(JASPER, Texas) — A local school district in Texas has announced plans to reduce students’ school weeks from the traditional five days to four days for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year.
The Jasper Independent School District cited teacher shortage and retention when it announced the change in a Facebook post last month and said it had conducted surveys with parents, teachers and staffers before the change was voted on by its board of trustees.
The change to a four-day school week was motivated, in part, by burnout among current teachers and difficulty recruiting new teachers, according to John Seybold, superintendent of the Jasper Independent School District.
“Teacher burnout has been an issue for a long time, but since COVID, it has seemed to expand, and it’s becoming more and more of an issue,” Seybold told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “The four-day week kind of makes it a little more manageable for them because there’s so much pressure placed on our teachers.”
He continued, “As a school district, ultimately the best thing we can do for kids is put the best possible teacher in front of them every day.”
The school district in Jasper, Texas, a city about 134 miles northeast of Houston near the eastern Texas and western Louisiana border, also plans to give teachers and school staff members a financial incentive if they stay in their positions.
Teachers would get a $3,000 stipend while staff members, such as librarians, would receive $1,500 if they remain with Jasper ISD. The funds allocated would come from the public school district’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) grants, a federal grant program under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
According to Seybold, the school district is now down to just one teacher vacancy. Prior to the changes, he said, open high school science positions “had been unfulfilled for two years.”
“Where we used to post a job and get no applications, now we’re getting multiple applications for every position. So it’s kind of worked so far,” Seybold said.
During the past two years of the coronavirus pandemic, school districts across the country have reported not only a shortage of teachers but also of substitute teachers and school support staff, such as bus drivers.
According to a study conducted last year by the American Federation of Teachers with the Rand Corporation, one in four teachers were thinking about quitting their job by the end of the school year. Teachers were also more likely to report experiencing regular job-related stress and symptoms of depression than the general population, according to the study.
Jasper’s school district serves over 2,230 students in pre-K through 12th grade, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education, which also showed there were 175 teachers and 196 full-time staffers in the district.
All students in Jasper’s public school system would be subject to the four-day school week.
Jasper ISD isn’t the only district to have changed students’ school weeks. Other Texas school districts that have adopted four-day school weeks include Devers ISD and Athens ISD, which promotes its “four-day instructional week” on its district homepage.
Other states — including Oregon, Montana, Colorado and Oklahoma — have also implemented four-day school weeks with mixed results.
According to one study from researchers at Oregon State and Montana State University, which examined 2005-2019 test scores from over 341,000 Oregon high schoolers, students’ math test scores appeared to decline on average after switching to a four-day school week in a non-rural district.
In other states, such as California and New Jersey, school districts have prioritized different changes, like starting school later in the day, in a push to address the growing mental health crisis among students.
The conditions of a four-day school week also vary based on a school’s district and state mandates. Some districts have added more time to each of their four days or included more days in the academic calendar.
In Jasper, the next academic year would kick off on Aug. 10 and run through June 1, 2023, but the four-day schedule wouldn’t begin until the week of Oct. 3, according to an academic calendar posted on the district’s website. From October through the end of April, students would report to school only from Mondays through Thursdays, and teachers would use Fridays as professional development days.
“The kids are going to school virtually the same amount of time,” said Seybold. “They’re still getting their required minutes.”
Two of the downsides to a four-day school week are an increased risk of food insecurity among students and that parents and caregivers could find it harder to secure child care with an extended weekend, according to a 2021 study and research compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures respectively.
Seybold said the Jasper ISD is working with a local YMCA to secure additional programming for kids and with a food bank to make sure kids who qualify have food to cover long weekends.
(NEW YORK) — Awoman who attacked a Black teen at a luxury New York City hotel after falsely accusing him of stealing her cellphone has pleaded guilty to hate crime charges.
Miya Ponsetto, 23, was charged with child endangerment, attempted assault, attempted robbery and grand larceny after she wrongly accused and physically attacked the 14-year-old son of Grammy-winning trumpet player Keyon Harrold on Dec. 26, 2020, at the hotel where Harrold and his family were staying.
In a video recorded by Harrold, a woman later identified by authorities as Ponsetto could be seen yelling at the teen and lunging at him. Harrold’s son could also be heard denying that he stole the phone as numerous witnesses attempted to intervene.
Ponsetto’s cellphone was later found by an Uber driver, national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Harrold family, announced after the incident.
Ponsetto was arrested on Jan. 7, 2021, in her hometown of Piru, California, after fleeing from Ventura County Sheriff’s Department deputies as they tried to make a traffic stop on a fugitive warrant for her arrest, officials said. The next day, she agreed to be extradited to New York.
On Monday, she pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment as a hate crime.
Ponsetto apologized for her actions in an interview with “CBS This Morning” that aired in January 2021.
“I don’t feel that that is who I am as a person. I don’t feel like this one mistake does define me,” she said during the interview, which was filmed shortly before her arrest. “But I do sincerely from the bottom of my heart apologize that if I made the son feel as if I assaulted him or if I hurt his feelings or the father’s feelings.”
Ponsetto’s former attorney, Sharen Ghatan, said in a statement to ABC News in January 2021 that she was “extremely concerned” about Ponsetto’s mental state.
“It is clear that she is emotionally unwell,” Ghatan said.
Ponsetto was previously arrested in California three times in 2020. In February 2020, she was arrested for public intoxication after getting into a fight outside a hotel, charging documents show.
In May 2021, she was charged with driving under the influence after someone called police when they saw her get into a car leaving a grocery store while apparently intoxicated. Police found open containers of alcohol and marijuana in her car when they pulled her over, according to charging documents.
Ponsetto was arrested a third time in October 2020 after she allegedly got into a physical altercation with her mother after leaving her car abandoned at a nearby intersection and then tackled a responding officer to the ground. She was charged with DUI, driving with a suspended license and resisting arrest, and her blood alcohol limit was 0.14, almost twice the legal limit, police said.
In a statement Monday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg described Ponsetto’s behavior at the New York hotel as “outrageous.”
“As a Black man, I have personally experienced racial profiling countless times in my life, and I sympathize with the young man victimized in this incident,” Bragg said. “This plea ensures appropriate accountability for Ms. Ponsetto by addressing underlying causes for her behavior and ensuring this conduct does not reoccur.”
Currently, Ponsetto faces up to four years in prison but can plead down to a misdemeanor after abiding by the terms of her probation in a separate case in California for the next two years.
ABC News could not immediately reach an attorney for Ponsetto for comment.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso and Marlene Lenthang contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — During the past two years of the coronavirus pandemic, during which federal student loan payments were put on pause, Marquita Prinzing, of Renton, Washington, said she went through a divorce and bought a home on her own.
Those are two things Prinzing, a mom of two who works full-time, said would have been difficult or impossible to do had she had to pay hundreds of dollars of student loan payments each month to pay down her approximately $100,000 remaining debt.
Now, as Prinzing looks to her future, she said she feels like her life is on hold as she waits to learn whether her loan will be forgiven or whether she’ll have to continue to repay her loans starting in the fall, when the current pause is scheduled to end.
“It means I can’t really think of a different or bigger future,” Prinzing, 38, a first-generation college graduate, told Good Morning America. “It means I am where I’m at, stable right now, because I have to deal with the loan payments and all of what’s going to come back.”
Ameshia Cross, 34, of Washington, D.C., said she, too, is living in flux during the payment pause as her family’s primary provider.
A first-generation college student who adopted her siblings after their mother died, Cross said she has the thought of payments resuming on her six-figure student debt looming over her as she tries to make decisions like whether to move her grandmother to a better care facility or how to care for her brother, who has a developmental disability.
“That this process has been kind of a stopgap measure and not knowing when it might end completely is a very scary place to be,” Cross, assistant director of communications for The Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on student equity, told GMA. “Because you don’t control the family issues or the family situation or the economic situation you’re born into, you do the best with what you have.”
The Education Trust released a report earlier this month, “How Black Women Experience Debt”, that found Black women receive little help when it comes to repaying their student loans. According to the report, 12 years after starting college, Black women owe 13% more than they borrowed, while white men, on average, have paid off 44% of their debt.
Brittani Williams, a senior policy analyst in higher education at The Education Trust and a co-author of the report, is a mother of three who said she currently owes tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, a number that will continue to grow as she is pursuing her doctorate degree.
“There is great anxiety around how will we repay these student loans back, majorly because I am a parenting student,” Williams, 32, of Washington, D.C., told GMA. “While maybe a non-parenting student may have ‘discretionary income,’ I don’t necessarily see that … so sometimes it comes down to what bills are going to be paid.”
On April 6th, President Joe Biden announced another extension in the pause in federal student loan payments — until Aug. 31 — marking the sixth extension to the program in the two years of the pandemic. It comes less than a month before payments were scheduled to restart on May 1, potentially affecting millions of borrowers who have not been making payments.
Bank surprises single mom by paying off $150K in student loans
“If loan payments were to resume on schedule in May, analysis of recent data from the Federal Reserve suggests that millions of student loan borrowers would face significant economic hardship, and delinquencies and defaults could threaten Americans’ financial stability,” said Biden, who faced pressure from top congressional Democrats to extend the pause or cancel student loan debt altogether, a position that has divided the party.
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, progressive icons Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and many others in their party have been calling on Biden to use executive authority to cancel $50,000 in student debt for all borrowers, though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the president lacks the authority to cancel this debt. Biden pledged to approve $10,000 in student loan forgiveness for every federal borrower during his campaign, but he has yet to do so, expanding parts of existing loan forgiveness programs instead.
Why Black women are so impacted by student debt
As the political debate over student loans continues and the pause remains extended, it is Black women like Prinzing, Williams and Cross who remain disproportionately impacted, data shows.
In the United States, women hold nearly two-thirds of all outstanding loans, according to an analysis by the American Association of University Women.
And Black women are the most likely of any gender group to have student loans, with around one in four Black women having student debt, according to the Census Bureau.
According to the Association of University Women’s analysis, Black women have the highest average total of student debt, at $41,466 for undergraduate and $75,085 for graduate school one year after graduating.
Why Black women are so impacted by student debt is attributable to several factors, including the change decades ago when financing for college began to fall more on individual families, according to Laura Hamilton, professor of sociology at University of California, Merced, and co-author of a report on student debt cancellation.
“When you think about shifting the burden of financing higher education to families, black families in the U.S. have historically had less access to wealth and income, so they haven’t been as able to finance their students’ education because of structural racism and historical discrimination,” Hamilton told “GMA.” “And now Black women are really leading the way in attending college, but they’re doing it without having as much family support because of those structural barriers.”
Many Black women are also first-general college students, which means they may have less knowledge of applying for financial aid and less knowledge of the ins and outs of repayment, experts said. That is what happened to Prinzing, who said she accumulated the majority of loans while getting her master’s degree in education.
“I’m a first-generation college graduate, so I had no idea about college. I had no idea about applying for anything,” Prinzing said. “I had no idea after graduating what consolidation was. I had no idea about loan forgiveness. I had no idea how to navigate the system to work in my favor.”
Once Black women graduate college, they face both a gender and racial wage gap that sees them typically being paid 63 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, according to the National Women’s Law Center, a policy-focused organization that fights for gender justice.
As a result of the wage gap, Black women, on average, lose $2,009 each month, $24,110 annually, and $964,400 over the course of a 40-year career, according to the law center.
“Black women are borrowing more because they lack family wealth and they are paid less to do the same jobs at the same educational level as white men and other people other genders and races,” said Victoria Jackson, co-author of the report with Williams and assistant director of higher education policy at The Education Trust. “Those things are coming together to create this crisis for Black women.”
Williams and Jackson said they applaud the Biden administration for extending the payment pause, and would like to see him continue to extend it through the end of the year. Ideally they said they would like to see student loans forgiven, which would give an advantage to Black women, who are so disproportionately impacted.
“If federal policymakers don’t figure out a way to end this, this student debt crisis, I’m afraid we’re going to end up right back in the same situation that we were in right before we received the pause,” Williams said.
According to Hamilton’s research, released by the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank, forgiving student loans could, “play a critical role in addressing the racial wealth gap and building the Black middle class.”
“The people who would really benefit are upwardly mobile, Black and Latinx people who are in the 50th to 98th income percentiles,” Hamilton said. “These are folks that are seriously striving, facing lots of barriers, attempting to be secure, but are being really held back by these enormous debts.”
Jamie Walker-Sallis, of Davenport, Iowa, made her final student loan payment this year, at age 50. She said the burden of student loans loomed over her entire adult life, impacting decisions she had to make, like not pursuing a doctorate degree for a fear of more loans to not having a choice to stay home while her two children were young.
Walker-Sallis said her nearly $100,000 remaining debt was forgiven after the Biden administration expanded eligibility guidance during the pandemic for a student loan forgiveness program for public service workers. She said student loan debt was not even “really a conversation” when she started college over three decades ago.
“It’s first and foremost now because it’s such a hindrance and it can change your trajectory,” Walker-Sallis said. “I hear kids saying now they don’t want to go to college because they don’t want student loan debt.”
“No one wants this burden,” she continued. “It is a true burden.”
ABC News’ Trish Turner, Molly Nagle and Rebecca Gelpi contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A major spring storm hits the western U.S. Monday with snow, high winds and blizzard conditions.
The storm will move into the central U.S. on Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing a multi-day severe weather outbreak to millions.
Another storm system in the mid-South will bring the first round of severe weather Monday night, before the more widespread severe weather moves in.
Residents located in areas from Texas to southern Illinois, including major cities like Dallas, Little Rock and Memphis, can expect to see damaging winds, scattered hail and a few tornadoes Monday. Little Rock has the highest chance for very large hail and a strong tornado or two.
By Tuesday night major cities such as Dallas, Kansas City and Des Moines can expect to see strong tornadoes and huge hail.
The highest threat for tornadoes on Tuesday will likely be areas north of Kansas City and across much of Iowa.
On Wednesday, a severe threat will move east, heading into the Great Lakes, Ohio, Tennessee Valleys and the Gulf Coast.
Major cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Nashville, Little Rock and Jackson will be in the bull’s-eye for strong tornadoes, huge hail and damaging winds.
Severe weather will extend all the way to the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans, through Wednesday night.
After a weekend of heat waves in the West, a new storm is expected to bring in heavy snow and strong winds. Some areas throughout the West could see more than 2 feet of snow and wind gusts up to 80 mph. In addition, blizzard warnings extend from Montana to the Dakotas this week.
(NEW YORK) — As COVID-19 cases continue to tick up in the United States, the Northeast appears to be fueling the increase.
Four of the five states with the highest seven-day case rates per 100,000 are in the Northeast. In the 10 states with the highest seven-day rates, seven are Northeastern, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rhode Island currently has the highest seven-day case rate at 172.4 cases per 100,000 people. This is nearly three times higher than the national rate of 59.4 cases per 100,000 people.
As of Friday, the Ocean State has also seen its average daily number of cases increase 53% over a two-week period from 170 per day to 260 per day, CDC data shows.
Other Northeastern states seeing increases include Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Maine and Connecticut.
In particular, New York and New Jersey have seen their average daily cases increase by 64%, the CDC data shows.
Experts said one of the reasons for the rise in cases is the spread of BA.2, a subvariant of the original omicron variant that is more transmissible.
In the Northeast, BA.2 accounts for more than 84% of COVID-19 cases that have undergone genomic sequencing, more than any other region in the country, according to the CDC.
Dr. Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told ABC News that early evidence suggests people who were infected with the original omicron variant during the previous wave may now have some immunity against BA.2.
He suggested states that were able to have better control of cases earlier may currently be more vulnerable to infections.
“States that did a good job controlling infections with mandates, most in the Northeast and West, are more susceptible now with BA.2,” he said.
Mokdad compared Maine and Florida using data from the institute, which projects COVID-19 cases around the country.
“We estimate that 54% of people in Maine have been infected at least once as of April 4,” he said. “So, we estimate that 60% are immune. We estimate that 87% of people in Florida have been infected at least once as of April 4. We estimate that 80% are immune.”
Another reason Northeastern states may be seeing case increases is due to the lifting of mask and vaccine requirements, the experts said.
“Not only is BA.2 extraordinarily transmissible, but now, consistent with CDC guidelines, many people are going to crowded indoor events and outdoor events without wearing a mask and not social distancing,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told ABC News. “In anticipation of summer … people are eager to see family and friends and engage in near-normal activities again.”
However, the experts warned the true number of cases could be even higher as some states shift their COVID-19 testing strategy.
In late February, the Rhode Island Department of Health announced that — starting March 7 — state-run testing sites would not accept asymptomatic patients unless they had been in close contact with a person who tested positive for the virus.
“Focusing testing efforts at Rhode Island’s state-run testing sites on people who are symptomatic and people who are close contacts will ensure that people who are positive and eligible for treatment can be quickly connected to treatment,” the department said in a news release.
Schaffner said he expects that the rise of cases in the Northeast will be followed in the next few weeks by increases in the Midwest, the South and the West.
“This is reminiscent of the very beginning of COVID here in the United States,” he said. “The Northeast led the rest of the country; they had the most infections for quite a period of time before the COVID virus spread to the rest of the county. So perhaps this is a little bit of history repeating itself.”
However, the doctors reiterated that unvaccinated people are at the highest risk of severe illness and death from BA.2 and stressed the importance of getting vaccinated and boosted.
(CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa) — Police in Iowa are investigating the scene of a nightclub shooting that killed two people and injured 10 others.
Shots broke out Sunday at the Taboo Nightclub and Lounge on Third Street in downtown Cedar Rapids just before 1:30 a.m., according to the Cedar Rapids Police Department.
Cedar Rapids police officers were on routine downtown patrol when the shooting occurred and “were able to respond immediately,” according to the police department.
The two victims were pronounced dead at the scene, while the 10 injured were treated at area hospitals, police said. Their conditions were not released by police.
It is unclear what led to the shooting. Police did not release information on whether the gunman was in custody but announced around 6 a.m. that the scene was secure and there was no threat to public safety.
Investigators are asking that anyone present at the time contact the police department.
ABC News’ Keith Harden contributed to this report.
(CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa) — Police in Iowa are investigating the scene of a nightclub shooting that killed two people and injured 10 others.
Shots broke out Sunday at the Taboo Nightclub and Lounge on Third Street in downtown Cedar Rapids just before 1:30 a.m., according to the Cedar Rapids Police Department.
Cedar Rapids police officers were on routine downtown patrol when the shooting occurred and “were able to respond immediately,” according to the police department.
The two victims were pronounced dead at the scene, while the 10 injured were treated at area hospitals, police said. Their conditions were not released by police.
It is unclear what led to the shooting. Police did not release information on whether the gunman was in custody but announced around 6 a.m. that the scene was secure and there was no threat to public safety.
Investigators are asking that anyone present at the time contact the police department.
ABC News’ Keith Harden contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — It was a chaotic meteorological transition into spring as March saw the highest number of tornadoes in a single month in U.S. history.
At least 218 tornadoes occurred in March, with many of the tornadoes happening toward the end of the month, according to the National Weather Service.
On March 30, eight states in the South and Midwest were under tornado watch.
The severe weather spawned nearly 30 tornadoes and killed two people who were inside mobile homes in Washington County, Florida. Two other people inside one of the destroyed mobile homes were injured, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.
A powerful EF-3 twister with winds up to 145 mph tore through Springdale, Arkansas, on March 29, injuring seven people and inflicting heavy damage to an elementary school, the NWS reported.
Earlier in the month, more than 60 tornadoes occurred across five southeastern states. A funnel cloud that caused severe damage over a 2-mile stretch in St. Bernard’s Parish, Louisiana, on March 22 killed one person and hospitalized seven others, St. Bernard’s Parish President Guy McInnis told ABC News.
That tornado was measured to be an EF-3 with winds of at least 130 mph, according to the NWS.
A tornado on March 21 killed a 73-year-old woman and injured 10 others in Grayson County, Texas, said Sarah Somers, the director of the county’s office of emergency management.
On March 5, seven people, including two children under the age of 5, were killed when a powerful EF-3 tornado ripped across central Iowa, Lucas County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Lamb told ABC News.
Up to 30 homes were destroyed in an area just north of Winterset, Iowa, announced Diogenes Ayala, the director of Madison County Emergency Management Agency, during a news conference at the time.
Even more severe weather that could conjure up more tornadoes is expected over the next several days. On Sunday and Monday, tornadoes could pop up in eastern Oklahoma, northeast Texas, southern Missouri and much of Arkansas.
On Tuesday, enhanced risks are also predicted from Iowa to Texas, with damaging winds, hail and strong tornadoes possible. That system will then shift to Arkansas and Louisiana on Wednesday.
ABC News’ Daniel Amarante and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
(GRANTVILLE, Georgia) — A $15,000 reward is being offered in the search for suspects who killed the owners of a Georgia shooting range and their teen grandson during an apparent robbery in which at least 40 guns were taken, authorities said.
The triple homicide occurred at the Lock, Stock and Barrel Shooting Range in Grantville, about 50 miles southwest of Atlanta. The bodies were discovered on Friday night by Coweta County coroner Richard Hawk, the son of the slain shooting-range owners and the father of the teenager who was gunned down, police said.
“I’ve been here eight years and we’ve never had anything like this,” Grantville police Chief Steve Whitlock told ABC affiliate station WSB-TV in Atlanta. “Right now, I’m just speechless. I have a hard time talking about it because they were friends of ours. I’ve known them for a long time.”
Police identified the victims as 75-year-old Thomas Richard Hawk Sr., his 75-year-old wife, Evelyn Hawk, and their 17-year-old grandson, Luke Hawk.
Investigators suspect the killings unfolded between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Friday during an apparent armed robbery, according to a statement from the Grantville Police Department.
Richard Hawk went to the shooting range around 8 p.m. on Friday, discovered the bodies and called 911, police said.
In addition to the arsenal of guns stolen, the business’ security camera was also taken from the scene, police said.
Grantville police officials asked anyone who drove passed the gun range around the time of the killings to contact investigators and relay any information on what they saw, specifically what type of vehicles were parked outside.
The federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is assisting in the investigation. The Lock, Stock and Barrel Shooting range is a federal firearms licensee in Grantville, officials said.
The ATF joined the City of Grantville and the Georgia and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry, in announcing a combined reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the killings.
“ATF and our law enforcement partners will work tirelessly to bring the killer(s) to justice,” Benjamin Gibbons, special agent in charge of the Atlanta ATF field division, said in a statement. “The brutality of these senseless murders along with the fact that these killer(s) have acquired additional firearms make solving this case our top priority.”
The killings have rocked Grantville, the town of about 3,000 residents where Thomas and Evelyn Hawk lived for more than 30 years and were well-known in the community, according to friends.
“Tommy would do anything for anybody. It’s just a nice family. It’s been really hard,” said Whitlock, adding that he last spoke to the couple on Tuesday when he visited the shooting range.
The family was well known in the Coweta County community and investigators are still trying to piece together what led up to the shooting. https://t.co/NS9YZBgi5a
Coweta County Sheriff Lenn Wood said he was also close to the Hawk family and posted a heartfelt condolence letter on the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, saying, the Coweta County Community is “forever broken and changed by the senseless and tragic event that happened in Grantville.”
“Family was taken from the Hawk family, and us, way too soon and we are left with hurt, pain, and very little answers,” Wood wrote. “I am a life-long member of Coweta and every family, especially the Hawk family, are a valuable and precious part of my life. My heart is hurting and my prayers to our God is that He is ever present right now with Richard and his family; providing peace, strength and overwhelming love from God and our community.”
Wood added, “I am also fervently praying that God will use our law enforcement community and the Coweta Community to bring justice swiftly.”
(NEW YORK) — When Jace Dulohery started school at Oklahoma Christian University in 2020, no one knew he was transgender. He had already begun to medically and socially transition, and no one questioned him living in male housing his freshman year.
However, when he opened up to a resident assistant about being trans that year, the information made its way up the administrative ladder at the school, which is affiliated with the Churches of Christ.
Eventually, he said he was forced to live in private housing.
“There’s just no room for a normal college experience when there’s actual discrimination happening,” Dulohery told ABC News. “This is not Christian behavior. This is not loving. This is not merciful. This is not compassionate. This is not of God. This is harmful.”
Dulohery filed a Title IX complaint about the decision to move his housing, and a Title IX panel agreed that his housing had been moved due to his gender identity. It also found that he was denied entry into a male-only social club for being transgender.
However, nothing has been resolved, Dulohery said. Instead, he said the school offered to pay for therapy.
Dulohery said the university’s legal team cited the religious exemption to Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination, as the basis for its actions. It’s just one way that he says the school has become increasingly hostile against LGBTQ people on campus.
He, other LGBTQ students and allies hope that the ongoing national debate about LGBTQ discrimination in education can push their movement forward and put an end to Title IX’s religious exemption.
Advocates say the exemption claimed by Oklahoma Christian in certain circumstances, and which is claimed by more than 100 other universities, allows schools to partake in legalized discrimination against LGBTQ people, even while federal law otherwise prohibits it.
They also say that the exemptions reinforce a particular view of Christianity that they say is not reflective of the faith as a whole.
‘Legal discrimination’
Title IX and the regulations that implement it state that religious institutions do not have to abide by the law if it would be inconsistent with the organization’s religious beliefs, according to the U.S. Department of Education. This is true even if the school has taxpayer funding.
Schools don’t have to apply for an exemption, however, however, a written claim or “request” can be submitted for assurance that the exemption will be legal and acknowledged by the DOE, according to the department. They must comply with Title IX otherwise, except for the aspects that are explicitly prohibited by their religious beliefs.
The agency can deny a school’s claim if it doesn’t believe its actions are within the religious tenets. Even if a school has a religious exemption, students can still file complaints against schools for discrimination, the education department said.
Dulohery says that the exemption allows “legal discrimination” against LGBTQ people.
There are more than 100,000 LGBTQ students attending religious colleges and universities across the U.S., according to the LGBTQ advocacy group the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP).
Oklahoma Christian has submitted a request for assurance of religious exemption under certain conditions more than once, according to the documents on the Department of Education website.
The school also filed a notice of religious exemptions for certain policies, such as housing and admissions, after the DOE clarified transgender people are protected by Title IX in 2014. Both were granted.
The letter listed passages from the Old and New testaments interpreted to be against homosexuality or transgender identities. Churches of Christ is a set of autonomous organizations that share similar beliefs about Christianity.
“Universally, Churches of Christ believe that all sexual relations outside of a heterosexual marriage covenant, are sin,” read the 2014 letter to the Department of Education from university President John deSteiguer.
“Churches of Christ would oppose a person’s attempt to modify his or her birth sex and present as a sex other than his or her original birth sex, and we’ll consider one who does so misguided and a disruptive presence,” deSteiguer stated.
OC does not explicitly ban LGBTQ students from attending.
Other alleged instances at Oklahoma Christian
Dulohery’s complaint is not the only instance of alleged discrimination described by students, faculty and alumni interviewed by ABC News.
At least one faculty member and one staff member say they have been fired or resigned for supporting the LGBTQ community in some fashion.
Michael O’Keefe, who was a tenured art professor at the university for about 40 years was fired after inviting a gay man, former OC professor and alumnus Scott Hale, to speak to his class in an annual speaker series.
Hale spoke about religious trauma and growing up as a gay man, according to O’Keefe, Hale and students.
He gave a trigger warning before the talk and told students they could leave at any time if they felt uncomfortable, both Hale and O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe told ABC News no students complained to him about the lecture and that he was fired less than a week after the speech.
Oklahoma Christian University declined ABC News’ request for comment on O’Keefe’s and Dulohery’s allegations.
However, in a memo to staff about O’Keefe’s firing given to ABC News, the school stated: “The employment termination process was prompted by multiple complaints from eyewitnesses or others aware of the inappropriate and graphic language of a sexual nature, and stories shared in O’Keefe’s class.”
The memo continued, “Some of the speaker’s remarks included telling the class about his history of exposing his genitals to others.”
In the letter, the university said the decision was not based on Hale’s sexual orientation.
O’Keefe and Hale both denied this to ABC News, saying that the “exposing his genitals” anecdote was taken out of context, and the speaker was discussing an incident when he was 10 years old at a slumber party. Both men said they believe O’Keefe was fired because Hale is a gay man.
O’Keefe is considering filing an appeal over his firing with the university.
A wider reckoning
The calls for change at OC are not an anomaly.
Students at Christian schools across the country recently filed a class-action suit against the U.S. Department of Education for alleged discrimination they say they have experienced as a result of religious exemptions.
The lawsuit, filed in Oregon federal court in March 2021, aims to “put an end to the U.S. Department of Education’s complicity in the abuses and unsafe conditions thousands of LGBTQ+ students endure at hundreds of taxpayer-funded, religious colleges and universities.”
The Religious Exemption Accountability Project is behind the lawsuit.
It states that if plaintiffs win, the DOE would have to treat Title IX complaints from sexual and gender minorities at religious universities with taxpayer funding in the same manner as it does with complaints from non-religious colleges.
Its director, Paul Southwick, says it’s been a long time coming for this anger to reach a boiling point in places like OC.
“There is a significant human cost to religious exemptions,” Southwick said. “Exemptions essentially mean that no matter how great the harm is that you commit, there is no accountability for it.”
Although the DOE is the named defendant, students seeking to be part of the class action describe alleged discriminatory treatment at various Christian universities.
The lawsuit represents 33 LGBTQ students and alumni from various religious colleges and universities from across the country.
“What we see is LGBTQ+ students being sent into conversion therapy,” Southwick said. “We see students expelled, disciplined, stripped of leadership positions. We see pervasive harassment that goes unchecked” at some Christian universities.
He continued, “We see students who experience sexual assault unable to report that assault if it involves someone of the same sex or would reveal their gender identity. Because they could then be disciplined for that in the course of reporting an assault” in some cases.
The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, an organization of evangelical Christian institutions, denounced the lawsuit as an infringement on religious freedoms.
“The Title IX religious exemption has proven indispensable as contemporary notions of sexuality and gender depart, often substantially, from the religious beliefs that animate every aspect of Christian campus life,” said the CCCU in a court filing to join the litigation as a defendant, since the group would be affected by the outcome.
It continued, “Removing Title IX’s religious exemption, as applied to LGBT students or otherwise, will deprive religious colleges of the oxygen that gives them life by forbidding them, on pain of losing federal assistance for their students, from teaching and expecting adherence to their core religious beliefs.”
In June 2021, the Justice Department wrote in a court filing that it would defend the DOE and the exemption. Several motions to dismiss the case have been filed.
The DOE declined ABC News’ request for comment and pointed to the DOJ’s response.
Promise to ‘end the misuse’ of exemptions
The Biden administration made a campaign promise to “end the misuse of broad exemptions to discriminate,” according to his campaign website. Those against Title IX exemptions have applauded Biden and have used it as momentum for their cause.In 2021, the DOE clarified that Title IX covers discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
“There has been this work to try to say: to be religious, to be Christian is to be anti-LGBTQ,” said Ross Murray, a deacon and vice president of LGBTQ media watchdog GLAAD Media Institute.
He continued, “They wanted to claim a generic Christianity that they can use and mold to reinforce the existing biases and prejudices and help to bolster their discrimination.”
As OC students and faculty continue to work toward addressing allegations of discrimination on their own campus, the effort nationwide against anti-LGBTQ sentiment continues.
They say accountability will save the lives of LGBTQ students, who suffer under such policies.
“People have always been mad about the way the school has been treating them. And now inside and outside ears are listening,” Dulohery said. He said plans are in the works for in-person action against the school from students and allies alike.
“We’re gaining attention. We’re gaining traction… I really just hope they see the consequences of their actions.”
