Writing on behalf of the mother of a former Shawnee Mission South student who pulled her son out of the school last month over concerns about the behavior of boys basketball coach Brett McFall, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas this week called on the district to appoint an independent investigator to look into four students’ claims of racial harassment by the coach.
In a letter delivered to Shawnee Mission Superintendent Kenny Southwick early this week, ACLU legal directors Lauren Bonds and Doug Bonney suggested that the district had failed to adequately respond to the students’ complaints, and that its failure to do so likely exposed the district to liability under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“The district is on notice that minority students at SMS have been subjected to pervasive racial harassment by Coach McFall,” reads the letter. “If the district fails to conduct a more thorough review into these complaints, it is choosing to facilitate a hostile educational environment.”
Of particular concern, argued Bonds and Bonney, was SM South principal Todd Dain’s failure to interview two players who said they could corroborate a specific complaint filed by their teammate.
In a summary of his investigation provided to a district patron, Dain claimed that he was unable to contact one of the students who filed a written report because that player had moved out of the district. However, that student still resides in the metro area and would be easy to locate for an interview.
Following the news in November that the three students had filed complaints against McFall late this summer, the mother of a fourth player approached Dain and said her son could corroborate what the other students had said about the coach’s behavior. According to the ACLU letter, Dain declined to interview that student. The mother pulled her son out of Shawnee Mission schools last month as a result of the interaction with Dain, saying she did not believe the district was taking its obligation to provide a discrimination-free environment to her son seriously.
Bonds and Bonney said Dain’s decision not to talk to those students suggests the district needed to revisit its fact-finding process:
USD 512’s decision to forgo interviewing [the students] raises grave concerns about the adequacy of the district’s investigation into complaints against Coach McFall. By omitting interviews with two key witnesses, the district has fallen far short of its threshold fact finding obligations under Title VI. Thus, Dr. Dain’s investigation is at best incomplete…
Further, we urge USD 512 to appoint an independent investigator to look into the allegations against Coach McFall. It is a well-established best practice in harassment investigations to appoint a fact finder with no ties to any of the parties. Dr. Dain is McFall’s direct supervisor and their relationship may compromise his ability to assess the complaints in an unbiased manner. Thus, USD 512 should select an investigator outside SMS to continue the investigation.
Bonds said that as of Thursday afternoon, the ACLU had not received a response from the district.
The ACLU of Kansas this week also sent a letter to the district requesting that it remove its restriction on criticism of district employees and members of the board of education from the new board procedures manual.