Fourteen-year-old Payton Bullett walked up in front of Park City School District teachers, administrators and other staff last August at a welcome back to school event and told them about being harassed by other students since the fourth grade.
Payton, who is Black, had been bullied mostly over his race, called racial slurs, asked for an “N-word pass,” called a monkey, and those are just a few examples.
“There are 17 incidents, so a lot of different things,” recalled his mother, Kelly Bullett.
Both Payton and his sister, who wished to remain unnamed in this article, have faced racial harassment from other students that persisted before the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office released a report showing the district hadn’t done enough to stop the behavior and lasted even after incidents had become widely known in public.
Bullet puts the prime responsibility for this on the district’s superintendent, Dr. Jill Gildea, whom Bullet said had been copied on every email she sent school officials regarding her son’s experience during seventh and eighth grade.
“Nothing was going to change if the federal government didn’t get involved,” Bullett said. “Jill Gildea never contacted me until the federal government was involved.”
History of harassment
The first time, Payton was in elementary school, Bullett recalled.
“He was in, like, fourth grade with the same kid who went on to be a repeated offender with the racial harassment,” she said. “The harassment then started off not racial, just telling him that his mom gave him away because she didn’t love him, and that’s why he’s adopted.”
He became a frequent target at Ecker Hill Middle School. That’s when Bullett started going to the district with her concerns.
“Everything has always been, ‘It’s a privacy issue. We can’t tell you what’s happening with the other student,'” Bullett said. “They would hear the complaint, they would acknowledge how sorry they were, and then they would — quote-on-quote — handle it.”
In line with federal restrictions on what school districts can share about students, she was never told the consequences her son’s harassers faced beyond that there would be a set of escalating consequences. Her son, meanwhile, continued to face the same abuse from the same bully.
“There was a claim to have a zero tolerance policy,” Bullett said. “That zero tolerance policy was never spelt out as to exactly what zero tolerance looked like.”
Gildea has equivocated on what the policy means in practice.
“Our challenge in a zero tolerance mindset is sometimes, you know, if you simply say, ‘Well, that’s it. You made a mistake. You’re expelled. You’re out of here.’ That just leads to more hatred and more misunderstanding,” she said.
“Zero tolerance means it’s not allowed to happen,” Bullett said. “Yet it continued. … It truly wasn’t a zero tolerance policy.”
As the abuse continued, Bullett continued going to school administrators, teachers and student service specialists for answers.
She asked the principal of Ecker Hill at the time to inform other parents about what was happening in hopes that the school taking an official stand or making a statement would help stop the behavior.
“‘We just can’t do it. That just wouldn’t go well in this community,'” she remembered the principal saying. “The undertone was, it would ruffle too many feathers.”
It makes white people uncomfortable, Bullett said, “and sadly, that’s life in Utah.”
When the principal did eventually send out an email addressing students’ language and treatment of one another, Bullett said it didn’t mention racial harassment and just a paragraph after asking students to be kind, asked them to treat the schools’ computers with respect with the same emphasis it addressed their behavior toward their peers.
“The tone of the email gave the mistreatment of the laptops equal priority to the mean things that were being said to kids,” she remembered. “It was so weak and so vague and to not be in the midst of the problem, you wouldn’t have any idea what it was talking about.”
A few months later — and after some criticism for the weak message — the principal sent out another email, Bullett said. This one was slightly stronger, she remembered, but not straightforward in addressing the issue, she said.
“Nothing ever calling out, ‘Hey, this is going on in our school and it’s got to stop and it’s not okay and your kid will be held accountable,'” Bullett said. “There was never any direct statement like that.”
Messages of that nature, she said, didn’t come until after the Office of Civil Rights report was released.
Finally, once Payton was enrolled at Treasure Mountain Junior High School, Bullett said someone eventually let it slip that her son’s harasser was no longer at his school. Before then, Payton had been feeling intense anxiety about even attending.
It wasn’t until the 2023-24 school year, after the investigation had begun, that Bullett noticed any safeguards being put into place to prevent kids’ from crossing paths with their tormentors.
Payton’s point of view
“It makes it very difficult to attend class, yet I have to figure out how to get my act together in order to go back,” Payton said. “It is hard to go back into class with the same person or people who have called me a racial slur or have said something derogatory.”
His teachers have always handled the situations calmly to the extent they could, which he said he appreciated.
“The administration handles it slightly differently,” he said. “They show empathy for my situation, but at the same time every incident happens, I report it to the administration and then I feel like it goes up their massive chain of command only for nothing to happen. Since the federal investigation has started, I feel like the school has started to very slowly handle the situations in a better way.”
The harassment could come from anyone, and it’s only his close friends who he’s received none from at all, he said.
“To the students who have harassed me, you need to be educated on why that language is offensive. And for the parents of those kids, educate your children,” Payton said. “For the teachers, I appreciate your support in helping me get back into the learning environment. As for the community, we need to take proactive steps to ensure this stuff does not happen ever again. It is absolutely inappropriate that any person feels like they have the right to walk up to me and call me a racial slur.”
While he was discussing his harassment with school officials, Payton was granted a meeting with Gildea herself. After the meeting took place, Gildea emailed Bullett with enthusiastic invitations for Payton to help the district in the future and speak at the district’s Welcome Back to School Convocation.
While Payton took the invitation, Bullett did not mince words with Gildea, who she had not heard from until the exchange.
“While I appreciate the concept of collaborating with Payton in “crafting an action plan,” your work is at least two years overdue,” Bullett wrote. “Between my two children I have reported at least 10 incidents of racially motivated bullying his year, almost all of which were cc’d to you and Carolyn Synan. Yet until Payton requested a meeting with you, I never heard a response. Meaningful action has only been taken since the district has come under fire from the federal government, and even then the harassment continues, as evidenced by the three events in six school days recently.”
She expressed her gratitude for her kids’ teachers and the services they’ve rendered their students.
“Regrettably, when it comes to the leadership and administration, I am woefully disappointed,” Bullett said.
“We are all working towards the same end goals,” Gildea replied.
She apologized that “efforts being made to support Payton as well as address any underlying issues were not made more clear or visible.”
Catching up
The district has been vocal about steps it’s taking to resolve the issues that came to light in the report and address past instances of harassment. Monthly progress reports are posted to the district’s website, as are resources for addressing race and inequality, a centralized reporting form for students who face harassment and the district’s signed resolution with the Office of Civil Rights.
In its May report, the district showed it is reviewing incidents from 2022-23, making sure “equitable resolutions are in place,” and reviewing and revising policies and procedures.
As part of this progress, Payton was among 29 students that Chief Student Services Officer Carolyn Synan interviewed.
Community Relations Manager Heidi Matthews said all the interviews will be completed by June, and students may be offered “counseling, clinical assessment, community resource facilities, extension of deadlines or other course-related adjustments, one-on-one mentoring, modifications of class schedules, increased security and monitoring of certain areas of the campus, mutual restrictions on contact between the parties,” or other measures.
Also, Matthews said students and parents have been using the centralized report form.
The district has also worked to provide the community with a more definitive list of consequences repeat harassers might face.
Nonetheless, Bullett said, Payton has yet to receive any help or resources even after his interview with Synan.
“Both of my kids have been in therapy,” she said. “I don’t know that you could put a price on emotional damage, but there’s certainly a price on what we pay for our kids to go to therapy.”
Now, not later
By many accounts, Payton’s speech was rousing. He and his mother had decided he would deliver the address without approving it with the school district, and he gave heartfelt remarks about his concerns with the district and its student-to-student harassment issues, she said.
“After I was finished giving my speech, I received a standing ovation from all the teachers. They loved that I was courageous enough to stand up for myself and what others were experiencing like me,” recalled Payton, now 15. “They wholeheartedly agreed that something needs to be changed now, not later.”