The California Department of Education has determined that Kenwood Elementary School District failed to properly respond to reports that a student repeatedly called another student gay over 16 months and grabbed the shirt of her sister to inspect her undergarments. The finding, issued in a report dated Nov. 2, orders the small Sonoma County district to offer both girls counseling and retrain staff by Jan. 15, 2027.
According to the Sonoma Index-Tribune, the state education department found the district failed to appropriately respond to the situations involving the two girls, and separately determined the district failed to appropriately address the impact of the actions on the students. The decision came after the girls' mother appealed an earlier investigation report filed by Kenwood Elementary School itself.
The state's findings go beyond the outcome and criticize the process. The department said the district failed to comply with its own complaint procedures, failed to support its findings with substantial evidence and reached legal conclusions inconsistent with the law, according to the same report.
Principal Investigated Complaint Against Himself
Among the most pointed criticisms: the state noted that the investigation into the allegations was conducted by the district's superintendent, who was also a subject of the complaint. Kenwood School District identifies Nate Myers as both superintendent and principal, the only administrator overseeing the district's single school, which serves grades TK through 6. The state's report stated that compliance officers should not investigate complaints when bias or a conflict of interest could prevent a fair resolution.
The mother's own account, described in her complaint and in a letter she later sent to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, echoes that concern. She said the principal investigated her formal complaint personally and produced findings without interviewing her daughters, the newspaper's report notes.
The mother filed her original complaint with the state education department on May 15, 2026. In an Aug. 14, 2026, letter to the county board of supervisors, she wrote that her daughters began attending Kenwood Elementary in August 2024. She said the principal had written notice of daily homophobic harassment within four months of her daughters' enrollment, promised to act, did not act, and never notified her. She said that 16 months later, the same student violated the physical boundary of her other daughter. The mother alleged both daughters suffered discrimination — one because of perceived sexual orientation, the other because of gender.
Counseling and Staff Training Ordered
The state's directives set firm deadlines. The department instructed the district to offer both girls three hours of school-based emotional health counseling from a licensed therapist by Jan. 15, 2027, and to provide evidence by March 1, 2027, showing whether that offer was accepted or declined. The department separately ordered the district to train Kenwood Elementary School staff on discrimination, harassment and bullying by the same January deadline.
The mother declined to be interviewed for the newspaper's report because an active parallel complaint remained before the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, the outlet reported. The Index-Tribune said it requested comment from Myers, Sonoma County Supervisor Rebecca Hermosillo and board president Cheryl Ghisla, but none had responded to those requests.
A Federal Backdrop of Shrinking Oversight
The case lands amid a broader pullback in federal civil-rights enforcement in schools. From Jan. 20, 2025, through July 2026, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights opened an average of about 100 new investigations a month — 1,839 total — compared with an average of 310 per month in 2024, according to ProPublica. The outlet found that more than 200 new complaints concerning schools' handling of sexual violence were filed with the office during the period it examined, with investigations opened in 29 of those matters and fault found with a school district just once. ProPublica noted it's typical for the office to open at least 60 sexual-violence investigations in a given year.
That federal data offers context for the pressures facing families who pursue complaints through multiple channels, though it does not represent a direct comparison to the Kenwood case, which was resolved at the state level. For now, the deadlines set by the California Department of Education — staff training and a counseling offer by mid-January, with proof due by March — mark the next concrete milestones in a dispute that has already stretched across a school district, a county board and, by the mother's account, a federal civil rights office.
