— In Michigan, the United States District Court upheld the school discipline of a ten (10) day suspension to a student for posting to a fake Instagram account that he created off-campus impersonating a teacher, sharing the username and password with other students, and targeting other teachers with subsequent posts. Applying the recent off-school speech case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. ex rel. Levy, 141 S.Ct. 2038 (2021), the court “balanced the school’s interest in disciplining a student’s speech against the off-campus features of his speech and then addressed the ‘material disruption’ prong of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).” The school discipline was valid because the Instagram account impersonated one teacher and targeted others teachers, qualifying as “serious or severe bullying or harassment,” giving the school a significant interest in disciplining the speech that “interfered with the work and discipline of the school.” Kutchinski v Freeland Community School District
— In Arkansas, the Arkansas School Safety Commission is launching an anonymous tip line to report safety threats. The tip line is one of several recommendations submitted to the Governor in a Report on protecting school students. Other recommendations focus on areas such as mental health and prevention, law enforcement and security, audits, emergency operations plans and drills, physical safety, and intelligence and communication.
— In New York, officials in New York City are making school safety a priority. Over 200 school safety agents will patrol schools. The buildings were checked for working door locks, alarms, panic buttons, and operable public announcing systems. School personnel are receiving training on active shooter procedures in coordination with law enforcement.
— In the United States, parents who are concerned for their children’s safety at school is at the highest level in over two decades. According to Gallup, 44% of parents said they fear for their child’s physical safety while at school, compared with 34% of parents in the previous survey.