| District 11 settles on sex harassment issue |
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| Wednesday, 19 August 2009 | |
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Staff writer Serving some 40,500 students and 248,000 residents living in 13 communities, Anoka-Hennepin School District’s 2,700 teachers tackle huge assignments every school day. Well, one student says two of his teachers took it on themselves to add a little extra duty to their daily doings. Alex Merritt recently won a $25,000 settlement after reporting that while enrolled at the STEP school back in 2007-2008, two teachers harassed him with remarks about his perceived sexual orientation. While school district officials express disappointment and anger over the incident, spokeswoman Mary Olson said, “With 2,700 teachers in the district it’s impossible to know what each teacher is saying and doing in the classroom.” “We are certainly saddened that something like this happened. It should not have happened.” For many years District 11 has had policies in place that would prevent this kind of incident, Olson said. “Unfortunately, it did not,” she said. In the settlement negotiated with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, District 11 agreed to pay Merritt $25,000 and the two teachers, Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson, were reprimanded. Cleveland, a social studies teacher, was briefly reassigned, and placed on two-day unpaid suspension. Her reassignment included working on a “social studies curriculum development and reflecting on equality and diversity in the classroom,” according to the investigation. Cleveland completed only one day of the assignment and called in sick for the rest of the week. Details were unavailable regarding the disciplinary action taken regarding Filson, a law enforcement teacher. Anoka-Hennepin denies any violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act and its settlement of this case “does not constitute an admission of any liability of violating the Minnesota Human Rights Act or any other law or of any wrongdoing,” the Department of Human Rights Web site reported. Other actions dictated by the settlement have District 11 reviewing its existing policies and/or developing new policies. Those policies must be submitted to the commissioner of the Department of Human Rights for review and approval. A newly updated sexual orientation curriculum policy was, in fact, adopted by the school board Feb. 9, 2009. That policy states, in part, “As set forth in the Equal Education Opportunity Policy, it is the school district’s policy to provide equal educational opportunity and to prohibit harassment of all students. The board is committed to providing a safe and respectful learning environment and to provide an education that respects the beliefs of all students and families.” The updating of that policy, Olson said, was not in any way done in response to the Merritt incident. In fact, the district’s sexual orientation curriculum policy hadn’t been updated since 1995, and so it was time for the district to take another look and update the policy, she said. “The updated sexual orientation policy was not at all related to this incident,” Olson said. Settlement of the Merritt incident also directs District 11 to submit training materials related to student harassment, its complaint process and sexual orientation as a protected class for the department’s approval. According to Olson, as has been the tradition for many years, all Anoka-Hennepin staff members go through harassment training when they are hired and principals revisit the anti-harassment policy with their employees and students every year. Not only that, said Olson, “The school board has asked administration to review all policies, procedures and decision-making processes to see how we can improve them and to review all training to make sure it is adequate and appropriate.” Sue Austreng is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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