Safety Law News for February 3, 2023

— In Indiana, the Court of Appeals of Indiana, affirmed the conviction of a parent for disrupting campus and failing to comply with the requests of school officials.  The court ruled that the felony of criminal trespass was appropriate because school officials had authority to request that the parent return to the front office instead of angrily continuing down a hallway toward classes in search of her child, shouting and using profanity.  “Simply because a school chooses to allow parents on the premises for limited purposes or to participate in certain activities on the premises does not mean that parents have a contractual interest in the premises…Without permission, (the parent) entered a prohibited area of the School that was locked and off-limits to the public…Even if (the parent) might have had a contractual interests in the School’s property, her behavior abandoned whatever contractual interest she had in the school property because she certainly had no contractual interest in remaining on school property to disrupt the education environment.”  Ebonie Craig v. State of Indiana

— In Connecticut, Senate Bill 119 has been introduced to change state policy on the roles of police in schools.  If enacted, statewide rules for the use of school resource officers, including “building on a 2015 law which required districts with SROs to enter a memorandum of understanding to document that officer’s role at the school …(by) flesh(ing) out what those MOUs should entail.”  Senate Bill 119 also calls for schools to make information on the roles and responsibilities of school resource officers readily available on their websites.

— In Ohio, the Governor’s 2024 budget plan sets aside money for districts to get help paying for school resource officers.  The funding would be available to every school in the state, public or private, to either start or expand their school resource officer program.  Poorer school districts would get more money towards an officer; affluent schools would get less.

— In Colorado, Senate Bill 23-070 has been introduced as a measure to place more rigorous training requirements on police in schools.  Under the legislation, an officer is required to complete school-specific training before being deployed to a school or as soon as is reasonably possible if there is not sufficient time to complete the training before the school resource officer assignment begins.