School Law
May 10th, 2010
It almost goes without saying: don’t write anything online or in an e-mail that you wouldn’t tell your principal or your students’ parents. What starts out as a casual e-mail between colleagues about Jonah’s classroom outbursts or Sami’s frequent absences can escalate to a full-blown incident. Electronic communication is a terrific thing: it creates a record, it is efficient, and it’s nearly instantaneous. It’s also a terrible thing: it creates a record, it is efficient, and it’s nearly instantaneous.
April 28th, 2010
In my last year of teaching, it was a budget year with teacher pay and benefits, school spending for buses, theater, sports, and maintenance all up for review. Our superintendent had budgeted a sizable amount of money to online student record access for parents. At the time, it seemed to me like a frivolous use of taxpayer dollars. It’s not like we didn’t send out progress and grade reports. How many parents had I called because their son or daughter had been missing class and hadn’t turned in work? Countless.
February 8th, 2010
Like it or not, what happens in cyberspace doesn’t stay in cyberspace. According to a recent Pew Research Center report, 15 percent of our students have received a nude or nearly nude photo or video of someone they know. Four percent are sending sexual photos or videos of themselves.
As teachers we know that the schoolhouse gate doesn’t serve as a barrier to information from the real world. The sexual text messages and instant messages (sexting) our teens send to one another during their online evenings can create a lot of trouble during the offline school day.
September 19th, 2009
Two teachers wheeled their shopping carts down an aisle of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Instead of saying hello and stocking up on canned peas, they talked at length about a special education student the two teachers had in common.
Mom was in the next aisle. She filed a complaint against the school district.
February 11th, 2009
Last September, President Bush signed the ADA Amendments Act (ADAA) of 2008, which amended the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and lowered standards for determining disability and broadened the major life activities that constitute impairment.
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act falls under ADA’s umbrella and follows the same definitions and standards as the ADA. So, when the ADAA took effect on January 1, 2009, it changed Section 504 as well.
December 15th, 2008
FERPA, or the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, gives student records protection. Parents and school officials can review a student’s grades, class schedules, and disciplinary records.
But, what if a student commits a crime? What if she has an allergic reaction and goes into shock? Can the police or medical officials have access to the student records?
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