Students at Peoria Unified School District’s Vistancia Elementary experienced a “school-wide hostile environment” due to racial harassment, according to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The OCR determined that the district failed to address harassment of students on the basis of race, color, and national origin, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Peer harassment included race-based slurs, such as targeting the N-word and “ching chong” at students, mocking police killings of Black people, pulling eyes back to mock Asian students, mimicking “Heil Hitler” salutes, drawing Swastikas on photographs of students’ faces on notebooks and in a bathroom, and saying Black people “do not deserve to live” and “should die,” a student’s skin looked like “burnt” food, and that a student should “go back to [their] country” and “eat dog,” according to a news release issued from the Office for Civil Rights.
