— In Missouri, the United States District Court ruled that school officials did not violate the rights of a 12-year-old public school student who recreated and posted for a friend an anonymous Snapchat social media post she received that read, “Pray tm I’m about to shoot up the Jackson School.” The friend – from a neighboring school district – reposted the message. “Within an hour, School District administrators learned about the Snap. School District administrators cancelled all classes …in response to the Snap. In addition, the School District rescheduled a home varsity football game and cancelled a boys’ swim meet, a JV boys’ soccer game, football, cheerleading, and cross country practices, and a youth football tournament.” The parents of the 12-year-old school student sued to challenge the school discipline of a ten day suspension followed by a 170-day suspension. The court held that despite the fact that the student was passing along a post she did not create the school discipline did not violate the student’s First Amendment rights. The court noted that the school officials were enforcing the “the Disruptive Conduct or Speech Policy and the False Alarms or Reports Policy” under a duty to protect the school environment. Applying the rule of law of the case Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. by and through Levy, the court ruled that “even though regulation of off-campus speech typically “falls within the zone of parental” authority, speech that threatens violence against a school community threatens the safety of the school environment. And that justifies intervention by school officials.” The court further ruled that “even before Mahanoy, the Eighth Circuit extended Tinker’s substantial disruption analysis to “off-campus student speech where it is reasonably foreseeable that the speech will reach the school community and cause a substantial disruption to the educational setting.” Most importantly, the court declared the reasonableness of the actions of the school officials in the light of current threats directed toward school campuses. “That the Snap would cause a substantial disruption in the school community was also reasonably foreseeable. The test is an objective one, focusing on the reasonableness of the school administration’s response, not on the intent of the student… (and) the uncontroverted material facts establish that the Snap created a substantial disruption to (the) school community.” A.N., A MINOR, BY AND THROUGH HER NEXT FRIEND, J.N., Plaintiffs, v. JACKSON R-II SCHOOL DISTRICT
— In Ohio “116 school districts and independent schools have armed staff members, as of June 17. Many of the schools are rural, but there are some urban and suburban districts. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law in 2022 that grants local boards of education authority to decide whether to allow their teachers and school workers to carry firearms. It lowered the required training hours for armed personnel from 700 hours to at least 24, but school boards have the authority to mandate more hours. (More here)
— In Tennessee, officials in Williamson County Schools “announced … that starting this fall, students who want to ride their e-bikes or other electric transportation devices to school will have to complete a required safety training session.”
— In Minnesota “a new education law … requires school districts and charter schools to adopt policies to implement anonymous threat reporting systems. Districts have until June 30, 2027, to adopt a policy and until July 1, 2028, to have a system in place. The systems must include a 24-hour mobile app, website or toll-free hotline for reporting dangerous, violent or threatening activity on school property or involving enrolled students.”