Lawsuit: Georgia school district lowered black student’s GPA after reporting racist Snapchats

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New allegations were added Tuesday to a federal lawsuit against the Effingham County School District in southeast Georgia, alleging district retaliation against a black student for reporting racist and threatening Snapchat messages sent by white students.

As GPB first reported last week, three black high school students have sued the Effingham County School District, alleging a litany of civil rights violations.

The plaintiffs have since amended their lawsuit to include Isaiah Jobe-Winn as a plaintiff, who is identified as a former student of South Effingham High School, located about 15 miles northwest of Savannah.

Jobe-Winn alleges the district retaliated against him for reporting leaked Snapchat messages in February 2020 sent by white college students that included the N-word and threats to murder them, execute them, have tazers killed , to cut off their toes every time they run away and we will teach them the Americas.

In response, according to the lawsuit, he was reprimanded for reporting the messages to high school administrators and ordered to write an apology.

After speaking to news outlets about the Snapchat posts, Jobe-Winn claims the high school undertook a series of reprisals against him, after which he decided to transfer to another school district.

During the transfer, the Effingham County School District withheld his transcripts for nearly 3 to 4 months, according to Jobe-Winn. After the transcripts were sent, the district had wrongly and illegally altered them so that the A’s were changed to C’s to significantly lower his GPA. Furthermore, false disciplinary offenses were added to his file, when in fact his file was impeccable.

The lawsuit claims that Jobe-Winn confronted the district about it, after which the district claimed that they were errors. The transcripts and disciplinary record were eventually corrected, but only after being vigorously challenged by Jobe-Winn.

Effingham County School District Superintendent Yancy Ford, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit in his official capacity, and the five members of the district’s board of trustees in their official capacity responded to request for comment. from the GPB via email: Neither the school district nor the other named defendants have been served with the lawsuit at this time. Once we have been served, a response to the allegations will be filed in accordance with the rules and procedures of the court.

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