Last summer, a San Diego Superior Court jury awarded former Poway High School student Joey Ramelli $175,000 and student Megan Donovan $125,000, finding that Poway High School administrators failed to prevent harassment. School officials acted “deliberately indifferent” to claims that fellow students spit on, shoved and threatened the two, who were openly gay.

During the trial, administrators talked about witnessing some of the acts, but testified that they could not do more than just mete out some minor discipline to the perpetrators. The jury didn’t agree.

The acts described by Ramelli and Donovan were hate crimes within the meaning of California law. In short, they were criminal acts motivated in whole or in part because of the victims’ actual or perceived sexual orientation – California Penal Code section 422.55.

Even if the students did not want to press charges, the penal code now allows the school to bring such charges in its own right. This is because the school is “associated” with the victim. The Legislature specifically amended the law to allow prosecution in those cases where a student did not want to press hate crime charges.

As I reported last week, most victims of hate crimes based upon sexual orientation are reluctant to report them to school officials. They fear retaliation and worry that that school officials will tell their parents about their real or perceived sexual orientation. But that wasn’t an issue with Ramelli and Donovan, who reported their crimes to school officials. That alone should have taken these crimes out of the purview of school discipline and into the criminal justice world. School officials should have contacted local police, child protective agencies and prosecutorial agencies. But that didn’t happen. Why not?

I asked the students’ attorneys, Paula Rosenstein and Bridget Wilson, how these “well-meaning” school administrators could be so ignorant not to recognize these acts as hate crimes. “They just don’t get it,” said Rosenstein. “It doesn’t even cross their minds.”

After the verdict, and now on appeal, these same school officials assert that they did what was “reasonable” and shouldn’t have had to do more.

As I’ve opined here before, most school officials don’t get hate crimes in schools, especially when it comes to acts motivated by the victims’ sexual orientation.

Contrast this with hate crimes in schools motivated by race. A federal judge recently sentenced two men to a year in federal prison for a hate crime that didn’t even involve a physical assault.

In September, 2004, two youths at Butte View High School attempted to keep two African-American students out of the school. They erected in front of the school a 20-foot-square Nazi swastika, lightning bolts and the number 23, signifying numerically in the alphabet the letter “w” for white power.

School officials and the police investigated the hate crime and found the perpetrators. Jared Oreste Giampaoli, 20, and Steven Foster Little, 19, pleaded guilty to federal misdemeanor charges for a hate crime. (Note that current federal law does not include “sexual orientation,” but a bill is pending in the Senate to add it.)

In December, U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski sentenced the two to one year in federal prison, even though probation officials recommended that the young men serve their time in home detention. The judge said he wanted to send a message that racial hatred and intolerance will not be tolerated.

The case above was investigated and pursued because of police involvement. Schools officials see anti-gay graffiti, often aimed at a particular student. That’s a hate crime, but no one reports it to police. Students like Ramelli and Donovan are spit upon, have their cars vandalized and are threatened with harm. No reports to police. No prosecution. And the cycle of violence and victimization continues.

It’s time to send a message, because the California attorney general’s own internal reports estimate that between 6 and 14 percent of students in California schools are victims of hate crimes because of their real or perceived sexual orientation. The LGBT Legislative Caucus needs to pass legislation that will make it clear that school officials must report to police agencies all hate crimes occurring on campus, or face criminal prosecution.

It doesn’t matter if the victim of the hate crime does not want to press charges or have his or her parents notified. The hate crime is against the school because it is associated with the victim. That’s all that the police and the D.A. need to prosecute.