Harassment

(1) A local education provider shall ensure that a qualified student with a disability is free from harassment that creates a hostile environment. A "hostile environment" includes an environment that interferes with or limits the student's ability to participate in or benefit from the local education provider's services, activities, or opportunities. (2) When a local education provider knows or reasonably should know of possible disability-based harassment, it must take immediate and appropriate action to investigate or otherwise determine what occurred. (3) If the investigation required by subsection (2) of this section reveals that disability-based harassment is sufficiently serious to create a hostile environment, the local education provider must take prompt and effective steps reasonably calculated to end the disability-based harassment, eliminate the hostile environment, prevent harassment and a hostile environment from recurring, and, as appropriate, remedy the hostile environment's effects. (4) Harassment on any basis may also impact a qualified student with a disability's receipt of a free and appropriate public education, in which case the effects of harassment, even if not based on disability, must be addressed by the student's section 504 team or IEP team.