Posts tagged with "school personnel"

What You Need to Know About Your Child’s Education

Adequate Education

As a parent, you are required to have your children enrolled in public school unless the parent can show that the child is receiving equivalent instruction elsewhere. Under Connecticut law, the child must be “instructed in reading, writing, spelling, English grammar, geography, arithmetic and United States history and in citizenship, including a study of the town, state and federal governments.” Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-184.

School Accommodations

The local school board is required to provide school accommodations to every child, age five (5) or over and under twenty-one (21), with a free appropriate public education. This includes children with special needs. The law also provides for your child’s education to take place in the district in which you live.

Absences

The State of Connecticut has strict regulations concerning a child’s absence from school. Specifically, the State declares a child who has four (4) or more unexcused absences in a month or ten (10) or more unexcused absences during the school year as a “truant.” The designation of your child as a truant results in the activation of certain policies and procedures of the school board, including but not limited to, the notification of the parents, services and referrals to community organizations offering family support, meetings with the parents and school personnel, and possible notification to the Superior Court. Conn. Gen. Stat. §10-198a. Habitual truants could even face arrest for failure to attend school. Conn. Gen. Stat. §10-200.

Open Choice

Connecticut law has established alternatives to traditional public school education. A parent can home school their children, as long as they comply with Conn. Gen. Stat. §10-184. A parent can choose to send their child to private school, as long as that private school conforms to Connecticut’s laws. But what many parents are not aware of is that Connecticut also offers charter, magnet and vocational schools, and the “open choice” program. Given the number of opportunities available to parents and children in Connecticut, it is important to research the various options to find the best match for you and your child.

Discipline

The school has the right to discipline your child for breaking school rules. This could mean removing your child from the classroom, giving an in-school suspension, giving an out-of-school suspension, or even expelling your child from school. Prior to any suspension or removal, your child has the right to an informal hearing conducted by a school administrator. If the school is attempting to expel your client, there will be an expulsion hearing. You have a right to an attorney during these proceedings.

Medications

The school, prior to prescribing any medication to your child, must receive a written order from an authorized prescriber, the written authorization of the child’s parent or guardian, and the written permission of the parent allowing communication between the prescriber and the school nurse. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-212a-2(b). The law also permits school districts to allow children to self-administer prescribed emergency medications, such as asthma inhalers, if the child has a verified chronic medical condition and is capable to self-administer.

Bullying

Bullying has become a pervasive problem within schools. State and Federal laws state that the school must investigate reports of bullying. The schools are obligated to meet with the children that are being bullied and whom are doing the bullying. If the schools fail to take certain steps to protect children from bullying, the school could be subject to civil liability. Therefore, if your child is being bullied, bring it to the attention of the schools so that they can attempt to remediate the situation.

Bullying is not just peer-on-peer. In Frank v. State of Connecticut Department of Children and Families, the Court upheld a hearing officer’s decision placing Mr. Frank’s name on the child abuse and neglect registry, for his bullying of one of his students. Consequently, as a parent you should be aware that bullying can take many forms, and can occur by teachers and other faculty members. 2010 Conn. Super. LEXIS 3085, J.D. of New Britain, Docket No. CV-10-6005213-S (2010).

School Records

A parent has the right to see their child’s school records. A school is required to provide you with a copy of your child’s records within 45 days (within 10 days if your child is receiving special education services). The school also has to provide the records free of cost if you are unable to afford the copying fees.

The school is not allowed to share your child’s school records without your written permission. While they are allowed to share your child’s records with other teachers and staff within the school system (or outside the school system in the case of an emergency), generally, your child’s records are private.

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If you have any questions regarding your child’s education, or any education law matter, contact Attorney Joseph Maya and the other experienced education law attorneys at Maya Murphy, P.C. at (203) 221-3100 or by email at JMaya@Mayalaw.com.

Searches by School Resource Officers

On Searches by School Resource Officers: Are They School Officials or Police Officers?

It Depends.

In light of school safety concerns that have plagued the nation since the 1990s, resource officers have become commonplace our public schools. They are the collaborative effort of local police departments and boards of education, serving a myriad of roles as educator, investigator, advisor, and a source of interaction and resource for students. However, what are the constitutional burdens imposed on a resource officer when he or she conducts a search of a student or the student’s property?

Limitations of the Fourth Amendment

First, let’s rewind to 1985, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that while the Fourth Amendment in general applies to searches conducted by teachers or school officials, they are not held to the stringent warrant requirements that constrain police action. As further elaborated:

[T]he accommodation of the privacy interests of schoolchildren with the substantial need of teacher and administrators for freedom to maintain order in the schools does not require strict adherence to the requirement that searches be based on probable cause to believe that the subject of the search has violated or is violating the law. Rather, the legality of a search of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search.

Determining the reasonableness of any search involves a twofold inquiry: first, one must consider whether the … action was justified at its inception, second, one must determine whether the search as actually conducted was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.[1]

Cases of School Searches by Resource Officers

In other words, school personnel are permitted to search student property (which includes purses, backpacks, and automobiles on school property) so long as the search is “justified at its inception” and permissible in scope. The search cannot be excessively intrusive. However, what the Court in T.L.O. declined to produce was “the appropriate standard for assessing the legality of searches conducted by school officials in conjunction with or at the behest of law enforcement agencies, and we express no opinion on that question.”[2]

Thus, we return to our original inquiry: because a resource officer serves functions both on behalf of the school and of the local police agency, what is the standard that applies? It does not appear that this question has been put to the test here in Connecticut, though other jurisdictions have progressively contemplated this scenario, and it boils down to three hypotheticals:

School official initiates search/police involvement is minimal: reasonableness test applies.
School resource officer initiates search on own initiative or at direction of a school official so as to “further educationally related goals”: reasonableness test applies.
“Outside” police officer initiates search: warrant and probable cause requirements implicated.[3]

How to Determine the Level of Police Involvement

In determining the level of police involvement, various factors are considered:

[W]hether the officer was in uniform, whether the officer has an office on the school campus, how much time the officer is at the school each day, whether the officer is employed by the school system or an independent law enforcement agency, what the officer’s duties are at the school, who initiated the investigation, who conducted the search, whether other school officials were involved, and the officer’s purpose in conducting the search.[4]

Because of the lack of a uniform standard as promulgated by a Supreme Court decision, different courts have come to wholly divergent conclusions purely based on application of the above factors. In Alaniz, the North Dakota Supreme Court determined that the school resource officer involved was “more like a school official,” thus implicating the less stringent reasonableness standard.[5] Conversely, this past August the Washington Supreme Court ruled that “the school resource officer was not a school official and thus the more lenient standard of ‘reasonable suspicion’ applied to searches by school personnel did not apply.”[6]

Every instance of school searches conducted by resource officers is unique, and as such determining whether it was reasonable or implicated greater Fourth Amendment protections may be difficult without the assistance of an experienced school law practitioner.

Written by Lindsay E. Raber, Esq.

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Should you have any questions regarding school discipline, searches, or any other education law matter, please do not hesitate to contact Attorney Joseph C. Maya, Esq. He may be reached at Maya Murphy, P.C., 266 Post Road East, Westport, Connecticut (located in Fairfield County), by telephone at (203) 221-3100, or by email at JMaya@mayalaw.com.

[1] New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 341 (1985).

[2] Id. at 342 n.7.

[3] State v. Alaniz, 2012 N.D. 76, ¶ 10. See, e.g., T.S. v. State, 863 N.E.2d 362, 367-68 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007); Myers v. State, 839 N.E.2d 1154, 1160 (Ind. 2005); State v. Burdette, 225 P.3d 736, 750 (Kan. Ct. App. 2010); In re D.L.D., 694 S.E.2d 395, 400 (N.C. Ct. App. 2010); State v. J.M., 255 P.3d 828, 832 (Wash. Ct. App. 2011). Accessed October 4, 2012: http://www.ndcourts.gov/_court/opinions/20110259.htm

[4] Id. at ¶ 11. See T.S., at 369-71; Burdette, at 740; R.D.S. v. State, 245 S.W.3d 356, 368 (Tenn. 2008).

[5] Id. at ¶ 12.

[6] “Court Invalidates Backpack Search by School Resource Officer,” by Mark Walsh. Accessed October 4, 2012: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/2012/08/court_invalidates_backpack_sea.html