agency that oversees the Office of Civil Rights.
The Education Department declined to provide a comment from Marten about the report and instead referred to another official’s quote in the department’s news release.
“Through today’s resolution, San Diego Unified commits to overhaul its response to allegations of sexual harassment to ensure all its students learn safely and without sex or disability discrimination,” said Catherine Lhamon, the federal agency’s assistant secretary for civil rights, in a statement. “OCR looks forward to working with the district to redress serial perpetration, protect students with disabilities from being preyed upon, and ensure that district students can expect to focus on learning without unlawful sexual harassment.”
San Diego Unified has told the civil rights office it will take several steps to address office’s findings. Those include reviewing past sexual harassment cases to see whether further action is needed, training staff annually on their duties to respond to reports, training students in third grade and older annually in how to recognize and report sexual harassment, and conducting annual school climate surveys of students, parents and staff on sexual harassment in schools.
The district also said it would establish a federally approved system and policy for keeping records and data about reports, complaints and investigations of sexual harassment.
In an emailed statement Friday evening, San Diego Unified officials said they are committed to fully complying with Title IX and federal laws for students with disabilities.
“The San Diego Unified School District remains committed to the safety and wellbeing of all students, and continuously works to assess and improve Title IX compliance,” district officials wrote. “The district holds itself to the highest standards to ensure that students are never harmed, and has a responsibility to acknowledge when harm does occur to maintain transparency and ability.”
The district said it has been working on improving Title IX compliance since before the federal office’s investigation began.
It said it has added Title IX compliance staff and implemented new protocols. It has also reorganized its former Title IX and quality assurance offices into one Office of Investigations, Compliance and ability that will be in charge of handling Title IX complaints and uniform complaints and of ensuring compliance with state and federal laws.
The district said the state education department has reviewed district policies twice and found them to be compliant with federal regulations.
The district said it had also convened a task force in 2019 about improving the district’s handling of sexual abuse allegations.
