SALT LAKE CITY: The family of a 10-year-old girl who died by suicide has accused a Utah school district that was recently reprimanded by the U.S. Department of Justice for failing to address widespread racial discrimination of not doing enough to protect their daughter who they said was bullied for being Black and autistic.
Salt Lake City police confirmed this week they are investigating the weekend death of Isabella Izzy Tichenor as a suicide. Her death has generated widespread outrage, including Wednesday from Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell, who called the case sickening.
Izzys family said in a statement that they reported the bullying to teachers, as well as school and district administrators, but nothing was done to stop the harassment, the Deseret News reported.
Nothing was done to protect Izzy,” the family said in a statement. “Children did not have their behavior corrected so the torment of this child continued day after day.
Shauna Lund, a spokeswoman for Davis School District, said Foxboro Elementary School in North Salt Lake worked extensively with the family and that the administration responded appropriately to the reports of bullying. Lund declined to share any further details to uphold the familys privacy.
We, like everyone, are devastated by the death of this child, Lund said in a statement. Our hearts go out to the family. Foxboro Elementary has worked extensively with the family and will continue to provide help to them and others impacted by this tragedy.
Several hundred people gathered at a vigil Tuesday night to remember Izzy as a giggly girl who loved Hatchimals, coloring books and the color purple, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Im not going to let her name fade, said Izzys mom, Brittany Tichenor-Cox.
She spoke from a podium draped in a Black Lives Matter flag with a large picture of Izzy in a dress smiling with the words #standforizzy at the bottom. Izzy’s 7-year-old brother Jackson also spoke.
I miss Izzy. She is my sister, and I love her, he said. She would help me when I would get bullied.
Izzy’s death comes about two weeks after a federal civil rights investigation found widespread racial harassment of Black and Asian American students at Davis School District, including hundreds of documented uses of the N-word and other racial epithets over the last five years.
Black students throughout the district told investigators about similar experiences of white and non-Black students calling them the N-word, referring to them as monkeys or apes and saying that their skin was dirty or looked like feces, according to the departments findings. Students also made monkey noises at their Black peers, repeatedly referenced slavery and lynching and told Black students to go pick cotton and you are my slave.
District officials admitted to federal investigators that their discipline data from at least four years revealed that staff treated students of color differently than white students, but the district did nothing to correct these disparities, according to the department.
The district acknowledged in a statement the investigation revealed incidents that were not handled appropriately and pledged to resolve any previous complaints. Black and Asian American students are each roughly 1% of the approximately 73,000 students enrolled in the district north of Salt Lake City.
___
Resources from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline are available at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org and the 24-hour hotline number is 1-800-273-8255.
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor
Read all the Latest News here
Comments
0 comment