As Carroll ISD parents and students wait for the district to negotiate with the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights over an ongoing civil rights investigation, the groups have outlined the resolution they hope to achieve.

On May 6, the Office of Civil Rights told members of ​​Cultural & Racial Equity for Every Dragon, a group of parents of Black Southlake students, and the Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition, a group of current and former CISD students, that it has initiated negotiations with CISD after yearslong investigations in four complaints filed by the groups in 2021. This comes on the heels of the district’s recent denouncement of federal Title IX changes.

At a minimum, the district needs to implement actionable steps to protect against harassment so students have a safe place to go to school, said Raqiyyah Pippins, a partner attorney at Arnold & Porter, a legal firm that represents the two groups alongside NAACP firm Legal Defense Fund.

The backstory

Members of ​​CREED and the SARC submitted an open letter to administrators on May 8 after the OCR found the district was in “violation of students' civil rights,” urging the district to respond to the federal government, according to the letter.


The complaints chronicled instances where students were subject to racial slurs, homophobic comments, and other verbal and physical harassment based on race, gender identity and sexual orientation without appropriate intervention from school officials and administrators, according to the letter.

The OCR “only initiates negotiations in complaints for which it found that the school district violated the complainant’s civil rights,” according to a Legal Defense Fund news release.

The details

Both groups hope the district enters into a resolution with OCR, Pippins said, and that, at minimum, the resolution includes the following:
  • Diversity and inclusion training for students and staff
  • Staff training on how to recognize and appropriately respond to discrimination and harassment
  • Establishment of a robust complaint system for addressing discrimination and harassment
  • Support for to students who experience harassment
  • Applications approved and resources provided to support identity-based student organizations
Additionally, requiring age-appropriate training for students on what constitutes discrimination based on race and sex, how to recognize and report it, and offering support to students who are victims of it are all necessary, Pippins said.


The groups would also like to see the district adopt a robust antidiscrimination and antiharassment policy as well as a policy that encourages students to report incidents of harassment, publicizes how to report discrimination, outlines interventions CISD will use to investigate and respond to incidents, and mandates collection of data, she said.

Looking ahead

At the May 15 meeting, board President Cameron Bryan said the district plans to have a phone call with the OCR but won’t entertain any recommended actions until district officials and board members can review the findings or conclusions, or the evidence driving their claims.