SOUTHLAKE, Texas — Southlake Carroll Independent School District board officials say the district won't work with the Department of Education to resolve alleged civil rights violations, arguing that Carroll ISD "complied with the law," according to a statement issued Monday night.
Carroll ISD School Board President Cam Bryan said board members have "declared an impasse in the negotiations and look forward to defending the district at all levels of this process."
WFAA has reached out to the Department of Education for a response to the Carroll school district's announcement Monday night.
The federal agency's Office of Civil Rights in May announced that four student complaints of discrimination based on race and sexual orientation would be upheld after a lengthy investigation. The Office of Civil Rights then invited the district to negotiate a resolution, giving the district 90 days to reach a deal before the federal agency could bring the issue to court.
But Bryan on Monday said the Carroll ISD board "concluded that our district has complied with the law in each case."
The board in a statement outlined each alleged violation, saying the cases involved "student-to-student or peer harassment," not allegations against any district employees.
For the district to violate the law, the board argued, it would have had to meet four elements: Creating a hostile educational environment, having actual knowledge of the harassment, having control over the harasser and the environment in which the harassment happened and acting "deliberately indifferent to the harassment."
The board argued that those criteria were not met.
"The facts of each case that follow show why there was no 'hostile educational environment' and why, even if there were, CISD was not deliberately indifferent to it," the board statement said. "They also show why CISD must defend itself against these baseless allegations."
Bryan and Carroll ISD Superintendent Lane Ledbetter in a letter to the Office of Civil Rights on Monday informed the agency of the district's intentions to stop negotiations and requested more information.
"We have repeatedly asked you to share your factual findings with us regarding this matter so that we could, in good faith, evaluate them on behalf of Carroll ISD and the community we serve," Bryan and Ledbetter wrote. "Despite that earnest request, you have allowed the clock to run out on this time period."
Bryan and Ledbetter concluded that while an impasse in negotiations "seems entirely counterintuitive and counterproductive to the resolution process," the district "has no other choice given the factors" they outlined in their letter.
"If OCR is not willing to provide the Board of Trustees with the information it needs to negotiate a Resolution Agreement, the District will await OCR's Letter of Impending Enforcement Action so that it has the information needed to move forward with fair and transparent negotiations," Bryan and Ledbetter wrote.
Carroll ISD's board accused the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights of repeatedly pressuring school districts into "burdensome" resolution agreements without proving the schools violated the law.
"We have serious concerns about entering into a multi-year agreement with the federal government without first understanding the rationale for its requirements—especially when we do not believe we did anything wrong!" Bryan and Ledbetter wrote.
The district's decision to declare an impasse "disgusted" Angela Jones, who filed one of the complaints to the feds on her son's behalf. She says the district did not do enough to help students subjected to racism and bigotry.
Jones says the district allowed students to get away with saying racial slurs, including the N-word.
"They're telling the community they're not interested in making sure everybody is safe in that school district," she told WFAA Tuesday. "It's been more than three years, and I feel like the district still doesn't get it."
Jones also took issue with the district's characterization of the incident involving her son. They got aspects of the story wrong and omitted the other times the family reported students called him the N-word, she said.
"I don't know if they're misinformed or if they are just flat-out lying, but what they put in there is absolutely wrong," Jones said. "For them... to say it was one incident and the child apologized is so wrong and it makes me hot."
While it's not immediately clear what the next steps are, the Department of Education could take the complaints to federal court for enforcement.