ANOKA, Minn. -- Minnesota's largest public school district confirms that it is the subject of a federal civil rights investigation involving alleged harassment and discrimination of gay students.
The Justice Department together with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights are looking into "allegations of harassment and discrimination in the Anoka-Hennepin School District based on sex, including peer-on-peer harassment based on not conforming to gender stereotypes," according to a district memo obtained by CNN.
News of the federal probe broke first on CNN.com.
District spokesperson Mary Olson tells KARE 11 that federal investigators interviewed district personnel this past spring. She says that officials for the Anoka Hennepin Public Schools are involved in "collaborative discussions" with the feds over the need for additional employee and student training on Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) issues, but could not elaborate what the end result of those discussions will be.
Olson also maintains that the district has been completely cooperative with investigators from the Justice Department and the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.
The federal investigation comes after a string of seven student suicides in less than two years, which stirred public debate over the district's sexual orientation curriculum policy.
Parents and friends say four of those students were either gay, perceived to be gay or questioning their sexuality and reports are that at least two of them were bullied over their sexuality.
It is unclear whether the suicides or the policy are a significant part of the federal investigation, reporters Poppy Harlow and Emily Probst write on CNN.com.
The district's controversial policy, adopted in 2009, states that staff must "remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation" and that "such matters are best addressed within individual family homes, churches, or community organizations."
The head of the Anoka-Hennepin school district told CNN the policy reflects a community divided over homosexuality.
"It's a diverse community," said Anoka-Hennepin Superintendent Dennis Carlson, "And what we're trying to do, what I'm trying to do as a superintendent is walk down the middle of the road."
Tammy Aaberg -- whose 15-year-old son, Justin, committed suicide last July -- has become an outspoken critic of the neutrality policy.
"He came to me and said, 'Mom, a kid at school says I'm going to go to hell because I'm gay,'" said Aaberg.
The neutrality policy, she said, contributed to a school environment harmful to her son, who was outed in the eighth grade by another student.
"I believe that the climate that they have in the school, the way that kids are allowed to treat other kids -- they say 'fag' all the time," Aaberg said. "If you're even questioning who you are and you're not seeing anybody who's like you, you don't see anything positive about who you are, then you start wondering, 'What's wrong with me?'"
The district -- which has a separate and comprehensive bullying prohibition policy -- has continually denied any connection between bullying and the suicides.
"It's really difficult to say that with any suicide, this instance or that instance caused a suicide," Carlson said. "We have no evidence that bullying or harassment took place in any of those cases."
In a related story, the Anoka-Hennepin School District has asked the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) to provide assistance in developing additional employee training to support GLBT students.
In a released statement the district says the invitation is in response to a threat from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) to bring a lawsuit against the district unless the school board eliminates its Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy.
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