Embattled by a federal lawsuit filed by the United States Department of Justice over gender transitions, USD 500’s (KCKPS) legal woes continue after a notice of lawsuit was delivered on August 18, 2026, over the alleged sexual assault of an 11-year-old in a school restroom.
ABC Affiliate KMBC news is reporting the $5 million lawsuit is on behalf of a sixth-grade boy who was allegedly dragged into a restroom by a group of eighth-grade boys where he was “physically restrained while they sexually assaulted him,” according to David Smith, an attorney representing the boy and his parents.
According to KMBC, the notice claims an adult monitor was supposed to be outside the restroom, but the district failed to provide one.
“That’s a gross mistake by the school district’s part, because there have been enough things that have happened in the bathrooms at that school that this was foreseeable,” Smith said to KMBC. “And if it’s foreseeable, it’s predictable. And if it’s predictable, it’s preventable. All they needed was to step up and follow their own policies, and they failed.”
Moreover, according to KMBC, KCKPS board members say they weren’t informed of the issue.
“KCKPS School Board members Valdenia Winn and Vice-chair Wanda Brownlee Paige said administrators didn’t tell them what happened at Eisenhower Middle School after the incident as they should have,” KMBC wrote.
While officers eventually showed up to investigate, there was apparently no officer working at the school on the day the boy was allegedly assaulted.
According to KMBC, Maria Castleberry was a KCKPS police officer at Eisenhower Middle until she was fired in January, which she believes is because she refused to drop charges against a boy who badly beat up a girl at Eisenhower.
KMBC reports that the district has until Sept. 17 to respond to the notice, has refused to turn over documents relating to the case to KMBC, and has also refused comment.
KMBC also said that in 2023 — after the station and parents raised other concerns about student safety — Superintendent Dr. Anna Stubblefield dismissed the questions.
“Our schools are some of the safest places for our students in the community,” Stubblefield said in 2023. “Unfortunately, in the urban core, you may see more fights, unfortunately.”
Legal woes mount for KCKPS
As The Sentinel previously reported, the United States Department of Justice is suing USD 500 Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools to stop secret gender transitions.
According to a release from DOJ on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, the department filed a ” first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools (KCKPS) to stop the district from facilitating secret “gender transitions” for children at school without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
As The Sentinel reported earlier this year, a whistleblower video confirmed that USD 500 Kansas City appeared to be continuing to flout state and federal law concerning “social transitioning” of students by having the conversations “be like underground railroad conversations … so not stopping the work, just not making it so public.”
In the complaint, DOJ alleges the district continues to maintain so-called “social transitioning” policies in violation of the law.
“The District maintains policies that direct staff to help students socially transition to a different gender at school and to withhold this information from parents as confidential,” the complaint reads. “This conduct violates FERPA’s guarantee that parents can see their children’s school records, seek correction of those records, and prevent disclosure of identifying information without consent. This conduct also violates PPRA’s guarantee that minor students will not be required to submit to any survey, analysis, or evaluation revealing sensitive information without prior written consent from their parents.”
KCKPS could face heavy fines or lose federal funding over the policy.
