The Board of Education will vote Wednesday on whether to approve the payment in a case involving an alleged attack by another student in a bathroom at a Rogers Park school.
Chicago Public Schools officials reached a $1 million settlement this month with the family of a former special education student who reported being sexually assaulted by a classmate in a North Side elementary school’s bathroom in 2014.
The lawsuit, filed by the boy’s family anonymously as John Doe in 2016, was into the second week of its trial before a Cook County jury when the school district negotiated a settlement, the family’s attorney said.
The $1 million settlement is up for Board of Education approval at its monthly meeting Wednesday.
“There is a sense obviously that money can’t replace what happened,” said Rafael Lázaro, the family’s lawyer. “They are happy that the process is over and they’re looking forward to actually providing the services that their child needs with the funding that’s going to come.
“I wish [CPS] had come to the table much sooner than this because the family suffered through this, and they had to fight them and had to show a lot of grit for their child.”
The boy, who is on the autism spectrum and has a learning disability, was 12 years old and in 6th grade when a bigger student in 7th grade, also in special education, allegedly sexually assaulted him in a Jordan Community Elementary School bathroom in the Rogers Park neighborhood, he reported to his parents later the same day in September 2014.
The student who reported being raped had an Individualized Education Program — a document that lays out federally mandated services based on each special education student’s unique needs — that called for supervision at all times, a requirement the family alleged was not met when a teacher sent him to the bathroom alone with the other boy.
Lázaro said the boy now has post-traumatic stress disorder along with his cognitive and physical disabilities, by which he communicates at a kindergarten level and walks slowly with an awkward gait.
“I couldn’t be prouder of this family,” Lázaro said. “They not only stood up for their child but part of their motivation was that this cannot possibly happen again. … These are the most vulnerable populations.”
The case closely mirrors another that’s currently at trial, in which a boy’s family accused CPS of failing to follow his IEP, which also called for supervision to the bathroom when he was allegedly assaulted by a classmate at Bogan Computer Technical High School in 2016. Just as it did with the case that settled this month, CPS has aggressively fought that family in court in an effort to dismiss the complaint.
“There are systematic issues at CPS that need to be addressed,” Lázaro said, referring to a 2018 report by a former federal prosecutor who found widespread mishandling of sex abuse cases in the district. “We’re still seeing cases. The system needs to change.”
Miguel Ruiz, an attorney who worked with Lázaro on the case, said victims face too high a burden proving their case in court because CPS, many times successfully, argues it’s immune from certain liabilities as a public body, leaving families with an unfulfilled need for closure and justice.
CPS spokeswoman Mary Fergus said the district “firmly believes that students who are impacted as a result of a legally-recognized failure on the district’s part should be compensated in a reasonable manner that will remedy injuries to the student.
“There is a tentative settlement agreement in place that resolves the matter in a way that is fair to the student and to the taxpayers who fund the district,” she said in a statement.