The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has reached an agreement with Norwin School District, a suburban district 20 miles east of Pittsburgh, over a series of “severe and pervasive” civil rights violations in 2021.
OCR found that, over the course of 10 months, students repeatedly engaged in racial harassment, creating what officials deemed a “racially hostile environment.” Federal officials said while district leaders were made aware of the harassment at the time, they failed to take the steps necessary to end it or tend to students affected.
According to agency investigators, white students wore confederate flag attire during a “’Merica” themed spirit day, told a Black student to “go pick cotton” and posted racial slurs to social media.
After one such incident — in which a white student posted a video to social media with racially offensive language — one of the district’s only Black students emailed teachers and administrators to express concern.
“Things like this affect me often. This video just lets you see a little part of what it is like for a black person in our majority-white school,” said the student, according to OCR’s investigation.
Norwin School District, located in Westmoreland County, serves students in North Huntingdon and Irwin. Just 1.4% of the district’s 1,627 high school students during the 2020-2021 school year were Black.
The district’s school board, in 2022, enacted a ban on curricula based on critical race theory. One conservative board member proposed prohibiting any discussion of systemic racism after 1965, calling systemic racism after that time “a myth.”
Federal officials are now requiring the district to offer counseling and other remedial services to students affected by the 2021 incidents, including reimbursement for private psychological support families may have required during that time.
The district must also review and revise its policies to ensure they satisfy federal non-discrimination laws, as well as provide training to students and staff on those procedures. OCR has tasked the district with hiring a consultant to support school leaders in fulfilling its agreement with the agency.
In a statement Wednesday, Norwin district officials expressed their commitment to providing equal opportunities to all students without discrimination. School leaders, however, noted their concerns about the scope of the OCR’s investigation and subsequent agreement.
“A letter from OCR dated October 2, 2024 appears to suggest that the issues outlined in therein persist today, when in fact a review of the specific issues reveals that most, if not all, of the incidents described therein involved issues which arose three or more years ago, and some issues which arose in the summer when school was not in session,” the district wrote.
According to Norwin officials, the complaint filed with OCR in October 2021 exclusively focused on the incident in which two students wore clothing bearing the confederate flag during the high school’s spirit week.
At the time, school administrators gave the students a verbal warning and asked them to change their attire before returning to class. But OCR investigators later found that none of the district administrators interviewed considered the incident to be racial harassment, “despite the clear evidence of a severe and pervasive racially hostile environment presented to the district in the form of voluminous student, former student, parent, teacher and community emails.”
“Worse, the then-superintendent minimized the severity of the conduct in an email to school board members, and in a press release that same evening,” OCR wrote.
In their statement Wednesday, school district officials said they remain committed to moving forward in a “positive and collaborative fashion,” despite their concerns over the investigatory process.
In compliance with the resolution agreement, the district must hold an orientation session for all Norwin middle and high school students on district policies prohibiting race-based discrimination and harassment.
