Report: Vt. school district violated civil rights

SPRINGFIELD — Federal investigators say a Vermont school district violated civil rights laws while responding to an incident in which a teacher’s aide threatened an African-American sixth-grader and then used a racial epithet.
After a two-year-investigation, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has reached a settlement with the Springfield School District. The Valley News reports the district is required to pay nearly $3,000 in counseling services for the student and increase regulations in training for employees.
The agency says in 2010, an aide at Riverside Middle School told the student if he didn’t stop using a yardstick to sword-fight with another student, the aide would “shove it” into him “and then used the epithet. The aide resigned. The child now attends school elsewhere.