A lawsuit claims the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s system for tracking bullying complaints lacks transparency, violating families’ legal rights. 

A grandmother from Park Hill near Tahlequah who has custody of her two grandchildren filed the lawsuit against State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the State Department of Education in November in Oklahoma County District Court. The woman claims that over a year after she submitted a complaint about bullying her grandchildren experienced at Keys Public Schools, the State Department of Education closed it without taking any action. 

Legal Overwatch for Parents’ School Rights, a nonprofit law firm in Oklahoma that sues school districts on behalf of parents, is representing the grandmother. The law firm’s lead attorney Maria Seidler ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Tulsa Public Schools school board earlier this year.

Seidler said she was frustrated by the State Department of Education’s lack of action on the grandmother’s complaint and similar issues. 

“I trusted that if I told (State Superintendent Ryan Walters) the right story, I gave him a pathway to the law or a path to investigate, that then they would go in, investigate deeper and do the right thing to protect these parents,” Seidler said. “It breaks my heart.” 

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The grandmother is asking the court to award her  $125,000 in compensation for each grandchild being denied a free public education and $75,000 for the emotional distress they suffered from bullying. She’s also asking for the court to order the State Department of Education to appoint an administrator to help bring non-compliant districts into compliance with the state’s bullying prevention law. 

The Frontier previously reported on the School Safety and Bullying Prevention Act, which requires schools to create policies on reporting and investigating reports. The law’s author said it hasn’t been as effective at stopping bullying as she hoped. 

The State Department of Education launched its Awareity reporting system in 2022 as a way for community members to submit reports on issues like bullying, civil rights and safety concerns. But the plaintiff claims that the state agency doesn’t have transparent policies for managing complaints, investigating claims or tracking final actions based on investigations. 

The Frontier reached out to the State Department of Education but didn’t get a response before publication. 

The grandchildren, who are identified only by their initials, suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their mother, the lawsuit claims. 

The children were malnourished and physically, socially and academically behind their classmates when their grandmother enrolled them in Keys Public Schools, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims Keys teachers did nothing to intervene when the grandchildren were bullied by their classmates.

The grandmother filed police reports related to the bullying incidents, and her lawyer sent a cease and desist letter to Keys Public Schools in December 2022 to try to put pressure on administrators. But the school took no action, the lawsuit claims.

The Frontier reached out to the Keys school district for comment but didn’t receive a response before publication. 

The grandmother and her lawyer filed a complaint with the State Department of Education in February 2023 against Keys Public Schools’ accreditation and asking for the teaching certificates of some district staff to be revoked. According to state law, the State Department of Education is supposed to investigate accreditation complaints within 30 days. The plaintiff’s complaint wasn’t closed for 458 days, according to the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit says that even small changes in school cultures could have provided hope to former Twin Hills student Eli Ballance, former Owasso student Nex Benedict and former Mustang student Jot Turner, who were victims of bullying, and the plaintiff’s granddaughter, who expressed thoughts of suicide. 

Walters didn’t address the pattern of bullying evidenced by those students’ experiences, the lawsuit claims.