Legal Articles, General Practice

As the school year gets into full swing, education administrators continue to grapple with the ongoing problem of peer to peer bullying.  In addition to issues relating to the extent to which schools must prevent, intervene, and address on-campus bullying come free speech challenges and issues. At least one author has written about how Connecticut’s anti-bullying law would fare in the face of free speech issues, noting that “[t]he new law puts school officials in the position of having to pass judgment on off-campus speech with little legal precedent to guide them . . . If they clamp down on online comments, they risk First Amendment challenges.  If they’re too lenient, they could be deemed responsible if cyberbullying leads to tragedy.”[1]

One of the reasons that parents work so hard is to be able to provide a better life and a better future for their children. The bedrock of a bright future is a good education.  As a parent, it is important to understand your rights and obligations when it comes to your child’s education.

Over the past few years, college students and graduate students have faced increasingly complex disciplinary rules and codes of student conduct. This is partly because campus-related disciplinary issues (in particular those related to hazing, harassment, and bullying) now frequently earn a significant amount of media and community interest. Especially because of the increasing scrutiny, colleges and universities must balance demands for punishment and accountability against students’ equally important rights to fairness and transparency with respect to the process and standards by which student discipline is meted out. In Connecticut and elsewhere, the most significant factor in determining the existence and scope of students’ procedural and substantive rights is whether the school at issue is a public or private university.

You have the right to obtain an independent educational evaluation (IEE) conducted by a qualified (licensed and/or certified) examiner who is not employed by your school district. When the school district agrees to pay for the IEE, the criteria under which the IEE is obtained, including the location and the qualifications of the examiner, must be the same as the criteria that the school district would use when it does its own evaluation.

In the case of Romanella v. Nielson, a student sued a teacher, principal, board, and town, seeking damages for injuries suffered when the student was assaulted by another pupil outside the doors of a school less than a minute after school dismissal. The teacher and related agents moved more summary judgment which is a preemptive judgment by the court in favor of one party over the other. In ruling on a motion for summary judgment, a court’s function is not to decide issues of material fact, but rather to determine whether any such issues exist. In seeking summary judgment, the teacher has the burden of showing the nonexistence of any issue of fact.

Under Connecticut General Statute §10-151b, each year teachers in Connecticut must be evaluated by either the Superintendent of Schools or by someone appointed by the Superintendent.  The evaluations shall include, but is not necessarily limited to, strengths, areas needing improvement, strategies for improvement, and multiple indicators of student academic growth.  In the event that a teacher does not receive a summative evaluation during the school year, the teacher must receive a “not rated,” designation for that school year.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: What You Need To Know

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act & Informed Consent

Expedited Special Education Due Process Hearings Explained

It is now well-established that out-of-school sanctions have an adverse academic and social impact on students. Out-of-school suspensions and expulsions contribute to poor performance in school, higher drop-out rates, and increased misbehavior at school. One report found that students who had been subjected to out-of-class disciplinary sanctions tended to score lower on the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and Connecticut Academic Proficiency Test (CAPT). In another study, 89% of sixteen and seventeen-year-old students in the juvenile justice system had previously been suspended or expelled from school. Despite their negative impact on students, Connecticut schools continue to resort with alarming frequency to out-of-school sanctions. During the 2007-2008 school year for example, as a result of suspensions or expulsions, schoolchildren within the state missed over 250,000 school days.