The League of Iowa Human & Civil Rights Agencies

In a 10-page letter to be sent on Tuesday to thousands of school districts and colleges, the Department of Education urges the nation’s educators to ensure that they are complying with their responsibilities to prevent harassment, as laid out in federal laws. The letter is the product of a yearlong review of the federal statutes and case law covering sexual, racial and other forms of harassment, officials said. Issuing the letter took on new urgency in recent weeks because of a string o...

WATERLOO - After surveying middle school students' attitudes on racism and bullying, St. Edward's School sixth-graders are proposing ways to deal with the problems. The students presented their ideas Thursday as featured speakers at the Waterloo Commission on Human Rights annual awards luncheon. The 31-question survey, part of a service learning project on the topic, was handed out to all sixth- through eighth-graders at three Cedar Valley Catholic Schools and one unnamed Waterloo public scho...

Washington – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, applauded today the introduction of the Student Non-discrimination Act of 2010 (SNDA), H.R. 4530, which would prohibit discrimination against any public school student on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. In addition, the SNDA prevents discrimination against any public school student because of the actual or per...

The Justice Department just issued a new guide for school communities with strategies to help prevent and respond to school violence.  The guide came out just days after a student walked into a class at Northern Virginia Commmunity College at Woodbridge and shot at his teacher--missing because the gun jammed--because of a poor grade. Schools tend to single out students who are bullied or who exhibit mental health problems as potential violent perpetrators, the guide says. The key is focu...

The federal government just released the latest available statistics on crime and violence in the nation’s public schools. Friday is List Day on The Sheet, so here are some of the key findings from the report, a joint project by the Justice and Education departments.  The statistics are for the 2007-08 school year (unless otherwise noted), when an estimated 55.7 million students were enrolled in prekindergarten through grade 12 in public schools across the country.

(CNN) -- Her choppy blue-and-blond hair hiding the fear in her eyes, a 15-year-old voiced her dislike for a hip-hop music group and got punched in the face by a classmate. The whole thing was caught on tape and social media helped police in their investigation. A crowd of six to 10 classmates were following the self-described emo girl and her boyfriend home from school in Newark, Ohio, on an autumn day in September. Some kids were taping it and others were egging on the assailant, who was on ...

Most everybody knows a story about a bully at school, and most everybody knows that most schools don’t do enough to address the problem. A conversation at http://www.storiesfromschool.org/ between an elementary school teacher and a state legislator in Washington is revealing about how to approach the problem. http://www.storiesfromschool.org/2009/12/joint-bl...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a Christian student group that had been denied recognition by a public law school in California for excluding homosexuals and nonbelievers. The case pits anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.

The group, the Christian Legal Society, says it welcomes all students to participate in its activities. But it does not allow students to become voting members or to assume leadership posit...

A Muslim woman was asked to leave her place in line at a credit union in Southern Maryland and be served in a back room because the head scarf she wore for religious reasons violated the institution's "no hats, hoods or sunglasses" policy, the woman said yesterday.

The incident at the Navy Federal Credit Union on Saturday was the second in a month for Kenza Shelley, and Muslim advocates fear it could become a problem nationwide as many financial institutions, intent on cur...