An Amherst, Massachusetts school counselor fired after a Title IX investigation found her and two other staff members negligent in addressing anti-LGBTQ+ bullying claims has been reinstated after winning an arbitration case against her termination.

Reports MassLive.com:

Amherst-Regional Public Schools announced last week that Delinda Dykes, the Amherst Regional Middle School guidance counselor who was fired alongside two others in 2023, won her arbitration case against her termination and was reinstated to her position. 

Dykes was terminated after a Title IX investigation found that the staff at the middle school and the district failed to effectively address claims of bullying against LGBTQ+ students.

The allegations originally came to light in The Graphic, the Amherst Regional High School newspaper, which documented unmitigated bullying and accounts in which Dykes played a part in failing to protect trans students. 

Dykes was accused of repeatedly misgendering and deadnaming transgender students, along with failing to support them when they came to her for help from bullying. On one occasion, students reported that Dykes called upon God to free the students from an “LGBTQ gay demon.”

The Ad Hoc LGBTQIA+ Caucus of Amherst was roiled by Dykes’ reinstatement, and issued a call to action last week in the Amherst Indy, a local news outlet.

“No counselor who holds prayer circles in a school building to pray, ‘In the name of Jesus we bind that LGBTQ gay demon that wants to confuse our children’ should be allowed anywhere near students ever again,” the caucus said in the statement.

Read the complete MassLive.com story here.

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