Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘schools’

Toronto schools: Halloween insensitive to witches

From the National Post (Nicholas Kohler, “School board cautions against offending Wiccans”, Oct. 27)(via Stuttaford):

Teachers should forego traditional classroom Halloween celebrations because they are disrespectful of Wiccans and may cause some children to feel excluded, says a Toronto District School Board memo sent to principals and teachers this week.

“Many recently arrived students in our schools share absolutely none of the background cultural knowledge that is necessary to view ‘trick or treating,’ the commercialization of death, the Christian sexist demonization of pagan religious beliefs, as ‘fun,’ ” says the memo.

Showing more common sense than the school board, an actual Wiccan priestess interviewed by the newspaper, Nicole Cooper, said she didn’t feel threatened by costumes or trick-or-treating: “If I had children I wouldn’t deprive them of that — it’s a really fun thing to do. It’s engaging in the spirit of the season; it’s exciting for kids,” she said.

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UC Berkeley sued over evolution website

“The University of California at Berkeley is being sued for running a website for school teachers called Understanding Evolution. Anti-evolutionists claim that the site breaches the American constitution on the separation of church and state because it links to religious organisations which believe faith can be reconciled with Darwin’s theory of evolution”. (Donald MacLeod, “Intelligent design opponents [sic] invoke US constitution”, EducationGuardian (U.K.), Oct. 18; Katie McCulloch, “Citing Religious Web Site, Parent Sues UC Berkeley”, Daily Californian, Oct. 14). More: CalStuff, Tim Sandefur, Ed Brayton, Not Your Father’s America.

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No constitutional right to play college sports

College sports dodges a bullet: the Texas Supreme Court, reversing a court of appeals below, has ruled that a star college-level athlete’s reputation and future earning potential do not rise to the level of a property interest creating due process rights under the state’s constitution. The court rejected “a lawsuit by former Big 12 champion and Singapore swimmer Joscelin Yeo, who claimed the University of Texas damaged her reputation by ruling her ineligible to compete after she transferred from another school.” (Jim Vertuno, “Texas Supreme Court rules against former UT swimmer”, AP/Denton (Tex.) Record-Chronicle, Aug. 26; Doug Lederman, “Do Some Athletes Matter More?”, InsideHigherEd, Aug. 30)(opinion/lower court opinion).

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Kutztown student “hacking” case

Kutztown issued laptops to its students, but installed an administrative program on the computers to prevent students from accessing “inappropriate” Internet sites and instant messaging and to allow remote monitoring of how students were using the computers. At the same time, the school posted the password to the administrative program on the back of the computer, and it was a matter of time before students figured it out. The school district has responded by having the police file felony hacking charges against thirteen of the students. Thankfully, the juvenile probation office recognized the difference between a mountain and a molehill, and cut a community-service deal. (Yvonne Lee, “Student Hackers Get Off With Community Service”, All Headline News, Aug. 26; pro-student site).

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Defensive coaching

Well, a different kind of defensive coaching than you normally think of when you think of high school sports coaches:

For the first time this season, Severna Park Athletic Director Wayne Mook required his coaches to record running times and player evaluation grades, then hand in that paperwork to him. It is an arduous process that many coaches find tiresome, but Mook instituted it for a reason: After a player was cut from the girls’ lacrosse team last spring, the family hired lawyers to meet with the school.

(Eli Saslow, “High Schools Address the Cruelest Cut”, Washington Post, Aug. 22).

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A new civil right

Namely, the “civil right to get a high-school diploma no matter how little you know, and consequently to have a high-school diploma that certifies precisely nothing about your abilities and which therefore has roughly no value in the job market.” Something at Harvard called the Civil Rights Project, in alliance with a bunch of litigious pressure groups, is planning to secure this new right for America’s schoolkids, notes Mark Kleiman (Aug. 18)(via Kaus).

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NY schools drug counselor caught with cocaine can be fired

And it only took three years of litigation to reach that result. Michael Campbell and the New York State United Teachers Union sued to get Campbell his job back at Intermediate School 72 after he was caught in his car with ten aluminum bags of cocaine, and a hearing officer and a trial court agreed before the appellate court reversed. There might be still another appeal. Taxpayers can thank Campbell’s lawyer, James R. Sandner, and lower court judge Debra A. James. (Samuel Maull, “Appeals court says teacher arrested as drug suspect should lose job”, AP/Newsday, Jul. 7 (via EdWatch); opinion).

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No running — this is a playground

Courtesy Matt Conigliaro (Jul. 18): swings and other fun elements are disappearing fast from South Florida playgrounds under lawyering pressure. “To say ‘no running’ on the playground seems crazy,” says Broward County School Board member Robin Bartleman, whose own 6-year-old daughter is disappointed in the playground at Everglades Elementary in Weston. “But your feelings change when you’re in a closed-door meeting with lawyers.” “Play is one of children’s chief vehicles for development,” said University of Texas emeritus professor Joe Frost, who runs the Play and Playgrounds Research Project there. “Right now it looks like we’re developing a nation of wimps.” (Chris Kahn, “In the pursuit of safety, teeter-totters and swings are disappearing from playgrounds”, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Jul. 18). See Sept. 8, Mar. 5, etc. More: Liz Lightfoot, “Schools ‘wrap children in cotton wool'”, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), May 3.

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“Court Lets Law Graduate Sue GMU Over F”

Overruling a trial judge, the Fourth Circuit has ruled that Carin Constantine can sue the George Mason University Law School in northern Virginia as well as professor Nelson Lund (whose work we’ve cited favorably in the past) over alleged failure to accommodate her disability, in this case severe migraine headaches which led to attendance problems and to an “F” on an exam. Her suit also charges that the university retaliated against her for voicing complaints, chilling her exercise of First Amendment rights. (Jerry Markon, Washington Post, Jun. 15).

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Texas lawmakers modify zero tolerance

Good news for a change: a bill awaiting the signature of Texas Gov. Rick Perry would restore some discretion to school boards, reducing the chances that students will be expelled over inadvertent violations of zero tolerance rules. In particular, according to a newspaper report quoted at Zero Intelligence (Jun. 6),

If the bill becomes law, students still could face severe sanctions for serious offenses, such as bringing a weapon onto a campus or a school-sponsored activity off campus. But if the bill passes, administrators would be able to consider the student’s intent or lack of intent, disciplinary history, a disability that substantially impairs the student’s capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the conduct and whether the action was done in self-defense.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers took active roles in support of the bill. (Helen Eriksen, “Discipline bill on Perry’s desk”, Houston Chronicle, Jun. 4).

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