Nevada's largest school districts settling child abuse cases

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s two largest school districts are admitting wrongdoing by employees on school buses in multimillion-dollar settlements of a child abuse lawsuit in Reno and a federal case in Las Vegas.

The Washoe County School District agreed to a $4.4 million settlement in the alleged abuse of a student last year after the district says it determined an employee “negligently supervised” children involved in severe physical abuse and bullying, a newspaper reported.

In Las Vegas, school trustees are due on Thursday to consider approving a $9 million settlement in the case of a former school bus driver who pleaded guilty in 2018 to sexually assaulting special needs preschoolers.

The Reno Gazette Journal first reported on its website Tuesday that the repeated abuse over six months in Washoe County involved a child with disabilities. It said the $4.4 million settlement was the biggest in district history.

The allegations included “multiple acts of severe physical abuse and bullying by another male student of similar age” between December 2020 and May 2021, according to documents obtained by the newspaper.

District spokesperson Victoria Campbell said the employee no longer works for the district.

“After a full investigation, the district determined that the employee negligently supervised the children,” she said in an email to the Gazette Journal.

The district said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press that the case “involved battery and bullying of a minor child by another minor child.”

“In the interest of protecting the confidentiality of those children and their families, as well as student privacy laws, the district will not comment on this litigation except to say that the parties worked together to resolve this issue,” it said.

The Clark County...