Lawsuit Against Pueblo 60 School District Alleges Severe Racial Bullying
A lawsuit was filed Thursday against Pueblo School District 60 and the principal of an elementary school for one 12-year-old girl’s years of racial bullying and harassment.
The bullying got so bad that stress sent her to the hospital for emergency stomach surgery and left her years behind in reading and math. This was despite repeated requests by her mother, Salina Cummings, to the school and district to stop the verbal and physical abuse from other students.
The lawsuit alleges racial discrimination based on Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin.
It also alleges sex discrimination based on Title IX and includes a third equal protection claim alleging the racial hostility Jaleigha’Nisa, who is Black and Mexican, experienced was so severe and pervasive, it deprived her of equal educational opportunities.
“They were telling me to go back to Africa and eat chicken off the ground and calling me the N- word, and also threatening to hang me and shoot me in my sleep,” said Jaleigha’Nisa softly.
She doesn’t like to talk about the time she was enrolled at Columbian Elementary School.
The lawsuit alleges that Pueblo 60 showed “deliberate indifference” to the racist abuse and harassment of Jaleigha’Nisa by failing to adequately investigate, discipline, and take remedial steps to protect her. It calls Columbian principal Jimmie Pool’s conduct shocking.
“Defendants should be held accountable so that no other student in the school district should ever have to suffer the same way,” said the lawsuit.
Pueblo 60 School District has not yet reviewed the lawsuit.
The district has policies on non-discrimination, harassment and bullying, which require schools to conduct timely investigation and resolve of complaints. Under federal law, schools are required to protect students from racial and sex discrimination.
The suit filed against the Pueblo 60 School District alleges constant bullying
Jaleigha’Nisa transferred to Columbian Elementary in fourth-grade, after being bullied by peers in three other schools. At one of those schools a student threatened to stab and kill her.
Within a few weeks at Columbian, which last year had nine Black students out of the school’s 333, classmates were hurling racial slurs at her in person and on social media. Students threatened to stab and kill Jaleigha’Nisa and burn her to death in her sleep. They punched her.
They called her “dyke,” “N—” and “porch monkey” and slapped her across the face, according to the lawsuit. Once the school issued a “no contact contract” between students when Jaleigha’Nisa fought back once when a student threatened to hurt Jaleigha’Nisa’s younger sister.
Cummings, Jaleigha’Nisa’s mother, went to the school repeatedly to report incidents to the school officials and to members of the school board. She said principal Pool would either downplay the incidents or promise he would talk to the children tormenting Jaleigha’Nisa.
“I was up there literally every single day, every day trying to get Mr. Pool to do something about it,” said Salina Cummings, Jaleigha’Nisa’s mom.
She said there was never mediation and none of the students engaged in bullying her daughter were ever reprimanded.
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