The Ithaca City School District’s Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to file objections to a judge’s recommendation in the case brought against it by Ithaca College student Amelia Kearney, who alleged that the district failed to protect her daughter from racial harassment while at school.

More than two weeks ago, Administrative Law Judge Christine Marbach Kellett of the New York State Division of Human Rights recommended that because the district did not do enough to protect Kearney’s daughter, it should pay the family $1 million in damages for pain and suffering.

Board President Thomas Frank said the district will hold a press conference Friday to discuss the specifics of their appeal and their response to the recommendation, which they said they were surprised by. The judge also recommended the commissioner mandate that the school revise its disciplinary code and have staff attend diversity training.

The decision to appeal came little more than a week after the board formally apologized to Kearney and her daughter and Superintendent Judith Pastel promised to work with the community to bring greater equity to the schools.

Kearney said the board’s about-face showed they weren’t committed to equity in the schools.

“They’re liars,” she said. “They’re not for equity because if they were they would have just accepted this and moved on from here but they want to continue this, and I think it’s a shame. I’m going to continue to fight.”

The board deliberated for more than two hours behind closed doors in an executive session before returning to publicly vote to allow their legal team to file objections to the recommendation. This would cost the district about half their contingency fund if the commissioner of the New York State Division of Human Rights approves the judge’s findings, which is most often the case, Kearney’s attorney Ray Schlather said. Kearney and her daughter Epiphany, along with approximately 15 community members and friends, were present at the meeting. Though the board would not yet comment on the appeal, it was widely believed by those present that the board would specifically be appealing the $1 million figure and not the other equity recommendations.

The judge’s recommendation for the $1 million settlement came two years after Kearney’s then 12-year-old daughter, Epiphany, was racially harassed at DeWitt Middle School. In hearings, the district admitted that within a five-month period it did not do enough to protect Epiphany from repeated instances of racial harassment during the 2005–06 academic year. Kearney is a 37-year-old student at Ithaca College majoring in sociology.

Kearney called the decision “unbelievable” and said even if the board only wished to dispute the monetary amount, a unanimous decision to appeal sent a strong message.

“I know they want to dispute the monetary amount but that also affects the other suggestions that the judge made, in terms of disciplinary code and things of that nature,” she said. “I think it’s very sad. They’re wrong, they’ve been found to be wrong, they’ve admitted that they’re wrong, they’ve apologized on some level and they’re still going to move forward to this.”

Kearney was advised by Joyce Muchan, a commissioner of the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission and an advocate for Kearney, not to comment on how she would feel about the objection if the board was only appealing the monetary recommendation.

Muchan said this latest vote by the board was a “unanimous vote to continue institutional racism.” She questioned the logic of appealing an expensive damages payment while at the same time paying the ongoing costs of employing a legal team.

“They’d rather litigate than educate,” she said. “[This] goes in the face of the apology. They’re not going to heal the community; it’s just perpetuating the racism that exists. I’m disgusted, actually. This is more of a reason why this school board needs to be voted out, and the superintendent needs to be voted out. We need to take a very strong action to save our schools.”