In 2023, facing criticism over the handling of sexual harassment complaints, the new president of an elite, state-funded boarding school promised to write a new, more positive chapter.
“Know that I, as the new president, am absolutely committed to continuing a professional, positive, and healthy workplace at OSSM and that I have the full support of the OSSM governing board,” stated Tony Cornforth, who taught at the school 21 years before being promoted to president in 2023.
And yet, in the fall of last year, an administrator resigned with a dire message to the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics board.
“The school is one serious incident away from a crisis that could erase years of goodwill,” wrote Cecil Lewis, whose tenure as vice president for academics lasted just four months.
One of his top concerns was that the school refused to adopt discrimination protections that apply to nearly every other school under federal laws, including Title IX, Section 504 and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Those laws protect students from sex-based harassment and violence and ensure students with disabilities have equal access to educational opportunities. The laws apply to every public school, college and university, and most private institutions, too. OSSM’s leaders believe the school is exempt because it doesn’t receive federal funding.
Lewis characterized that assessment as dangerously incomplete. The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, he wrote, indicated to the school that even without federal funding, the spirit of those laws needed to be followed. A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office was unable to confirm Lewis’ claim.
The Legislature established the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics in 1983 as a state agency with a 25-member governing board, independent of the state’s public school system. It received a $7.2 million state appropriation this year. Approximately 115 students in 11th and 12th grades live at the school’s campus near the state Capitol.
An Oklahoma Watch investigation in 2023 revealed pervasive sexual harassment and bullying of students and staff at the school. Students described being subjected to inappropriate and sexist comments, and some struggled with mental health issues while attending and after graduating.
In response, two teachers accused of misconduct retired.
The school’s board formed a personnel subcommittee to address problems and adopted the first student and employee handbooks, outlining policies to address and report harassment and bullying. The school also deployed an anonymous complaint reporting system.
The student handbook directs students to report harassment using the FaceUp complaint system or to an employee such as the academic counselor, residence hall supervisor or vice president of academic services. It gives the school broad discretion over whether and how to investigate.
That’s not enough, according to three lawyers with expertise in Title IX.
“The student policy is missing pieces I would expect to find in any residential school serving minors,” said Nancy Potter, an education attorney in Pennsylvania, who reviewed the school’s handbook policies at Oklahoma Watch’s request. Potter’s practice focuses on Title IX and Section 504 disability discrimination in schools and universities.
She pointed to significant omissions, such as a designated official to report complaints, defined standards for deciding whether or not to investigate, a timeline, a written outcome to the student who reported, interim measures while the complaint is open, an appeal process, and a rule to recuse the administrators on both sides of the complaint.
The policies in the employee handbook, on the other hand, are more specific, outlining a structure for investigating and disciplining employees, including defined consequences, and prohibiting retaliation against students who file complaints. But those protections are in a document students never see, Potter said.
“When a student reports a teacher, the institution has a more developed framework for investigating and disciplining the employee than it has for protecting or informing the student who made the report,” Potter said.
Some residential schools serving minors even go beyond what Title IX requires, she said, adding policies on adult-student boundaries, mandatory reporting, lodging, private interactions, background screening and outside oversight.
Potter, who is from Oklahoma and earned her bachelor’s from Oklahoma State University before attending law school in Pittsburg, said the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics’ lack of federal funding explains why federal regulators can’t require the school to implement student protection policies, but doesn’t explain why the school hasn’t adopted policies itself.
Putting policies in place is just a start, said Kayleigh Baker, an attorney and senior supervising consultant at TNG, who works with schools on Title IX compliance. Schools that implement the policies with fidelity also limit and reduce barriers to reporting.
“Sometimes, we see a fear that we don’t want there to be incidents reported because then that might indicate that our school isn’t safe,” she said. “So there’s not necessarily a lot of incentive created within the institution for these things to be reported.”
There are a dozen schools like the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics around the country — residential, STEM-focused state high schools for high-achieving students. They all have a policy on Title IX protections, according to a survey of the schools’ handbooks and websites.
Many are under the umbrella of a university or located on a college campus that is already subject to Title IX. But even ones that aren’t have adopted Title IX policies.
Federal funding is the trigger for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ authority to enforce Title IX. But courts have applied that to mean indirect funding, too. So even private schools or institutions that receive funds through a federal school lunch program or whose students receive Pell Grants for college, for instance, are subject to Title IX.
School Tried to Keep Concerns Secret
Oklahoma Watch asked, through a January 13 Open Records Act request, to see Lewis’ email. The school’s board, represented by Assistant Attorney General Madalynn Martin, voted six months later, on July 16, to deny the request. The school contends the email is a personnel record and contains confidential student information, making it exempt from release.
Oklahoma Watch obtained the email from an anonymous source.
“The Lewis Memo to the OSSM board certainly does not fall within the educational records exception to the ORA because it does not include protected information of any identifiable student,” said Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press attorney Leslie Briggs. “It is also not a personnel record subject to withholding, but, even if it were, such withholding is discretionary by OSSM and can be overcome with a showing of a public interest outweighing the government’s reason for secrecy. After seeing the Lewis Memo, there are obvious public interest concerns discussed within it which would outweigh any need for governmental secrecy.”
The attorney general’s office, through a spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed.
Cornforth did not respond to interview requests.
Another concern Lewis outlined in the email was the school’s lack of a dedicated human resources department.
The school eliminated the human resources position in 2021, just one year after creating the role in response to a state audit report that found more concerns with the school’s culture than its finances.
In the absence of professional oversight, Lewis wrote, tasks such as interview questions, timekeeping, faculty leave, separation of duties between the school and its nonprofit, and student discipline are handled in ways that could expose the school to liability.
Reached by telephone, Lewis declined to be interviewed.
This summer, Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed a new chairman to the school’s governing board, the second in its history. Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, replaced attorney Dan Little, who held the post for 40 years. Little, 83, remains on the board; his term runs through 2027.
Caldwell, who is term-limited and could not seek reelection to the House, said he’s looking forward to making OSSM more accessible to students across the state and improving the school’s relationships with higher education institutions.
“It’s a public school,” Caldwell said. “We understand that. Out of fairness, I can’t speak to what’s gone on in the past, but my focus is going forward and how do we make OSSM the best high school in the country.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
