Izzy Tichenor is 10, black, autistic, and dead by her own hand.
She committed suicide on Saturday, November 6, 2021, after relentless bullying and teasing by other students, including frequent use of the “N” word, which her teacher and principal ignored despite her parents’ repeated complaints. (Story here; obituary here.) The little girl couldn’t take it anymore and killed herself.
The Davis School District in northern Utah, whose students are mostly white, is so bad (details here) it was investigated and placed under supervision by the U.S. Department of Justice.
But the problem reaches far beyond Foxboro Elementary School and uncaring school officials. It’s the entire community. A local parent slammed “the culture in this county,” calling it “not what we want for our children.” (See story here.)
This school district is notorious for that; Wikipedia says (here),
“In 2019 a Davis school bus driver closed the bus doors on the backpack of a boy, pinning him outside the bus and dragging him forward a couple hundred feet. His family sued the driver, alleging this was done intentionally to racially harass the boy, who was biracial. They pointed to previous instances of racial harassment by the driver and attempts at retaliation for reporting him. The district settled the suit for $62,500 and acknowledge the ‘racial assault’. A investigation by the United States Department of Justice followed … [and] found that racial harassment was widespread in the school district and hundreds of complains were intentionally unaddressed.”
Needless to say, the school district will be sued again. The family’s attorney is promising to make the school district “cough up a huge sum of money so that they know that they can never afford to do it again.” Roughly translated, he means millions of dollars. In addition to the family’s wrongful death claim, Utah allows punitive damages, and the school district’s track record certainly seems to support an award of exemplary damages. With those damages, the sky is the limit.
Trouble is, the school district probably won’t pay, more likely an insurance company will. But insurance companies have leverage. They can refuse to insure incorrigible clients. Maybe that’ll change things in Davis County. But for one little girl, that will come too late.
