Central Bucks says Office for Civil Rights failed to report bullied student’s abuse

After accusing one of its teachers of concealing bullying of a transgender student, the Central Bucks School District is now saying federal officials contacted by the teacher also wrongly covered up abuse.

In a letter asking the U.S. Department of Education’s Inspector General to investigate the Philadelphia office of the department’s Office for Civil Rights earlier this month, Central Bucks school board president Dana Hunter said that when the office received a complaint in spring 2022 from teacher Andrew Burgess detailing alleged bullying, assaults, and threats against the student, it should have contacted the district and local law enforcement.

Instead, the office closed the complaint, saying it could not investigate the discrimination without disclosing the student’s identity.

“The district is concerned that OCR’s Philadelphia office violated the Victims of Child Abuse Act of 1990,” requiring prompt reporting of suspected child abuse, Hunter said in the Sept. 15 letter.

The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The letter is the latest chapter in the saga around allegations Central Bucks has discriminated against LGBTQ students, which the civil rights office has investigated for the past year.

Burgess was involved in bringing those claims to the office. In addition to the since-dismissed complaint filed on behalf of the bullied student, he filed a complaint alleging he was suspended in retaliation for helping the student. He also cooperated with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which filed a complaint in October 2022 on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary students in the district, alleging the district had created a “hostile environment” for LGBTQ youth.

The ACLU accused the district of failing to address persistent bullying of LGBTQ students — a climate the organization said was worsened by discriminatory policies and directives, like calls to remove classroom Pride flags.

But Central Bucks denies the claims of unaddressed bullying — instead casting blame on Burgess. A report by the Duane Morris law firm, hired by the district to investigate and address the allegations, said Burgess had endangered the bullied student by discouraging him and his mother from going to administrators. Instead, the teacher compiled a “dossier” of assaults and threats against the student, which he then submitted to the civil rights office.

The law firm — which conducted a five-month investigation and said Democrats had “weaponized” false allegations against the school board’s Republican majority — points to notes taken by the Lenape Middle School principal, indicating that the bullied student’s mother had called the school and shared that she was given a civil rights complaint by a teacher.

She told the principal she was “confused about how this would help” her child in the short term, according to the firm’s report.

Burgess says he never encouraged the family not to report to administrators, but gave them the choice. He said the student, who had been repeatedly harassed, didn’t want to submit a report through the district’s system because it would notify the parents of those doing the bullying.

“It had already been made clear to Burgess and other teachers that the district was not taking action to address anonymously reported incidents of bullying,” the ACLU said in a lawsuit filed in April on behalf of Burgess.

In the lawsuit, Burgess said he had asked the student if he was thinking of hurting himself, but the student “earnestly told Burgess that he was not.” He said he determined the student “was not describing child abuse, as defined by Pennsylvania law, and thus the situation did not trigger the mandated reporting procedures for teachers who suspect child abuse.”

But the alleged threats and bullying would qualify as “mental injury” under the federal Victims of Child Abuse Act, Hunter said in the letter.

The office “participated in Mr. Burgess’s cover-up of abuse of a vulnerable, transgender middle-school student, endangering that student in its game of political ‘gotcha’ with the district,” Hunter said.

She said the office’s “politically motivated investigations of the district have already gone on for about a year and have been very costly, diverting scarce resources that could be used for other purposes,” and that it shouldn’t have taken the district hiring its own law firm to “learn of serious allegations of abuse of a vulnerable child.”

» READ MORE: More than 300 women teachers say Central Bucks underpaid them compared to men. Here’s what to know.

As of March, Central Bucks estimated that Duane Morris’ bills would top $1 million. The district agreed to pay U.S. attorney and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McSwain $940 an hour, and fellow former federal prosecutor Michael Rinaldi, $640 an hour.

Burgess, who was suspended by the district again after the April release of Duane Morris’ report, said the district knew who the student — who no longer attends school in the district — was and could have taken action on its own.

Rather than causing further harm, Burgess’ lawsuit says, he was the student’s “sole safe haven after the administration did nothing discernible throughout the year in response” to repeated complaints about bullying.