The United States Department of Justice on Wednesday announced a settlement agreement with the Elmore-Morristown Unified Union School District following a year-long investigation into student-on-student racial harassment. The investigation, conducted by the Justice Department's  Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont Nikolas Kerest, found that the school district "did not appropriately respond to serious and widespread harassment of Black and biracial students by their peers." The harassment, which occurred primarily at Peoples Academy Middle Level, included "frequent slurs and racist imagery, and a hostile environment where the use of the N-word and displays of confederate flags and Nazi symbols and salutes were commonplace," according to a press release.[content-1] The school district, which is part of Lamoille South Supervisory Union, cooperated fully with the investigation and is implementing measures agreed to by the parties, the press release said. That includes creating a central reporting system to track harassment incidents, revising district anti-harassment policies, undertaking annual campus assessments, and providing training to students and employees. The investigation, which began in December 2023, examined complaints from the 2021-2022 school year through fall 2023. It included interviews with parents of targeted students, school staff and administrators. [content-3] When students returned to school following the pandemic, there was "a significant increase in behavior at the middle level that was deeply concerning," Lamoille South superintendent Ryan Heraty wrote in an email to Seven Days. Since then, the supervisory union has "taken many intentional actions to address this behavior," he noted. "We stand firmly against any acts of racism or bias-based harm in our schools and respond immediately to these incidents when they are reported," Heraty wrote. "The statement issued by the DOJ does not reflect our current reality, which shows a dramatic decrease in these incidents." Heraty shared a January 6 letter he wrote to the Elmore-Morristown community about the settlement. In it, he said that the Department of Justice's findings primarily address "'amorphous ' incidents, or those without a clear target." "These situations are often the hardest to navigate and can lead to an unsafe environment," Heraty wrote. The Justice Department stipulations will complement work the district is already doing through its health curriculum, small-group lessons and community meetings, the letter noted. [content-2]…