Daniel Gilchrist was constantly picked on in middle school, to the point that fellow students and even employees called him a snitch, according to his father, Stephen Gilchrist. Video footage from the South Carolina public school showed another student punching Daniel in the face during a gym class basketball game in 2024.
The other kids ignored it, and teachers were visible in the corner, oblivious as they stared at their phones, Gilchrist said.
A week later, another student filmed Daniel sitting in a bathroom stall and texted it, along with a caption containing a racial epithet, to the entire school community.
Gilchrist reported both incidents to school administrators and the police. Arrests were made in both instances, but the culprits remained on the campus, and there was no indication of any school discipline despite criminal prosecution.
Gilchrist submitted 180 emails to the district regarding bullying incidents over the course of five semesters, and few received replies. He said that in some responses, teachers said that the victim complained about his peers too often.
School leaders said they couldn’t act against the bullies unless a complaint was filed under the federal Title IX provision specific to gender and sexual harassment.
Gilchrist, vice chair of the current Civil Rights Commission, who also served on that board during President Donald Trump’s previous administration, took exception to that.
Daniel’s case is a microcosm of what’s happening at schools across the nation, Gilchrist said during a Heritage Foundation discussion in Washington on Feb. 4.
“Action is needed,” he said.
He’s calling for state-level accountability measures under which school districts lose funding if employees fail to address bullying.
Additionally, Virginia Gentles of the Defense of Freedom Institute said victims of school bullying should be eligible for private school vouchers funded by the new federal tax incentive program.
They’ll share these ideas with lawmakers in the months ahead.
Gilchrist said about 5,000 students in his South Carolina district are planning to move to charter schools, which could result in up to 1,400 teacher layoffs.
Trump’s May 2025 dear colleague letter reminded state and school district leaders of the incident reporting requirements.
There were 1.2 million violent offenses across public K–12 campuses in the 2021–2022 academic year, and yet “no schools were reported as persistently dangerous,” it said.
Only four schools were deemed persistently dangerous the following year, and five were in 2023–2024.
When a school gets that designation, parents are allowed to enroll their children elsewhere.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 does not penalize teachers or school employees if they fail to detail or report incidents, let alone document multiple occurrences that would help state and federal governments identify persistently dangerous schools.
“We have a broken system at many levels,” Gentles said.
Gilchrist said, “We’ve got to put more teeth into educators who know there’s stuff going on in schools.”
Gilchrist said that was the case with his district. Daniel, the bullies in both instances, and most students there, are black.
“[The district] championed those causes,” he said.
