Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘schools’

Booster clubs and bake sales

The anti-obesity campaign isn’t the only policy initiative that’s leading to regulatory scrutiny of high school bake sales. There’s Title IX and its state equivalents, too:

Controversy in New Mexico continues over booster club funding and Title IX implementation as discussion heats up over the state’s Schools Athletics Equity Act. The issue remains whether private donations raised by parents through bake sales and working concession stands, or whether philanthropic contributions by private businesses, should be pooled together and distributed among all boys and girls teams under the guise of Title IX equality — and regardless of which parents/teams raised what.

Not surprisingly, many expect volunteerism to droop if the chance to raising funds for your team’s road trip or new equipment is replaced by a new rule prescribing that you can only raise money for school sports generally and hope that some fraction gets passed through to your team. [Deborah Elson, Saving Sports; earlier on booster clubs]

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“If you say it’s just a drill, would you move as quickly?”

Just when you think the school-locker-search genre has exhausted its outrage potential, comes this: Wolcott, Ct., school authorities falsely informed students over the intercom that a menacing intruder was loose in the school and that everyone needed to go into lockdown mode. Actually, it was an excuse to search lockers for drugs. (None were found.) One possible lesson? “If you say something important to teenagers and you want them to trust you, it’s better not to lie.” [Rick Green, Hartford Courant via Scott Greenfield]

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Faced with federal suit, Arizona quits monitoring teachers’ English fluency

My new Cato post points out that while this may be craziness, it’s craziness with a long pedigree:

It was way back in the first Bush administration that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) began filing lawsuits against employers for “discriminating” against employees with difficult-to-understand or heavily accented speech, the theory being that this served as an improper proxy for discrimination based on national origin. The scope for allowable exceptions was exceedingly narrow, too narrow to cover most teaching positions, as I wrote quite a while back when the issue had just come over the horizon in a Massachusetts case. Indeed, the National Education Association (I pointed out) had been prevailed on to pass a resolution “decrying disparate treatment on the basis of ‘pronunciation’ — quite a switch from the old days when teachers used to be demons for correctness on that topic.”

Read the whole thing here (& Alkon, Peter Pappas/Tax Lawyer’s Blog, Bader). Another view: Josh Hanson.

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September 19 roundup

  • Educator: please don’t bring lawyers to parent-teacher meetings [Ron Clark, CNN] Steve Brill: what I found when I investigated NYC teacher “rubber rooms” [Reuters] “The Six Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety” [Cracked] School waterfall liability [Lincoln, Neb. Journal-Star]
  • As predicted: “Dodd-Frank Paperwork a Bonanza for Consultants and Lawyers” [NYT]
  • “Running out of common drugs” [Josh Bloom, NY Post] Pharmaceutical shortages: the role of Medicare price controls [Richard Epstein, Hoover; earlier here, here, etc.]
  • DoT insists on exposing private flight plans online. Yoo-hoo, privacy advocates? [Steve Chapman]
  • New class action law in Mexico includes loser-pays provision [WSJ]
  • Newt Gingrich candidacy revives memories of his 1995 call for death penalty (with “mass executions”) for drug smuggling [NYT archive via Josh Barro; see also @timothy_watson “Sounds kinda like Shariah Law to me.”)
  • “Cy pres slush fund in Georgia under ethics investigation” [PoL]

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Food law roundup

  • Feds fund Boston campaign bashing sweetened drinks [Globe; see also on NYC] More on ObamaCare “Public Health Fund” subsidies to local paternalist initiatives on diet [WLF]
  • Thanks to federal funding priorities, New York education department had 40 experts on school lunches, only one on science education [Frederick Hess via Stoll]
  • Grocers hope to escape federal menu labeling mandate [FDA Law Blog] How regulations exasperate midsize restaurant operators [Philip Klein, Wash. Examiner]
  • “The Eight Dumbest Restaurant Laws” [Zagat]
  • Proposed federal standards on kid food ads extreme enough that many USDA “healthy” recipes would flunk [Diane Katz, Heritage] Do FTC’s guidelines violate the First Amendment? [WSJ]
  • Compared with what? “Egg farm regulations still skimpy” [Stoll] Deer blamed for E. coli in pick-your-own strawberries [USA Today]
  • U.K.: Your kids are too fat so we’re taking them away [Daily Mail; earlier here, here, etc.]

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