OXFORD – A complaint of a first grade girl being touched inappropriately on a school bus in Oxford this week is not the first time SAD 17 officials have been faced with such issues.

Last year, the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education Office began investigating complaints by a Paris couple that school officials failed to appropriately investigate alleged sexual harassment of their 7-year-old daughter by several second-grade boys at the Paris Elementary School.

About the same time, the civil rights office also began investigating a complaint alleging second-grade boys at the school harassed a boy on a bus last spring.

The federal investigation into the two cases is still under way, U.S. Department of Education spokesman David Thomas said.

Last year, the district investigated what school officials conceded was very limited but continued problem behavior in the school and on the bus, including allegations of sexual harassment involving second-grade students. Many of the allegations were later found be to be unverifiable, but some discipline, including suspension and alternative education placement, was made, school administrators said.

As a result of the complaints, SAD 17 directors ordered administrators to form a task force to look into the issue, re-educate faculty members about harassment issues and review the school’s harassment policies.

Behavior education by the Rape Education and Crisis Hotline representatives was also provided to students, including the Good Touch Bad Touch program that gives students age-appropriate information about inappropriate behavior.

That program was offered to Deborah Walo’s daughter’s class at the Oxford Elementary School within the past two weeks, Walo said Wednesday.

“Within the last couple of weeks, she brought the papers home and left them on the coffee table. We talked about it,” Walo said of the program that she has taught her daughter since she was little.

Walo said she is pleased the program has been put in place in SAD 17 because that, along with her own discussion with her daughter, enabled her daughter to come right to her parents with information.

“She immediately told us,” Walo said of the girl’s complaint that she had received an “‘uh oh touch.’ She knew what she was talking about.”

SAD 17 Superintendent Mark Eastman said staff members have reported the classes occasionally result in younger children talking about what they have learned and even inappropriately acting out in the subsequent days.