Spartanburg County School District 2 facing federal lawsuit

SPARTANBURG CO., S.C. (WSPA) – Spartanburg County School District 2 is facing two federal lawsuits.

The lawsuits were filed by the same plaintiffs who are suing the school district in state court.

The federal lawsuits were filed on July 1 and named four additional defendants who were with District 2 during the 2021-2022 school year including former Shoally Creek Elementary School Principal Laura Meyer, former assistant principal Laura Szynalski, former school counselor Rebekah Robinson and the school’s former director of elementary and middle education, Deana Watson.

The lawsuit claims students were bullied and harassed at Shoally Creek Elementary School , and the district’s policies and practices allowed the bullying to be tolerated.

In one example given in the lawsuits, in February of 2019, a second-grade boy put his hand down one of the plaintiff’s pants and then grabbed his genitals. The lawsuit states that the same second grader also slapped one of the plaintiffs on the rear-end in a separate incident.

That same lawsuit states, in total, that second-grade boy “sexually assaulted [the plaintiff] approximately 6 times at Shoally Creek during the 2021-2022 school year by grabbing his penis.”

Tyler Rody, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the school district failed to act effectively to stop the behavior of the child and failed to allow one of the plaintiff’s parents to transfer their child out of Shoally Creek.

The principal of Boiling Springs Elementary School, the new elementary that was requested, told the mother she would “accept [the] transfer request”.

“No police reports were filed because the school didn’t report it to DSS or law enforcement. That was their choice that they made, and they’re mandatory reporters,” said Rody.

According to Rody, the school district is claiming they “did everything right”.

“Their defense is that they did everything right. They don’t think they did anything wrong. They think that sexual assault can be defined in a way to sort of let them off the hook. They’re trying to qualify what happened [and] trying to change definitions and use certain definitions that favor them, instead of just taking responsibility for what happened,” said Rody.

In May, a school board member asked Superintendent , Lance Radford, to step down, claiming the board was unaware of the allegations regarding the school.

Rody went on to claim the actions of District 2 violated his client’s 14th Amendment constitutional rights among others.

“The school districts and administrators’ actions violated my clients’ constitutional rights,” Rody said. “They increased the risk of my clients being assaulted and had deliberately indifferent responses to known sexual assaults that happened under their watch. The Constitution protects us from the government and Section 1983 allows us to enforce our constitutional rights, and we have chosen to do so with the federal lawsuits.”

According to the pair of lawsuits, the plaintiffs are requesting monetary damages and a jury trial.

Rody said he’s hoping the jury trial for the state case will start this fall and the jury trial for the federal suit will begin next year.

7News reached out to Spartanburg County School District 2 and have not heard back. We will update with a statement if received later on.

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