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Safety Law News for December 14, 2021

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— In Texas, the United States Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by parents whose special needs child was seized by the neck, thrown to the floor, and held in a choke hold by a teacher.  The court affirmed that the teacher did not violate substantive due process, and thus was entitled to qualified immunity because, “(t)he facts alleged simply do not suggest that (the student) was the subject of a random, malicious, and unprovoked attack, which would justify (liability).”  The court emphasized that here the conduct of the teacher occurred “in a disciplinary context,”  after the student hit the teacher.  “(W)e have consistently dismissed substantive due process claims when the offending conduct occurred in a disciplinary, pedagogical setting.”  T.O. v. Fort Bend Independent School District

— In Iowa, the school board for the Ames Community School District voted unanimously to end its school resource officer program for the 2022-23 school year, following years of intense community discussion over how the presence of police impacts students.

— In Massachusetts, the Worcester City Council adopted a resolution to revise its school resource officer program.  The officials do not intend to eliminate the presence of police in schools.  The goal is to implement a “school liaison” model in which officers are assigned to quadrants in the schools for entry and dismissal times. 

— In New York,  the Kingston Board of Education is implementing major revisions to its school resource officer program.  The officers, from the Kingston city and Ulster town police departments, will not be involved in the discipline of students.  The officers will not be allowed to serve non-school warrants while on school property.  The officers will discontinue wearing formal traditional police uniforms.

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Safety Law News for December 9, 2021

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— In California, the Court of Appeal of California affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit for failing to protect a middle school student from sexual abuse by a teacher and for breach of the mandatory duty to report suspected abuse under the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act.  The appellate court agreed that schools “have a duty to protect students from sexual abuse by school employees, even if the school does not have actual knowledge of a particular employee’s history of committing, or propensity to commit, such abuse.”  However, the court ruled that educators could not be liable because, “here was no evidence that any school district employee knew facts from which a reasonable person in a like position would have suspected that (the teacher) had sexually abused student.”  Doe v. Lawndale Elementary School District

— In Indiana, the South Bend Community School Corporation voted to continue its school resource officer program.  The 4-3 vote was influenced by a survey of students, employees and the community, in which 77.7% were very positive or somewhat positive of the policy.

— In Virginia, the Harrisonburg School Board unanimously voted to keep school resource officers in its schools.  The SRO Task Force, made up of teachers, parents, and community members and leaders, revised the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with local police to implement changes in the role of the campus officers.

— In Washington D.C., government officials are providing funding of $4.3 Million to expand the Safe Passage Program.  The program creates Safe Passage Safe Blocks (SPSB) supervised by adults placed on mapped routes to support student safety as students travel to and from school.

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Safety Law News for December 6, 2021

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— In Massachusetts, the United States Court of Appeals ruled that a school did not violate the rights of two students by suspending them for their speech and conduct in bullying their fellow team members on a school-sponsored team.  The misconduct included circulating photos and videos on SnapChat of team members taken without their consent.  The appellate court upheld the school anti-bullying policy, holding that “courts generally defer to school administrators’ decisions regarding student speech so long as their judgment is reasonable.”  The court ruled that Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. ex rel. Levy (141 S. Ct. 2038, 2045, 210 L.Ed.2d 403 (2021)), did not protect the misconduct because here the bullying “targets and invades the rights of an individual student.”  Doe v. Hopkinton Public Schools

— In Connecticut, the superintendent for the Manchester schools is urging parents to help educators in dealing with students’ bad behavior.  According to the educators students are struggling in “transitioning back to school, which has led to more altercations than usual.”

— In Florida,  the Orlando Police Department is increasing the number of school resource officers at schools because of the number of fights.  Educators and police are asking parents to help in a program that allows parents to volunteer.

— In Michigan, the legislature voted to increase funding for police officers in schools after the shootings at the Oxford High School.  The amendment boosts the $10 million funding to $50 million. Schools would have to apply for grants to get a share of that money.

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Safety Law News for November 30, 2021

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— In Massachusetts, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts ruled that a student’s statement to a school administrator that he was going to kill his teacher was not protected speech under the First Amendment.  In reversing the lower court, the appellate court held that the student’s demeanor when making threat to assistant principal that he was going to “kill that bitch,” his escalating behavior in school, and the specific anger he expressed towards his teacher established the requisite probable cause for juvenile delinquency complaint.  The court held that, “(w)hen a defendant utters a threat to commit a crime to a third party who would likely communicate it to the ultimate target, the defendant’s act constitutes evidence of his intent to communicate the threat to the intended victim.”  Commonwealth v. Leonardo L.

— In Arizona, the Tempe Union High School District Governing Board unanimously reversed its resolution to remove school resource officers from all campuses.  Confronted by opposition from the district’s six high school principals, at least five former board members, the Tempe Police Department and numerous parents, students and others, the board decided to spend the next year studying the issue.

— In Texas, the school resource officers for the Killeen Independent School District are adding body cameras to their campus activities.  The KISD Board of Trustees unanimously approved by the purchase of the cameras that will be utilized only for incident-related calls.  The video footage would be kept on file for a total of 180 days.

— In Maine, state officials are placing new emphasis on the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program that has been taught in schools for decades.  At least 120 Maine schools currently have the revised DARE program, that previously aimed at keeping kids away from drugs.  The revised DARE program includes additional topics, e.g., the dangers of social media, peer pressure, bullying, stress, and developing healthy life skills.

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Safety Law News for November 29, 2021

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— In Rhode Island, the Supreme Court of  Rhode Island affirmed the liability verdict against a school whose disciplinary policy failed to provide students with a safe and secure school.  The victimized student was assaulted by another student at school.  The lower court and the appellate court held that the school breached the duty to maintain a safe and secure school by failing to act on an aggressive student’s lengthy history of disciplinary issues.  The restorative justice reforms of the school were rejected by the courts because the school did nothing “to supervise (the) aggressive student (despite the) aggressive student’s progressively more serious disciplinary problems, of which school was well aware.”  Dextraze v. Bernard

— In California,  officials in the Mountain View Whisman School District are assessing a Report submitted by Mountain View Public Safety Advisory Board.  The Advisory Board, after months of surveys and interviews with parents, students and school staff, recommended that, “school resource officers have a place on campus;…(that there be) greater transparency on what law enforcement activities can take place on campus, and suggest that disciplinary actions be handled discreetly and out of sight of other students.”

— Nationally, the Governmental Accountability Office released new data on bullying in schools. The Report reviews “hostile behaviors in K-12 schools,…the prevalence and nature of hostile behaviors in K-12 public schools; the presence of K-12 school programs and practices to address hostile behaviors; and how Education has addressed complaints related to these issues in school years 2010-11 through 2019-20.”  Statistically, “(a)bout one in five students aged 12 to 18 were bullied annually in school years 2014-15, 2016-17, and 2018-19….Hate crimes—which most commonly targeted students because of their race and national origin—and physical attacks with a weapon nearly doubled. Sexual assaults also increased during the same period.”  FULL REPORT

— In Colorado, officials in the Denver Public Schools have replaced the school resource officer program with an in-house deployment of security personnel.  The safety patrol officers wear uniforms, are armed with guns, and have authority to ticket students for certain offenses.  Parents who succeeded in persuading the Board of Education to remove school resource officers view the new policy as “a slap in the face to our community.”

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Safety Law News for November 19, 2021

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— In Ohio, the United States District Court refused to dismiss a liability lawsuit brought by parents whose child suffered from anxiety and panic attacks due to sexual harassment by fellow students.  The court upheld claims based on negligence, gross negligence, and Intentional infliction of emotional distress.  The court found that, “defendants knew the full extent of the harassment, and the extreme risk of emotional damage to (the victim), but consciously disregarded it when they failed to discipline the boys or take other specific actions to end the harassment.”  The court noted that the restorative justice plans of the educators – to have the victim “talk it out” with the boys – was nonsense: “(g)iven that (the victim) could not even pass the boys in a grocery aisle without suffering a panic attack, (the principal’s) suggestion was to effectively induce more emotional distress.”  T.W. & K.W. v. Finneytown Local School District

— In Oregon,  disciplinary data released by the Salem-Keizer Public School District shows that while suspensions and expulsions have been drastically reduced – through restorative justice reforms – fighting has increased.  Expulsions decreased by almost 90%.  Suspensions decreased by 55%. Campus disruptions and fighting increased 42%.   The school district contends that it expected the increase.  The school district voted in 2021 to discontinue its school resource officer program.

— In North Carolina, school officials in Wake County released an executive summary of a report from its School Safety Advocacy Council.  Hired by the school board to assess school safety, the Council recommended increased oversight of the school resource officer program, cancelation of student off-campus dining privileges, and a more effective district-wide emergency communications network.

— In Ohio, the Ohio House has passed legislation that changes the law requiring more than 700 hours of training for teachers and staff who want to be armed in schools.  The new policy lowers the requirement to 20 hours of gun training.  The sponsors of the legislation contend that the change is needed by rural districts with longer response times from law enforcement, and by poor districts that can’t afford school resource officers.