In a press release, the department said it found the district failed to “respond to reports of sexual assault by employees and students or to coordinate its responses to such reports through its Title IX coordinators, among other Title IX violations.”

According to the department, the district specifically failed to investigate or remedy employee-to-student and student-to-student sexual assault allegations that were reported to law enforcement.

According to Alpine School District spokesperson Kimberly Bird, the compliance review began in 2020 and reviewed incidents between 2017 and 2020.

“While OCR was conducting its review, Alpine School District began taking steps to resolve self-identified compliance issues that came to our attention during the documentation-gathering process,” Bird said in an email, referencing the Office for Civil Rights.

“Many of these steps align with the resolution that has just been entered into between OCR and ASD. Some of these steps included updating Title IX related policies, ensuring more thorough training of the Title IX coordinator and school administrators, and improving documentation of Title IX issues,” she wrote.

As part of the press release, the Office for Civil Rights provided three specific examples of the district reportedly not meeting Title IX requirements.

In 2018, a teacher pleaded guilty to “unlawful sexual conduct with a minor” after performing a sexual act on a student on school property. The district allowed the teacher to resign without conducting a Title IX investigation.

In another incident, reported in 2019, a student reported a teacher had groomed her and inappropriately touched her. The district interviewed multiple students who described similar situations, but the teacher was allowed to retire that year, and the Office for Civil Rights found the district took no measures to investigate if the teacher’s actions required redress for current students.

And in 2017, a parent complained about a school employee who hugged and kissed several female elementary students, which was later confirmed with video footage. According to the press release, the district provided no evidence of disciplinary action, investigative measures or support for affected students.

Aside from incidents involving students and employees, the department also found compliance concerns with the district’s handling of reported student-to-student sexual assaults.

Between fall 2018 and spring 2020, there were 88 reported sexual assaults between students. According to the press release, the district only involved a Title IX coordinator in one report, and there was no evidence in any of the cases showing an investigation had been conducted to determine if the incidents had created a hostile environment for the harassed students.

Compliance issues were also found with handling of off-campus sexual harassment complaints, employee Title IX compliance training and sexual harassment complaint record keeping.

The district came to an agreement with the Department of Education regarding actions schools needed to take to increase Title IX compliance.

Part of the agreement includes:

• Ensuring that the district coordinates all of its efforts to comply with Title IX through its Title IX coordinator(s) moving forward.
• Notifying students, parents and employees of its designated Title IX coordinator(s).
• Revising Title IX policies and procedures to comply with the Title IX regulations.
• Disseminating a notice of nondiscrimination that complies with the Title IX regulations.
• Training employees and students regarding the district’s Title IX procedures, how to identify what constitutes sexual harassment and how to report such harassment.
• Reviewing case files for reported incidents of employee-to-student and student-to-student sexual harassment from school years 2017-18 through 2019-20 to determine if further action is needed to provide an equitable resolution of each incident.
• Improving its record-keeping system to ensure that records about sexual harassment are created and maintained and to report complete and accurate data to the Civil Rights Data Collection.
• Administering school climate surveys to students, parents and district employees.
• Reporting to OCR on its responses to reports and complaints of sexual harassment during OCR’s monitoring of the resolution agreement.

“We continue to address these specific violations and compliance concerns identified by OCR as outlined on September 20, 2023,” Bird said. “Alpine School District is committed to ongoing improvement and adherence to Title IX regulations.”