ACLU objects to Jesus painting in Ohio middle school

The Columbus-Dispatch reports that the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio (ACLU-OH) has recently joined another group in seeking the removal of a painting of Jesus displayed in a Jackson, Ohio, middle school. Like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the ACLU believes that the picture, which school officials vow will stay, is an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state and an endorsement of Christianity.

“In this case, there are no other historical or religious figures displayed, making it very clear that the portrait is non-secular and meant to endorse one religion in particular,” an ACLU-OH lawyer said in a statement. “The fact that this portrait has been hanging for many years does not change the fact that it promotes one set of religious beliefs at the expense of all others,” said ACLU litigation coordinator Drew Dennis.

The Jackson school board decided recently that the picture of Jesus, which has hung in Jackson Middle School since 1947, would not be removed in response to the objections of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Rebecca Markert, a staff attorney for the Madison, Wis.-based nonprofit group, said yesterday it was “unfortunate” that the school board defends the display of the Jesus picture despite court rulings to the contrary. The group, which is confident a court would rule against the school district, is meeting with Jackson-area residents to determine “our next step,” she said.

Superintendent Phil Howard told an approving crowd of more than 300 people at the school board meeting that the picture, a decades-old gift from a student group, is legal because it has historical significance. Howard did not return telephone calls yesterday seeking comment.

“Public-school displays that advance one particular religious tradition are neither welcoming, nor inclusive for those who may have other beliefs,” said Dennis, who wrote to the school district requesting the removal of the painting. It hangs over an entrance to the middle school.

Source:  The Columbus Dispatch, 1/11/13, By Randy Ludlow

Indiana bill would fast track siblings into state school voucher program

According to the Courier-Journal, legislation has been introduced in the Indiana legislature to make it easier for siblings of private school voucher students to join Indiana’s voucher program. The bill, sponsored by State Senator Carlin Yoder, would eliminate the requirement that siblings of current voucher students first attend a public school for a year before becoming eligible for the program.

While supporters say doing so would remove an unnecessary hurdle for families, a key legislator says the move would sidestep the notion that all students would first give public schools a try. Senator Luke Kenley argues that making a sibling exception represents a “fundamental change” to the agreement reached during the 2011 debate on the voucher program that public schools should have a chance to first win over parents.

Indiana has the country’s largest voucher program, spending about $36 million on subsidies to low- and moderate-income families toward sending about 9,100 children to private schools this year. The state Supreme Court is weighing the legality of the program after hearing arguments in November 2012 from opponents that virtually all of the voucher money goes to schools whose primary purpose is to promote the teachings of their affiliated churches.

Kenley is chairman of the state Senate Appropriations Committee, which would have to consider the voucher expansion if it clears the Education Committee in a vote that could happen very soon. Kenley says the sibling exemption could add millions of dollars in additional costs for the voucher program and change the premise of how students qualify.

Yoder counters that it was unfair to require low-income families receiving vouchers to go through more one-year public school periods for their children. “These are not kids who are going to stay in the public schools,” Yoder said. “The family has already made that decision.”

Source:  Courier-Journal, 1/10/13, By Tom Davies (Associated Press)

[Editor's Note: Even as the Indiana legislature considers expansion the scope of the voucher program, the Indiana Supreme Court is weighing whether the program is constitutional. In November 2012, Legal Clips summarized an article in the Indianapolis Star, which reported that the Indiana Supreme Court had heard arguments in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the State’s school voucher program. The Indiana State Teachers Association, one of the parties opposing vouchers, contends school vouchers violate the state constitution because they direct taxpayer money to religion-affiliated schools, money that otherwise would have gone to public schools. The Indiana Attorney General’s Office defends the voucher law saying parents are free to send their children and direct the money to pay tuition at any school they want – public, private, or parochial.]

Federal district court allows Texas district to require student to wear ID badge on campus

A.H. v. Northside Indep. Sch. Dist., No. 12-1113 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 8, 2013)

Abstract: A federal district court in Texas has denied a student’s motion for a preliminary injunction barring a school district from transferring her from the specialty program she attends back to her base school because she refuses to wear the required ID badge while on campus. The court rejected her claims that being required to wear the badge violated her First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and free speech, and her Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection. In addition, the court found that the ID badge requirement did not violate her rights under the Texas Religious Freedom Act (TRFA).

Facts/Issues: A.H. attends the John Jay Science and Engineering Academy at John Jay High School (JJHS). JJHS is one of two schools in the Northside Independent School District (NISD) participating in a pilot program known as the “Smart ID Card Student Locator Project.” The Smart ID Card contains a “locator” chip that allows school staff to track the location of students while on campus.

A.H. and her parents initially objected to her wearing the ID badge based on their religious beliefs that the presence of the chip in the badge “is the mark of the beast” as foretold in the Bible. However, after NISD officials agreed to remove the chip from A.H.’s badge, she and her parents still objected on religious grounds to her being required to wear the badge. NISD informed A.H. that she would be transferred back to home school, which is not participating in the program, if she continued to refuse to wear even the chipless badge.

NISD believes the Smart ID badges will improve safety by allowing school staff to know the whereabouts of a student who may be missing or unaccounted for in the event of a fire alarm or other emergency evacuation. NISD also points out the badges provide a more reliable and efficient method of determining daily student attendance, which impacts State funding. In addition, the badges also function as multipurpose “smart cards” that may be used to check out library books, purchase meals in the cafeteria, and purchase tickets for extracurricular activities.

A.H. and her parents filed suit against NISD in state court, which granted them a temporary restraining order (TRO) from the badge requirement. The suit was then removed to federal district court. The parties agreed to extend the TRO until the hearing on A.H.’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The suit claims violations of her: (1) free exercise rights under the First Amendment; (2) free speech rights under the First Amendment; (3) rights under the TRFA; (4) due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment; and (5) equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ruling/Rationale: The district court denied A.H.’s motion for a preliminary injunction to bar NISD officials from requiring her to wear the ID badge in order to attend the magnet program at JJHS. Before beginning its analysis of A.H.’s claims, the court reaffirmed the principle that school officials have wide discretion in regards to management of the daily operation of schools. The court also restated the constitutional principle that while students retain their First Amendment rights at school, those rights must be analyzed in light of “the special characteristics of the school environment.”

First Amendment free exercise of religion claim. The court restated A.H.’s claim that her right to freely exercise her religion would be violated if she is forced to wear the ID badge. While she asserts that the chip in the badge constitutes the Biblical “mark of the beast,” she, nonetheless, rejected NISD’s accommodation that she could wear a chipless badge.

The court next determined that NISD’s badge requirement is a neutral rule/regulation of general applicability and, thus, only need be rationally related to a legitimate government interest to survive a constitutional challenge. Even though the court rejected A.H.’s argument that strict scrutiny should apply because she is asserting more than just a free exercise challenge, i.e., free speech, due process, and equal protection, the court analyzed the claim “under both the rational basis and strict scrutiny tests” to determine if A.H. has a likelihood of success on the merits.

Applying the rational basis test, the court found that the badge requirement “is neutral in both purpose and application, as the entire student body is subject to the requirement.” The court determined that the requirement serves a number of purposes, none of which touch upon religious beliefs or practices.

The court pointed out that the requirement serves NISD’s “legitimate need to easily identify its students for purposes of safety, security, attendance and funding, and the requirement that all students carry a Smart ID badge is certainly a rational means to meet such needs.” The court also noted that to the extent the requirement imposed a burden of A.H.’s exercise of religion, that impediment was eliminated by NISD’s offer of an accommodation – a chipless badge.

Applying strict scrutiny, the court concluded that A.H. had “failed to show that carrying a Smart ID badge containing a chip imposes a substantial burden on the observation of a central religious belief.” The court emphasized that A.H. is free to “continue to disagree with the Smart ID pilot program and she can continue to exercise her religious beliefs even if she carries a Smart ID badge during school hours.”

The court also pointed out that even if A.H. could should a substantial burden, it would be outweighed by NISD’s compelling governmental interest in providing a safe and secure environment for all students, teachers, administrators, parents, and visitors on campus. The court: “One could envision many different methods of ensuring safety and security in schools, and the requirement that high school students carry a uniform ID badge issued for those attending classes on campus is clearly one of the least restrictive means available.”

Finally, the court determined that even if NISD’s requirement failed to pass the strict scrutiny test, it would be moot “because [NISD] has offered [A.H.] an accommodation that clearly removes her religious objection to wearing a Smart ID badge containing a chip (i.e., ‘the mark of the beast’).” The court also noted that A.H.’s objection to wearing the Smart ID badge without the chip is a secular, not religious, choice because she had worn a Student ID badge for several years prior to JJHS implementing the pilot program.

First Amendment free speech claim. The court characterized this claim as one involving coerced speech/expression in the form of being required to wear the badge. The court, however, agreed with NISD that no speech/expression is implicated by the badge requirement because “[w]earing a student ID badge does not communicate support for the pilot program, or convey any type of message whatsoever.”

In addition, the court found that even if wearing the badge amounted to expressive conduct, NISD’s requirement would pass constitutional muster under United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968), because: “The requirement is within the District’s power and authority; the rule furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; it is unrelated to the suppression of students’ expression; and the incidental restrictions on First Amendment activities, if any, are no more than necessary to further that interest.”

TRFA claim. The court disposed of A.H.’s TRFA claim relying on its First Amendment analysis, and on the grounds that it was precluded because NISD had offered her two accommodations: “(1) wear the student ID badge issued to [JJHS] students with the chip removed; or (2) transfer to her home campus, where she may wear her old student ID badge.”

Fourteenth Amendment due process and equal protection claims. The court concluded that A.H. had no constitutionally protected liberty or property interest in attending a particular school of her choice, a particular curriculum, courses of her choice, or particular extra-curricular activities on which to rest the due process claim. Nor did the court find a viable equal protection claim because the unequal treatment complained of, i.e., being “inconvenienced” and “singled out”, was the result of A.H.’s voluntary choice to refuse to carry a Smart ID badge while on campus.

A.H. v. Northside Indep. Sch. Dist., No. 12-1113 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 8, 2013)

[Editor's Note: In its press release responding to the court's decision, the Rutherford Institute, which is providing A.H. with legal representation, stated: "By declaring Andrea Hernandez’s objections to be a secular choice and not grounded in her religious beliefs, the district court is placing itself as an arbiter of what is and is not religious. This is simply not permissible under our constitutional scheme, and we plan to appeal this immediately.”

In November 2012, Legal Clips summarized an article in The Christian Science Monitor, which reported on A.H.'s suit against NISD.]

Ohio Education Department rules that district can require schools to keep ‘seclusion & restraint” records, but prevent public disclosure of records

The Columbus Dispatch reports that the Ohio State Board of Education (OBE) plans to adopt the state’s first policy governing seclusion and restraint in public schools. Although the new rules would require schools to keep records of how often and why educators place children in seclusion rooms or physically restrain them, those records would remain private.

Only the parents of the child who was secluded or restrained, or the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) would be informed of such incidents. Making information about seclusion private could prevent the public, including other parents, from knowing whether their schools have improperly secluded kids.

Currently, the state knows virtually nothing about seclusion in Ohio’s public schools because it never has asked which schools have rooms, how often they are used or why. The policy to be adopted says schools can use seclusion on students only when they are a physical danger to themselves or others, but never as a punishment, to force them to behave or as a convenience for school employees.

Under the new policy, ODE would be the watchdog, though it does not specify how often the department would collect data from schools about seclusion and restraint, only that it may. It also does not specify exactly what kind of data schools must keep.

ODE spokesman John Charlton said the department expects to be able to examine why students are secluded, but that its’ current data-collection systems are not yet prepared to collect seclusion-and-restraint information from schools. “It’s not that we don’t want that information. But we don’t have a good way to collect it, so we did not build that into the legislation,” Charlton said. Until those systems are in place, the department will examine aggregate data, including how many times seclusion was used in a particular district during the school year.

Although some school districts complain the rules are too burdensome, child protection advocate applaud the new rules. “We hope that this rule will end some of practices observed during the course of our investigations, such as the use of seclusion for minor behaviors and the use of restraints that restrict a student’s breathing,” said Sue Tobin, Executive Director of Disability Rights Ohio.

Source: The Columbus Dispatch, 1/10/13, By Jennifer Smith Richards

[Editor's Note: In September 2012, Legal Clips summarized an article in the StarNewsonline.com, which reported that Rick Holliday, Assistant Superintendent for Support Services, had announced that New Hanover County Schools’ use of seclusion rooms to deal with students’ aggressive behavior does not violate North Carolina law. According to Holliday, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights completed an investigation of the district’s seclusion rooms, finding that the district had no non-compliance issues with North Carolina’s Greenblatt Act, which gives schools strategies, such as seclusion rooms, to deal with students’ aggressive behavior.

In July 2012, Legal Clips summarized an Associated Press article in The Washington Post, which reported that the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions recently convened a hearing on the use of restraint and seclusion to raise awareness of how much physical force is used when disciplining students. The Committee is considering a bill, S. 2020, that calls for restraining or secluding students only if they might physically injure other students.]

North Carolina State Board of Education set to vote whether to approve statewide online charter schools

The News & Observer reports that the North Carolina State Board of Education (NCBE) plans to vote on a special application for virtual schools that want to run public charters and receive taxpayer money. It may consider charters that could sign up students statewide, though local school districts are worried about having to share funds with the online schools.

The move to consider virtual charters for approval alongside applications for brick-and-mortar schools comes after months of controversy over a lawsuit brought by N.C. Learns, a nonprofit that wants to bring to the state an online school managed by K12, the nation’s biggest for-profit selling online education. The charter proposed to enroll as many as 6,526 students from kindergarten through high school statewide.

After NCBE refused to consider the charter application, N.C. Learns appealed. Dozens of school boards from around the state united to persuade a Wake Superior Court judge to prevent the online school from opening last fall. School board members said then that they were not prepared to consider requests for online schools. NCBE’s vote would give virtual school operators a way for their – proposals to get a hearing.

N.C. Learns is appealing the Superior Court ruling and has informed the state Department of Public Instruction that it intends to apply again. The state board still has concerns about the funding of online charters that it did not address. Virtual charters will receive money according to the same formula that funds all charter schools, even though the virtual schools don’t have to open and maintain buildings. Charter schools receive public money for students, but not for buildings. Any changes in store for virtual charter funding would have to come from the legislature, NCBE Chairman Bill Harrison said.

Leanne Winner, lobbyist for the N.C. School Boards Association, said opening the state to online charter schools would be a bad idea without first answering those funding questions. There should be “a close examination of cost and whether they should be getting the same dollars,” she said.

Bryan Setser, former executive director of the N.C. Virtual Public School, said NCBE’s approach to virtual charters is standing in the way of innovation. “You’ve got to provide opportunities for charters to distinguish themselves,” he said. “It still feels very much like a traditional school application. The environments we’re moving into are not traditional.”

Source:  News & Observer, 1/8/13, By Lynn Bonner

[Editor's Note: In July 2012, Legal Clips summarized an Associated Press article on Reflector.com, which reported on Wake County Superior Court Judge Abraham Penn Jones' ruling barring North Carolina Virtual Academy from enrolling students in the fall of 2012. The ruling did not involve whether a for-profit company could open an online virtual charter school, but only that it did not get approval from the state board as the law requires. After the State Board of Education decided in 2011 that it would not approve any virtual charter schools for the coming school year, N.C. Learns sought and received approval for its virtual charter school from the Cabarrus County Board of Education.]

Civil rights groups challenge New Hampshire’s tuition-tax credit program

The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New Hampshire chapter of the ACLU (ACLU-NH), and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have filed suit against New Hampshire’s Education Tax Credit system, the Republican-backed plan that issues tax credits to businesses that donate to scholarship funds used to pay tuition for students to attend private and religious schools.

The lawsuit was filed in Strafford County Superior Court and names the state of New Hampshire as the defendant. The complaint says the system violates two provisions of the New Hampshire Constitution – one that forbids the use of tax money for religious schools, the other that no person shall be compelled to pay for the support of any religious school.

“A robust respect for the separation of church and state is vital to protecting the religious freedom of all New Hampshire citizens,” said Barbara R. Keshen, staff attorney for the ACLU-NH. “That’s why our state constitution contains several provisions intended to prevent this type of program.”

The program, passed by the New Hampshire Legislature last year, took effect Jan. 1. It allows up to $3.4 million in tax credits to be claimed in the first year, and $5.1 million during its second year. Keshen said she understands that some families have applied for funding.

The New Hampshire Attorney General is responsible for defending all lawsuits against the state. Mary Ann Dempsey, head of the Attorney General Civil Bureau, said it is too early to comment on the substance of the complaint. “Statutes are presumed to be constitutional,” she said. “Certainly, we will be defending the case and defending the statute.”

Source:  New Hampshire Union Leader, 1/9/13, By Mark Hayward

[Editor's Note:  This challenge to New Hampshire's tuition tax credit program is yet another in a growing list of state programs being challenged in the courts. In October 2012, NSBA submitted an amicus brief in Niehaus v. Huppenthal to the Arizona Court of Appeals in a case involving similar facts, addressing whether Arizona's tuition-tax credit program violates the state constitutional provisions mandating separation of church and state and prohibiting the use of public funds to aid religious institutions, such as schools.

In its press release about the complaint filed in Duncan v. State of New Hampshire, the ACLU states that New Hampshire's tuition tax credit program "allows businesses to reduce their tax liability by receiving an 85 percent tax credit in exchange for donations made to K-12 scholarship organizations, which will pay for tuition at religious and other private schools. Since there is no state oversight of the schools receiving funds, religious schools will be able to use the donations for religious instruction, indoctrination and religiously based discrimination." "This is just a backdoor voucher scheme," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United. "Whether it's through a traditional voucher or a tax credit, the result is the same: Taxpayers are subsidizing religious instruction."

The civil rights groups' complaint filed in the New Hampshire case identifies the two constitutional violations alleged by the groups, and requests a declaratory judgment that the program is unconstitutional, and a preliminary injunction and permanent injunction to block implementation of the program.]

Wisconsin teachers sue district for illegal contract terms

The Courthouse News Service reports that Milwaukee public school teachers have filed a class action lawsuit against a public school district that claims it can cut their pay at will and fine them up to $2,500 if they do not sign their contracts on time. Lead plaintiff Kimberly Palmer sued the Greenfield School District School Board on behalf of a class of 230 teachers, in Milwaukee County Court.

Palmer claims the district’s 2012-2013 contracts are full of illegal and unenforceable provisions: allowing the district to fire or reduce the pay and benefits of tenured teachers for vague and undefined reasons, and to fine them $1,000 to $2,500 if they do not sign their contract by the time the district wants it, or seek release from their contract.

Wisconsin has been Ground Zero in a nationwide fight over rights of public employee unions ever since Governor Scott Walker pushed his so-called “Budget Reform Act” through the Legislature in March 2011.

The teachers claim that:

- The 2012-13 contracts illegally allow the district to “make salary adjustments ‘due to disciplinary action and/or changes in full-time equivalency warranted by the district,’” in violation of a state statute;

- The contracts illegally allow the district to cut salary and benefits “if in the sole discretion of the district, the educator fails to meet the expectations referenced in the contract, acts in a manner that is not in the best interests of the district’s students, fails to abide by the terms of the Employee Handbook, fails to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the job description, or if the district decides to reduce the professional staff for financial or other lawful reasons,” in violation of state statutory and contract law;

- The contracts illegally set up “a liquidated damages schedule that begins assessing damages on June 1,” with fines beginning at $1,000, escalating to $2,500, for failing to sign contracts by June 15, or seeking release from contract; this “unlawfully assesses damages to teachers seeking release from their contracts prior to the statutory date for acceptance.”

The contracts state “that failure to return a signed contract … would result in non-renewal of the teacher’s contract,” the teachers say. “A stigma is attached to being non-renewed by a school district, as it suggests that a teacher’s employment was not continued for performance reasons or misconduct.”

Counsel for the Greenfield Education Association sent a letter to the school board president, objecting to the contracts’ provisions, but never received a response.

The class cites violation of state statutes under which the school district must fix teachers’ wages and set the contract acceptance date at June 15, and under which it can terminate permanent only employees for good cause.

They seek a declaration that the contracts are illegal and unenforceable and that new lawful contracts for the 2012-2013 school year must be entered into. They also seek damages for all loss of pay and/or benefits resulting from the Greenfield School District’s enforcement of the illegal provisions.

Source:  Courthouse News Service, 1/8/13, By Lisa Buchmeier

[Editor's Note:  In September 2012, Legal Clips summarized an article in The New York Times, which reported that Judge Juan B. Colás of Dane County Circuit Court had struck down much of the 2011 state law, “Act 10″, pushed through by Governor Walker that severely restricted the ability of public employees to bargain collectively. Judge Colás overturned the law with regard to city, county, and school district workers – although not state employees – ruling that it violated the federal and state Constitutions.]

Federal suit claims Texas district’s voting system for board members disenfranchises Hispanics

According to The Dallas Morning News, Manny Benavidez, an unsuccessful school board candidate, has filed suit against Irving Independent School District (IISD) and its board alleging that the district’s new voting system is designed to disenfranchise Hispanics. The suit comes a year after IISD overhauled its electoral process in an effort to prevent just such a lawsuit.

Benavidez’s legal complaint calls that overhaul “a sham that would continue to keep Latino-backed representatives off the school board,” which governs a majority-Hispanic school district but has no Hispanic trustees. A tide of recent voting rights lawsuits have targeted local governments with citywide elections for at-large seats, claiming they allow small blocks of white voters to shut out large Hispanic populations.

IISD won such a suit in 2011, but voluntarily converted five of its seven at-large school board seats to single-member districts, at least one of which was supposed to be majority-Hispanic. The suit claims that when creating the new districts, IISD used obsolete census data and inflated the number of Hispanic voters in each district by counting thousands of non-citizens.

Consequently, the suit claims, all seven school board seats are still controlled by white voters. “The only thing that concerned the trustees was maintaining their political fiefdom, and thwarting any redistricting plan that would result in the election of non-Anglo candidates,” says the complaint.

The suit asks the court to block IISD from using its new system in the May 2013 school board elections, and to set up a new system with two majority-Hispanic districts and no at-large seats. It also sets up a potentially expensive legal fight for a school district that had hoped to be done with litigation over single-member districts.

Source: The Dallas Morning News, 1/8/13, By Avi Selk

[Editor's Note: In January 2012, Legal Clips summarized an article on TheCitizen.com, which reported that the Fayette County, Georgia, chapter of the NAACP had entered into a settlement agreement that would have resolved that portion of the NAACP’s redistricting lawsuit pertaining to the Fayette County Board of Education. The proposed consent decree obtained formal approval from the school board in January 2012, and from the federal district court in February 2012, as reported by TheCitizen.com. The consent decree stated, “The parties have agreed upon a single-member redistricting plan that provides an equal opportunity for Blacks to elect candidates of their choice to the Board of Education in District 5, in which Blacks comprise 48.68 percent of the total population and 46.2 percent of the voting age population. Upon receiving court approval, the consent decree was forwarded to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for review and consideration.

However, in April 2012, TheCitizen.com reported that the federal judge had reversed himself, vacating the order approving the consent degree, and ordered an hearing, even though the consent decree had already been sent to DOJ. After the May 2012 hearing, TheCitizen.com reported that the judge had denied the proposed settlement, and upheld the qualifying process for the three school board seats, which meant that the 2012 school board election would continue to be held at-large and which allowed voters to have a say in the outcome of all five seats on each board.]

Proposed legislation to provide state funding to Indiana schools for school resource officers

According to a report in The Papers Incorporated, Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller has thrown his support behind a bill that would provide state grant funding as a way to encourage school districts to enter into formal relationships with local police or sheriffs’ departments to put school resource officers in place. The bill introduced by State Senator Pete Miller would create uniformity in the standards and duties for school resource officers.

Senate Bill 270n (SB 270) would make grants available to schools that do not currently have a resource officer agreement in place, and offer funding support to schools with existing programs so long as there is local matching funding and the new standards are adopted. Although the legislation was not originally intended as a response to the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, Zoeller and Miller noted the bill would become the state government’s first formal proposal to address increased school safety in Indiana in the wake of the incident.

“The Department of Education strives to support and provide our schools, teachers and administrators with all the tools and resources they need to create a safe and positive learning environment for our students,” State Superintendent-Elect Glenda Ritz said. “And that is why I believe that Attorney General Zoeller’s and State Sen. Miller’s proposed legislation to support and expand the School Resource Officer program will help in the identification and prevention of bullying, and ensure that our schools, personnel, and students are safe and secure.”

It is estimated that at least one-quarter to one-third of Indiana school corporations already have resource officers. Without a specific definition of the position in state law, resource officers’ duties can vary from one school district to another. In some schools, resource officers have a predominantly building-security role, in others they assist with student conduct or counseling issues such as misbehavior, and the needs assessment revealed a need for uniformity and a desire by stakeholders for a greater utilization of school resource officers.

SB 270 would write a definition into state law that would specify that school resource officers must be either school corporation employees or law enforcement officers with a police agency who work on contract for the school, and they must complete a training program and obtain certification.

The bill defines resource officers’ duties as (1) assisting with implementing the school’s safety plan and supporting the school safety specialist program, (2) promoting a safe school environment through reduction in crime and rule violations, (3) acting as liaison to local law enforcement, (4) detecting and addressing bullying, (5) participating in law-related educational programs when needed and (6) serving as a mentor to students. Each year, resource officers would complete an annual report that would allow for evaluation of their efforts

As currently drafted, the legislation would appropriate $10 million into the Indiana Safe School Fund from which state grants could be awarded. Any school corporation or charter school could apply for a state grant of up to $50,000 per year for two years to create or formalize such positions.

According to Zoeller, SB 270 is consistent with Indiana’s early leadership role among states in requiring schools to have school safety plans in place. The bill also would complement the state’s Teacher Protection Act (TPA), through which the Attorney General’s Office was given heightened responsibility to defend teachers from civil lawsuits arising from disputes over teachers imposing school discipline in the classroom.

The TPA provides teachers limited immunity from lawsuits provided they had followed school corporation policies, and allows the Attorney General’s Office to serve as a teacher’s legal counsel in such litigation.

Source:  The Papers Incorporated, 1/4/13, By Stacey Page

[Editor's Note: In December 2012, Legal Clips summarized NPR’s “All Things Considered” discussion of the Connecticut school shooting that focused on the state of security in schools and the call by some school officials for armed police officers on campus. Mo Canady of the National Association of School Resource Officers, which trains most of the nation’s 10,000 school police officers, however, found the suggestion of arming teachers or administrators dangerous and unwise. Francisco Negrón, General Counsel for the National School Boards Association, said school safety policies in the short term will probably shift to more sophisticated surveillance technology and a greater law enforcement presence in all schools.

Indiana's TPA is similar to the federal Coverdell Teacher Protection Act (CTPA). In February 2011, Legal Clips summarized the decision by the Missouri Supreme Court in Dydell v. Taylor, which held that the CTPA was a valid exercise of the U.S. Congress’ power under the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution. As a result, the court concluded that a school district superintendent was entitled to immunity under the CTPA from a negligence suit brought by a student who was injured during an assault by another student.]

Federal judge releases Pennsylvania district from lawsuit over principal’s suspension

The Patriot-News reports that a Pennsylvania federal judge has freed the West Shore School District from a lawsuit by a middle school principal who claims her civil rights were trampled when she was suspended without pay. Yet New Cumberland Middle School Principal Karen Hertzler can keep suing district Superintendent Jemry Small and Secondary Education Director Tammi Jones, U.S. Middle District Senior Judge William W. Caldwell ruled.

Caldwell found that the district itself did not violate Hertzler’s constitutional right to due process, when she was suspended over what officials called her allowance of the misuse of $685 in student activity funds. Hertzler, who has headed the New Cumberland school since 2006, received a five-day, pay-less suspension over the incident, which involved an allegation that activity funds were improperly allocated during a school trip. She also was ordered to repay the activity fund.

Hertzler sued this spring, arguing that she was not given a proper chance to defend herself. She contended, too, that she is the target of a vendetta by her superiors.

While releasing the district from the lawsuit, Judge Caldwell found that Hertzler can continue suing Small and Jones over their handling of the activity fund incident.

Source:  The Patriot-News, 1/4/13, By Matt Miller

[Editor's Note:  In April 2012, Legal Clips summarized the decision by a federal district court in Weiss v. Dep't of Educ. of the City of New York, which held that a former assistant principal's Title VII claims of hostile work environment and discrimination based on religion that he made against the New York City Department of Education related to his termination could proceed to trial. The court has granted NYCDE’s motion, however, with respect to the retaliation and federal procedural due process claims.]