Leland Gray Union Middle and High School in Townshend. File photo by Mike Faher/VTDigger The Windham Central Supervisory Union will pay a historic $250,000 in damages to two Black students who allegedly faced discrimination, under a settlement agreement signed last month. The consolidated la wsuit had alleged that school authorities did “little or nothing” to deal with the complaints reported at the Leland Gray Union Middle and High School in Townshend. As part of the settlement, the school district also agreed to centralize and improve its recordkeeping and implement training sessions to better handle hazing, harassment and bullying in school.  It is the largest single settlement in the history of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, according to a press release Thursday. “This settlement represents a significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to ensure that every student can learn and thrive in a safe and inclusive environment,” Big Hartman, executive director and general counsel of the Human Rights Commission, said in the release. The commission received complaints and took up the cases involving harassment faced in school by two students of color. The lawsuits outline pervasive incidents of racial harassment including students calling a Black male student the N-word and “little brown banana” and a Black female student being teased and taunted and called “lesbian” due her sexual orientation. The commission determined that both students were racially discriminated against in violation of the Vermont Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act, according to the lawsuits filed in 2022 and 2024 in Vermont Superior Court. Bob Thibault, superintendent of schools for WCSU, said the agreement is “a means of avoiding “protracted litigation with families” and “not an admission of wrongdoing in this case.” He noted the settlement money will come from the union’s insurer and not taxpayers. “We are pleased to resolve the lawsuit on favorable terms given that it covers two students with two separate claims,” he wrote in an emailed statement Friday.  “The School is constantly working to improve and welcomes the additional training from HRC to supplement our own rigorous training on the prevention of harassment.” A training program will be developed in partnership with the Human Rights Commission and Windham County NAACP to be implemented over the next three academic years, according to the settlement agreement signed last month. “By investing in comprehensive training for supervisory union staff, we are committed to creating lasting change that will benefit students, families, and educators alike. Schools and administrators must understand the importance of addressing student discrimination and following the mandates of Title 16’s harassment complaint process,” Hartman said in the release. Mary Gannon, an education consultant and vice president of the Windham County NAACP, said the settlement brings justice to the students and helps families pay for the expenses incurred due to ongoing harassment. But school leaders hiding behind settlements to avoid acknowledging the harm done is “absolutely preposterous,” she said. “So no, you didn’t do the best you could and that’s been an issue at Leland Gray for a very long time, as it is with other schools that we are talking with, some of which have cases in front of the Human Rights Commission,” Gannon said. “We have a lot of people in positions of leadership, mostly white men, who don’t have an understanding of what the cumulative impact is of something like this.” Conflicts of interest and insurance companies, law firms and school boards protecting their own further hinder progress on hazing, harassment and bullying (HHB) cases, she said, adding that Vermont needs to better foster individual responsibility among educational leaders. This settlement comes after the Agency of Education reestablished an HHB prevention advisory council this year to seek advice and recommendations to update current policies. The state agency has created a new Safe and Healthy Schools Division, according to agency spokesperson Toren Ballard. It aims to help schools foster a safe, inclusive and culturally responsive environment for students, educators and staff.  “This renewed focus is crucial in ensuring that instances such as those that occurred at Leland and Gray Middle School do not happen again,” Ballard said in a Monday email.  Big Hartman of the Vermont Human Rights Commission speaks at the Statehouse in Montpelier on April 22, 2025. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger Persistent racial harassment The lawsuits shared with VTDigger describe complaints from the parents of two Black students who faced multi-year harassment at the Leland Gray Middle and High School in Townshend, a small Windham County town. According to the first complaint, an unnamed minor identified as A.B., who attended the school from 2019 to 2022 and was the only Black student there, was subjected by students to “continuing unwelcome conduct, including verbal, written, visual, and physical conduct” and electronic communications based on his racial identity.  Incidents outlined in the complaint included students calling him the N-word and “little brown banana” and described white basketball players mocking a kneeling pose used by professional athletes protesting police harassment during the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite written or verbal accounts of the incidents he faced, authorities at the school and the district “failed to take prompt and appropriate remedial action” or follow their own policies for addressing student harassment, the complaint noted. While he started school as a “personable, intelligent, curious student and athlete, eager and willing to make friends, and interested in participating in and learning at school with other children,” the “pervasive harassment” A.B. faced at Leland Gray “substantially and adversely” affected his access to equal education there, according to the complaint.  As a result, A.B. self-isolated, lost interest in attending school and participating in sports, refused to socialize with other students and cried when he came home from school. Eventually, his parents transferred A.B. to private school and began mental health treatment for him in March 2022, “all at considerable expense,” to “protect their son from continued harassment, suffering, and denial of educational opportunities,” according to the lawsuit filed April 2024. Ariah Pacht, a student and youth advocate holds up a sign at a press conference organized by the Education Justice Coalitionand Outright Vermont at Essex Middle School on Monday, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo courtesy of Robyn Freedner-Maguire, Outright Vermont ‘Little or nothing’ done In the second complaint, a Black female student identified as D.B., faced “unwelcome conduct” from other students about her sexual orientation from 2020 to 2022. These included “verbal, written, visual, physical conduct, the use of epithets, stereotypes, slurs, comments, insults, derogatory remarks, gestures, threats, graffiti,” and the display or circulation of written or visual material, the complaint filed in May 2024 states. Examples include a student threatening to “beat the fucking shit out of” D.B. because of D.B.’s sexual orientation. A dean handling complaints in school reportedly overheard the threat and emailed the parent to notify a student had spoken “in an unkind way” and would be disciplined. But nothing was done, according to the Human Rights Commission. The complaint outlined other incidents in which D.B. was allegedly called “lesbian” by a student who took food from her tray at lunch, bit into it and threw it back on her tray, and another where students drew graffiti on the bathroom wall insinuating that D.B. and her best friend were lesbians. “D.B. was thereafter repeatedly humiliated, even by students she did not know, including by being told “to shut the fuck up” or “to get her [ass] out of here,” according to the complaint. The complaint noted that school and district authorities who were notified of the incidents “imposed little or no discipline” on the perpetrators for the harassment. The parents withdrew D.B. from school in March 2022 “to protect their daughter from continued harassment, suffering, and denial of educational opportunities,” according to the complaint. D.B. entered the school as a “personable, intelligent, and curious student, eager and willing to make friends,” but by the end of those two years her performance declined and she became “depressed and self-isolating,” lost interest in going to school, refused to socialize with other children and came home crying, the complaint stated.  The complaints state the school and district “did little or nothing to satisfy the requirements” of its own policy to prevent harassment, “failed to take prompt remedial action” to stop the harassment, “failed to keep contemporaneous or accurate records” of the harassment the two students faced and as required by Vermont statute. School discrimination cases in Vermont have surged in recent years, yet very few make it to the Vermont Human Rights Commission. Last December, the commission was forced to stop taking cases in a year that saw a record increase, due to a serious funding gap.The commission that enforces anti-discrimination and civil rights laws in Vermont has declined to investigate 45 cases in the current fiscal year and has requested three new positions for fiscal year 2027, according to Hartman. It is currently investigating 12 school discrimination complaints and has accepted two additional school cases that have not yet been initiated. These are among 23 cases accepted by the commission this fiscal year. It has 70 open investigations and 14 cases under litigation currently. Students push for reform Last week, parents and students shared similar testimony of discrimination faced in other schools at a press conference announcing the next phase of Narratives for Change, a statewide campaign, at Essex Middle School.  Alice Langbauer, a youth organizer for the Education Justice Coalition and a Colchester High School student, said they faced increased bullying after reporting harassment. Friends were afraid to speak up on their behalf because of potential retaliation from peers, they said, and school leaders did nothing to address the issue.  “I’ve experienced bullying getting worse or more people joining in on the bullying after reporting,” said Langbauer, who called for the agency to include whistleblower protection in its hazing, harassment and bullying policy “because knowing that someone will report them makes a bully feel unsafe.” Superintendent of Schools Amy Minor said she was sad to hear of it because addressing harassment and making sure students are heard is “a core priority” at the Colchester School District. When she hears about students feeling unheard or unsupported, she said she takes it as an opportunity to examine their systems and make improvements. “Personally, I really want to make sure that every student feels safe, respected and supported in our schools,” she said Wednesday. In Berkshire, a middle school student was urged to report sexually explicit comments from a classmate, but no action was taken when she was called a racial slur at school, said parent Caroline Elander.  “I don’t feel like educators are given enough help,” she said in the release. “Right now the staff don’t know how to stop (bullies) from picking on other kids. There needs to be specific training to support staff to interrupt harm.” Youth advocates outlined progress made in some areas, such as students in White River Valley School District creating a youth council to process cases of harassment and bullying. They demanded the state agency implement student-driven priorities — such as whistleblower protection, mandatory intervention and restorative justice — to address “the growing crisis” of harassment incidents across Vermont schools.  “At its root, bullying and harassment is about power and abuses of power. Schools must use their power to intervene on behalf of those who are being harmed,” Alyssa Chen, co-coordinator of the Education Justice Coalition, said at the Dec. 3 press conference. The concerns “underscore the need for proactive engagement that centers the lived experiences of students, educators, and caregivers,” Ballard, the Agency of Education spokesperson, said in an email, which is why Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders reestablished the Hazing, Harassment and Bullying Advisory Council this year. “The Agency is listening, and we are deeply appreciative of the students, educators, and caregivers who have engaged in this process,” Ballard wrote. “The Agency looks forward to continuing to collectively work towards our shared goal of ensuring that every student in Vermont can learn and thrive in a safe and supportive setting where every member of the community is treated with respect.” Read the story on VTDigger here: Windham Central Supervisory Union makes historic $250K settlement to resolve student discrimination lawsuits. ...read more read less