Graduation time is here. “My advice to other principals is, Whatever you do, do not name a valedictorian. Any principal who does is facing peril,” is the quote from one Florida high school principal in a New Yorker article on the subject. Subhead: “Students are suing their way to the top.” Valedictorian controversies have escalated into numerous lawsuits (which we’ve covered the last two seasons: 2004 and 2003 (also here)). (Margaret Talbot, “Best in Class”, Jun. 6).
Posts Tagged ‘schools’
$2M for marshmallow incident
A Glenview Elementary School teacher briefly left his sixth-grade class unattended, and the kids decided to play a game called “Chubby Bunny” to see how many marshmallows they could hold in their mouth at one time. Unfortunately, 12-year-old Catherine “Casey” Fish was a tad overambitious, and choked to death on the three or four marshmallows she had in her mouth, and her parents sued the teacher and the school district for not having a teacher physically present to deal with the consequences of their daughter’s actions. The school district decided to settle the case with insurance funds. As is inevitable, the family’s lawyer denied that money was at the center of the case, and the newspaper allows the fiction: “John and Therese Fish’s wrongful-death lawsuit involving their late daughter, Catherine, was never about money but was meant to publicize hazards of such ‘idiotic’ games, the couple’s attorney, Francis Patrick Murphy, said.” It’s not likely we’ll see follow-up on how much of the money the Fishes spend on anti-marshmallow-choking public service advertising. (Rummana Hussain, “Family of girl who choked to death gets $2 mil.”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 3; Lisa Black, “Settlement reached in choking lawsuit”, Chicago Tribune, Jun. 2; Romenesko blog, Jun. 5).
Students’ dance performance
Students at San Francisco’s Farragut Elementary School and an educational foundation are scrambling to raise funds to make it possible for students to perform a Congolese dance routine in the city’s May 29 annual Carnival parade. “In previous years, the school has supported the Foundation’s efforts financially, but this year, the school has withdrawn its support ‘[d]ue to liability concerns.'” (Sarah Rohrs, “Students step lively for Carnivale”, Vallejo Times-Herald, May 17)(via Common Good Society Watch).
Preschool expulsions
Researchers at the Yale Child Study Center led by Walter S. Gilliam have found that a surprisingly large number of 3 and 4 year olds are expelled from community and private preschools, perhaps 5,000 or more annually. Zero tolerance and liability fears may be among the factors at work: “The study did not gather information on why the children were expelled. But Dr. Gilliam said a wide range of behavior could lead to expulsion: aggression toward the teacher or other children; actions that violate a zero-tolerance policy, like taking a toy gun to school; or anything that might cause a teacher to worry about injury and liability, like running out of the classroom to the parking lot.” (emphasis added) (Tamar Lewin, “Research Finds a High Rate of Expulsions in Preschool”, New York Times, May 17). Last December the Times reported (Dec. 7) on how liability fears sometimes drive colleges’ decisions to impose involuntary leave on students; colleges, like preschools, generally enjoy greater flexibility in expulsion and discipline than do conventional K-12 public schools.
Update: Gender equity and staggered sports schedules
The U.S. Supreme Court, sending a case back to the Sixth Circuit, has kept alive Michigan school athletic directors’ hopes of proving that they have a rational basis for scheduling some girls’ sports in different seasons than the equivalent boys’ sports (see Dec. 24-27, 2001; Jul. 10, 2004). (“Supreme Court ruling delays decision”, Saginaw News, May 3; Hope Yen, “High Court Asks 6th Circuit to Reconsider Girls Sports Seasons Ruling”, AP/Law.com, May 3). Mick McCabe of the Detroit Free Press says that based on actual results, the schools deserve to prevail; Michigan has one of the nation’s highest rates of participation by girls in sports and disproportionately graduates girls who win athletic scholarships in the relevant sports of volleyball and basketball. (“Gender equity no-brainer as Title IX case”, May 6).
Schools and sunscreen
Those reports from Bristol, England last summer (“It’s sunny, stay inside”, Jul. 6) turn out not to be an isolated case: in Montgomery County, Maryland, ordinary sunscreen lotion is considered a medication for which a doctor’s note is required, while in adjacent Howard County, a student who wishes to use sun protection cream must bring in a parent’s note and the bottle must be kept with the school nurse. The American Cancer Society, which favors wide sunscreen use as a protective against skin cancer, is upset. (Daniel de Vise, “Bill Would Legislate Maryland Students’ Use of Sunscreen”, Washington Post, Mar. 29)(via Taranto). More on zero tolerance: Kris Axtman, “Why tolerance is fading for zero tolerance in schools”, Christian Science Monitor, Mar. 31.
Florida’s legislature inviting plaintiffs’ lawyers to re-enact Scopes?
Two bad ideas in one: A Florida state House committee voted 6-2 to forward on H-837, a bill some legislators say will give university students a legal cause of action to sue universities and professors who “ridicule” their beliefs.
“Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design, and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,'” [Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala] said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.
The bill is expected to pass the Florida House. It’s not quite clear that the bill will have the effect of opening the courtrooms to every crackpot student offended by a professor’s lecture, but it’s not comforting to see the absence of a denial. (James Vanlandingham, “Capitol bill aims to control ‘leftist’ profs”, Independent Florida Alligator, Mar. 23; Joe Follick, “House OKs Student `Free Speech’ Bill”, Lakeland Ledger, Mar. 23; James Vanlandingham, “Pending academic freedom bill comes under fire”, Independent Florida Alligator, Mar. 24).
Broken thermometer? Close down the school
When tiny amounts of hazardous materials get spilled, major disruptions can result: “Suppose Marshall University had responded to a dropped vial of phenol by asking a janitor to clean it up, cautiously. The school would have feared, and perhaps rightly so, junk-science lawsuits over mysterious symptoms that someone near the spill might claim mysteriously to have developed. Evacuating the med school and bringing in the moon-suit patrol might have been unnecessary, but it reduced the school’s tort exposure.” (Gregg Easterbrook, “Hazardous Waste”, The New Republic, Mar. 21).
“Judge throws out lawsuit over summer homework”
Another widely noted pro se suit comes to grief: Wisconsin judge Richard J. Sankovitz has thrown out the lawsuit filed by 17-year-old Peer Larson and his father arguing that mandatory summer homework should not have been assigned in the honors math class Larson wanted to take (see Jan. 21). “Had the Larsons done a bit more homework, they would have discovered that the people of our state granted to the Legislature … the power to establish school boards and the state superintendent and to confer upon them the powers and duties the Legislature saw fit,” wrote the judge in his order (PDF, courtesy Courthouse News). (AP/Janesville, Wis. Gazette, Mar. 9).
Iowa Poetry Awards
“An online group of self-described ‘literary watchdogs’ is threatening a class-action lawsuit against the UI Press, alleging that recent awards for poetry were unfairly given to writers with ‘illicit’ ties to the program. Postings at foetry.com demand a return of $20 reading fees after the 2004 Iowa Poetry Awards — open to anyone inside or outside the university — were given to people with ties to the UI. University officials note that the contest employs blind judging, in which the authors’ names are removed from the manuscripts.” (Drew Kerr, “Two allege bias in UI Press poetry awards”, Daily Iowan, Feb. 28)(via Schaeffer who got it from Maud Newton).