A school district outside Worcester has settled a civil rights discrimination complaint filed two years ago by the family of two Black students who alleged months of racial bullying and harassment, according to both parties in the case on Monday.
Officials from Millbury Memorial Junior/Senior High School will pay the family an undisclosed amount and has agreed to revamp its policies on addressing discriminatory-based harassment in the school, according to Lawyers for Civil Rights, the Boston legal nonprofit that represented the family of students Melody and Kamora Dabney.
The sisters were among the few Black students at the school and faced monthslong bullying by peers, including the repeated use of racial epithets such as “monkey” and the N-word, according to the complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Trusha Vilvar, the mother of the two girls, told GBH News that the settlement means her daughters’ voices were finally taken seriously.
“This was never just about my daughters. It was about standing up for every child in the district who has experienced racism, bullying, or discrimination and felt unheard, and making sure their voices matter too,” Vilvar said in a prepared statement.
The school said that it did not admit any wrongdoing or violations of students’ civil rights in signing the settlement.
“The settlement in this case reflects the District’s decision to avoid the significant expense, uncertainty, and disruption associated with protracted litigation,” Millbury Superintendent Greg Myers wrote in an email to GBH News.
“We take concerns involving bullying, harassment, and discrimination seriously. Racism, discrimination, and harassment have no place in our schools,” Myers added.
Mirian Albert, a senior attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights who handled the complaint, told GBH News that the settlement reached in September should help other students who might face similar racism.
“The settlement goes beyond just changing policies on paper. It is about changing what happens when a child reports acts of racism at school,” Albert said. “Melody and Kimora repeatedly spoke up, but they were not meaningfully protected. So these reforms are intended to ensure that the next student who comes forward is heard and taken seriously and protected by the school.”
The Dabney sisters ultimately left the school district and are no longer students there.
Albert said the Millbury school had disciplined the two girls on several occasions, portraying them as liars and aggressors. The complaint said that the school punished Kamora Dabney for “ripping up a piece of paper handed to her by a racist white student at the school library, saying “N-word pass.” The complaint also said that Melody Dabney was suspended for adjusting her hair into a ponytail.
“Even though they were the victims, (the school) overdisciplined them,” said Albert.
An ongoing investigation by GBH News into school bullying has found a high rate of Massachusetts schools failing in recent years to investigate bullying allegations and complaints lodged by students and families, violating Massachusetts’ longstanding bullying prevention law.
A poll of more than 1,000 parents of K-12 schoolchildren in Massachusetts, released last August by the MassINC polling group, found that Latino and Black students, along with multilingual learners, experienced bullying at much higher rates than their white peers.
Albert said the federal Office for Civil Rights originally took up the complaint filed in September 2024 — under the Biden Administration. The agency took no further action on the case after that, she said, citing actions by the Trump Administration last year to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and close the Boston civil rights office.
