Superintendent says student safety a priority as board considers administrators’ defense

The Bellingham Public Schools board has approved providing and funding the legal defenses of three assistant principals who are accused of failing to report a student’s sexual assaults.

The board unanimously approved providing and funding the legal defense for the administrators at its regularly-scheduled Wednesday evening, Dec. 14, meeting.

The item passed as part of the board’s consent agenda. The items listed on the consent agenda can be approved by the board by a single motion, but any item can be removed by majority vote of the board and placed on the regular agenda, according to the board’s document portal.

No discussion of the item or removing it from the consent agenda took place at the meeting Wednesday evening.

As part of Washington state’s laws regarding the abuse of children, public employers are required to provide legal defense for public employees who are required to report abuse when the public employee “acts in good faith and without gross negligence, and if the employee’s judgment as to what constitutes reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect is being challenged.”

Baker had previously reviewed and approved of the board’s resolution to retain attorneys on behalf of the administrators and pay for the costs of defending the administrators against their criminal citations, school board documents show.

The three administrators were criminally cited Dec. 7 for failing to report, which is a gross misdemeanor, the assaults a female student brought to their attention. All three administrators — Jeremy G. Louzao, Meghan V. Dunham and Maude Chimere Hackney — are mandatory reporters, which requires them by law to report any suspected abuse or neglect of a child to law enforcement or the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Hackney is an assistant principal at Bellingham High School, while Louzao and Dunham are assistant principals at Squalicum High School. None of them have been placed on paid administrative leave and all three are continuing to work in their normal capacities and have the school district’s support in doing so, a previous statement from Superintendent Greg Baker said.

The 15-year-old male student accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting the female student while they both attended Squalicum High School was charged Feb. 17 with one count of indecent liberties by forcible compulsion, a felony, in Whatcom County Juvenile Court, which is a division of the county’s Superior Court.

He is also facing charges in two other criminal cases, juvenile court records show.

The 16-year-old female student had her attorney file a federal civil rights lawsuit Dec. 7 in the Western District of Washington in Seattle against Bellingham Public Schools. In the lawsuit, the student alleges the school district failed her and showed a pattern of “extreme and outrageous conduct” after she reported the assaults to the three school administrators, violating her federal Title IX rights, the federal court records show.

In a Wednesday afternoon statement, Baker said that focus of teachers and school staff across all schools is to support their students. He called attention to the commitments made in the district’s Bellingham Promise and said staff are working to “look for opportunities for improvements” in district policies related to how school staff handle student reports of sexual assault and harassment.

Baker said student safety will be a priority in 2023 and said district staff take their duties as mandatory reporters seriously.

He declined to comment on the federal civil rights lawsuit, or the criminal citations issued to the three assistant principals, saying that “this matter is being litigated, and we cannot compromise these legal processes, so we are limited in what we can share.”

“It is important to remember that anyone accused of a crime has rights, including a presumption of innocence and an opportunity to defend themselves through the justice system,” Baker’s Wednesday statement said. “What we can tell you regarding an incident in January at Squalicum High School is that our staff received information and took good-faith actions to support and protect a student based on the information they received.”

Baker said the details regarding the information reported to school administrators and the actions they took in response to the information “are intimately tied to the legal issues being considered by the courts.”

“We, as a district — including all staff — strive to support, care for, listen to, inspire, teach and learn from our students,” Baker’s Wednesday statement said. “We believe all students deserve to be safe and feel safe in our schools, and we are committed to doing the work with our community.”