• In Maine, state officials enacted a law banning vaping or possession of an e-cigarette on school grounds, joining Montana, Oklahoma and Virginia. And in the past three years, at least 18 states have raised the legal smoking age for both traditional and e-cigarettes to 21 in response to the meteoric rise in adolescent vaping.
• Nationally, a survey of educators reports that 92% percent of K-12 educators feel safe going to school on a regular basis and 65% feel prepared to respond to a school crisis.
• In California, the Court of Appeal, upheld the jury verdict in favor of school officials in a lawsuit filed by a student who was injured when other students were roughhousing in class. The court reasoned that educators presented evidence of reasonable supervision. The court gave the jury the following instruction: “A school district has a duty to supervise at all times the conduct of the children on the school grounds and to enforce those rules and regulations necessary for their protection. The standard of care is that degree of care which a person of ordinary prudence, charged with comparable duties, would exercise under the same circumstances. Either a total lack of supervision or ineffective supervision may constitute a lack of ordinary care on the part of those responsible for student supervision.” (Ethan Young v. Menifee Union School District).
• In Virginia, the United States District Court held that allegations by student victims of child sexual abuse by a teacher that the school principal had many reasons to know yet took no action were sufficient to state claim against principal for gross negligence under Virginia law. (Graham v. City of Manassas School Board).