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Parent tells Augusta County School Board her daughter was punished after reporting teacher harassment
Summary
A parent told the board her daughter followed district procedures to report alleged harassment by a teacher but was suspended while the accused teacher stayed in the classroom; she said she filed a Title IX complaint with the district and an Office for Civil Rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education.
Corey Lynn Newman, introduced by the board as a delegations speaker, told the Augusta County School Board that her daughter reported being harassed by a teacher on Nov. 14 and “followed every rule, every procedure.” Newman said the school administration initially was helpful, but that central office later suspended her daughter for two days.
"My daughter was still called a liar, and she was suspended from school for 2 days by Central office," Newman said, and she added that "the teacher she accused remains in the classroom without consequence and worse, continues to speak poorly about her." Newman said the teacher has emailed the student's cheer coach and made negative comments in class and directly to her younger daughter, who is also in the teacher's class.
Newman said she filed a Title IX complaint with the school board on Nov. 25 and has since filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights with the help of an attorney. "This school board may have silenced my daughter, but you will not silence her mother," she said during public comment, calling for immediate action to protect students and stop retaliation.
The parent said she does not want the issue handled in closed session and urged the board to provide public updates and transparency about how reports of alleged misconduct are handled. The transcript records no direct response from the board during the public comment segment; Newman said she had been given timelines and phone calls but no substantive updates.
The comments were made during the public-comment portion of the board's December meeting. The board later voted to convene a closed session to discuss personnel matters under Code of Virginia §2.2-3711; the transcript does not show whether the specific complaints Newman described were the subject of that closed session.
The meeting record shows Newman described both a Title IX filing with the district and an Office for Civil Rights complaint to the U.S. Department of Education. The board did not announce any discipline of the teacher during the public session, and no formal staff response to Newman's allegations appears in the recorded public remarks.
