OCR Provides Guidance for Pregnant and Parenting Students

by | Nov 10, 2022 | General

 U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently released guidance linking the protections of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act to students and employees based on pregnancy and related conditions. The October 4, 2022 guidance reiterated that the protections of Title IX that prohibit discrimination on the basis of pregnancy have been in place since 1975. The guidance goes on to provide that schools may not discriminate against any student, or exclude any student from their education program or activity, including any class or extracurricular activity, based on the student’s pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, or recovery therefrom. Furthermore, a school may not discriminate against or exclude from employment any employee or applicant on these bases.

Schools are advised to treat pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, and recovery therefrom the same as any other temporary disability of a student. For employees, schools must treat pregnancy and its related conditions the same as any other temporary disability for all job-related purposes.

The guidance goes on to state that if a school does not have a leave policy for students, or if a student does not otherwise qualify for leave under existing district policies, the school must nonetheless provide leave to a student for pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, or recovery therefrom, for as long as the student’s physician deems such leave to be medically necessary. After the leave expires, the student must be reinstated to the status the student held when the leave began.

Finally, the resource states that a school must ensure that its teachers’ policies and practices do not discriminate against students because of pregnancy and related conditions. This means that a teacher may not refuse to allow a student to submit work after missing a deadline because of absences due to pregnancy or childbirth, and if part of the teacher’s grading is based on class attendance or participation, the student must be allowed to earn the miss credits and be reinstated to the student’s pre leave status.

As with other Title IX matters, students may file a complaint through their school’s grievance process or directly with OCR. For OCR’s purposes, a complainant can include students, parents and guardians, employees, community members, and others, including anyone who observes discrimination in educational programs based on sex, including pregnancy and related conditions.

What This Means for Schools: school districts are encouraged to review their policies and practices regarding student absences, return to school, and policies on work completion to ensure their compatibility with OCR expectations.

SCOTUS Affirms that Schools May Regulate Off Campus Speech – Sometimes…

by | Jun 24, 2021 | General

In a lengthy decision, the Supreme Court of the United States found that a Pennsylvania High School overstepped when it suspended a student from the cheerleading squad for using social media to criticize her exclusion from a spot on the varsity team and a private softball team. The High Court found the school’s actions to be a violation of the student’s First Amendment rights. However, the Court stopped well short of declaring that all off-campus speech is protected from school-based regulation.

After discovering that she did not make the varsity squad, and while shopping in a convenience store the following weekend, the student at issue (B.L.) took to social media to express her displeasure with the decision in two brief Snapchat posts – one of which included profanity. The posts were initially shared with her social media friends, who shared the posts with other friends, including the child of the cheerleading squad coach. This upset team members and became a topic of chatter in a class taught by another coach. In response, B.L. was suspended from the JV squad for the upcoming year. This spurred the student and her parents to file suit in Federal Court.

After first granting a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction ordering the student’s reinstatement to the squad, the trial court ultimately ruled in B.L.’s favor, determining that there was no substantial disruption at the school. Further finding that the discipline violated B.L.’s First Amendment rights, the court awarded nominal damages, attorneys fees, and ordered the school to expunge the discipline from her record. The decision was upheld on appeal, with an added pronouncement that schools within the Third Circuit were not free to discipline for off-campus speech, which was partially defined in the opinion as “speech that is outside school-owned, -operated, or -supervised channels.”

The court went on to conclude that, since the speech here occurred off campus, the standard handed down in the oft-referenced case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (speech that materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disruption or invasion of the rights of others) did not apply. This very narrow reading of Tinker may have prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to accept review to clarify, among other things, the application of the Tinker standard to student speech that occurs off campus.

In its June 23, 2021 opinion delivered by Justice Breyer, the Supreme Court held that school districts may have a special interest in regulating some off-campus student speech. However, that interest primarily exists only when the Tinker test is applied and in so applying finds that the student speech materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others. However, unrestricted regulation of any speech that may relate to the school is unauthorized. In this case the Court opined that the student’s speech was not disruptive to the school environment and therefore was subject to First Amendment protection.

What this Means for Schools: While the media may portray this case as a victory for the student, in reality it is largely a carefully worded affirmation that, especially in the present technology age, actions away from school may have a disruptive impact at school. Yet the onus remains with the school to show how that disruption is manifested. The Court also affirmed a school’s authority to apply discipline to extracurricular activities only. Districts are advised to review their board policies, codes of conduct and extracurricular guidelines for the necessary support of disciplinary consequences and notice of the possibility of corrective action for violations of school rules.

Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. ( Slip Opinion No 20-255)

National Initiative to Address Sexual Assault in Schools

by | Mar 9, 2020 | General, School Management

Last week, U. S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced plans for a new compliance review and data collection initiative to address the rise in sexual assaults in K-12 education, this time targeting the actions of adult employees toward school students.  Among other things, the new initiative will implement provisions to prohibit public schools from reassigning employees accused of sexual assaults against students. 

Asserting that “No parent should have to think twice about their child’s safety while on school grounds,” DeVos directed the Office for Civil Rights to lead the initiative to examine sexual assault through several avenues, including the following:

  • OCR will focus on raising public awareness of the issue of sexual assault in K-12 schools, including making information on the issue available to educators, school leaders, and families.
  • OCR will conduct nationwide compliance reviews to examine how sexual assault allegations are handled under Title IX, with special emphasis on sexual incidents involving teachers and school staff. It will then become OCR’s job to work with districts to correct any compliance concerns.
  • OCR will conduct Data Quality Reviews (DQRs) of the sexual offenses data including sexual assaults, as submitted by school districts through the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). In doing so, OCR will partner with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and support districts in accurately recording and reporting incidents of sexual assault/sexual offenses through the CRDC.
  • For the 2019-2020 data collection, OCR has proposed collecting more detailed data on sexual assault. The proposed data collection includes incidents perpetrated by school staff or school personnel.  If adopted, the inclusion of this data would make the CRDC collection the first universal collection to gather such data systemically for individual schools.

This is the second nationwide initiative announced by the OCR within the last 13 months.  The present announcement comes in the wake of OCR’s recent resolution of two sexual harassment complaints involving Chicago Public Schools. However, Secretary DeVos insists the issue is widespread, stating “We hear too often about innocent children being sexually assaulted by an adult at school.”  Her declaration is supported by 2015-2016 CRDC reports recording more than 9,700 incidents of sexual assault, rape or attempted rape in public elementary and secondary schools.  The Agency additionally reports the problem is “fifteen times greater than a decade ago.” The reporting as referenced does not break down the number of adults directly involved in such allegations but relate to a companion announcement by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education that it will publish an extensive study on state and local measures to prevent the “pass the trash” phenomenon in dealing with adults accused of sexual offenses against students. 

Arming School Personnel

by | Aug 16, 2019 | Board Policy & Representation, General, Labor and Employment, Legislation, School Finance, School Management

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office recently released an opinion in response to a request for legal advice on the issue of arming school staff. The letter requested, among other things, an analysis on how the training requirements under R.C. 109.78(D) apply to school employees authorized by the board of education to carry or possess a deadly weapon on school property under R.C. 2923.122(A).

R.C. 109.78(D) in full provides:

“(D) No public or private educational institution or superintendent of the State Highway Patrol shall employ a special police officer, security guard, or other position in which such person goes armed while on duty, who has not received a certificate of having satisfactorily completed an approved basic police officer training program, unless the person has completed twenty years of active duty as a police officer.”

As noted, R.C. 2923.122(A) prohibits any person from knowingly conveying, or attempting to convey, a deadly weapon into a school safety zone. However, there is a specific exception set out in R.C. 2923.122(D)(1)(a) which excludes any other person from this prohibition:

“who has written authorization from the board of education or governing body of a school to convey deadly weapons… in a school safety zone or to possess a deadly weapon… in a school safety zone and who convey or possesses the deadly weapon… in accordance with that authorization.”

The letter sought advice on whether or not a school employee who has been authorized to carry a deadly weapon by the board of education under R.C. 2923.122(D)(1)(a) is subject to the training requirements of R.C. 109.78(D). The Attorney General’s Office reiterated their argument laid out in their amicus brief in the appeal of Gabbard v. Madison Local School Dist. Bd. of Edn. The court in that case concluded that school employees authorized by the board of education to carry firearms on school premises were not subject to the training requirements of R.C. 109.78(D) because they were not employed by the district in a security capacity. The Attorney General’s Office agreed and opined that in order to determine which provision outlined above is applicable to an employee hired by a school district, we must analyze whether the individual is employed in a role comparable to that of a security guard or police officer. In doing so, we must look to the person’s job title along with the duties and responsibilities assigned to them.

If an employee is hired by the district in a security capacity, then they are subject to the training requirements expressed in R.C. 109.78(D). (I.e. approved basic training police program, or twenty years active duty of a police officer). However, any other employee hired by a school district who does not serve in such a role, i.e. teacher, principal, custodian, and who is authorized by the board to carry or possess a firearm under R.C. 2923.122(D)(1)(a), is not subject to the training requirements of R.C. 109.78(D).

Changes Coming for Body Worn Camera and Dashboard Recordings

by | Mar 28, 2019 | General, School Management

A new law may impact the obligations of schools, School Resource Officers, and law enforcement agencies, in general, in responding to a request for dash cam or body cam recordings. HB 425, which added new exceptions to the R.C. 149.43 definition of public records, becomes law on April 8, 2019. Under this new provision, portions of a body worn camera (BWC) or dashboard recording are not included in the definition of a public record. Those exceptions include:

•The image or identity of a child, or information that could lead to the identification of a child, who is the primary subject of recording, if police know or have reason to know the subject is a child.
•The death of a person or images of a dead body, unless the death was caused by a police officer or if the executor or administrator of the deceased’s estate grants consent to production of the images. Similarly, images of grievous bodily injury or acts of severe violence resulting in severe physical harm are excluded, unless the same applies.
•Images of the death of a police officer or first responder in the course of their duties, unless the executor or administrator of the deceased’s estate gives consent.
•Depictions of acts of severe violence resulting in severe physical harm to a police officer or first responder in the course of their duties, unless consent is obtained.
•Images of a person’s nude body unless consent is obtained.
•Protected health information or other identifying information including the identity of a person in a health care facility who is not the subject of a law enforcement encounter.
•Any information that could identify a victim of a sex offense, menacing by stalking or domestic violence.

Further exceptions are:

•Information that could identify an informant and endanger the safety or property of such information.
•Personal information of those not arrested, charged, given a written warning or cited by law enforcement.
•Proprietary police contingency plans or tactics for crime prevention, public order and safety.
•Personal conversations unrelated to work of law enforcement and employees, or conversation between police officer and citizen not concerning law enforcement activities.
•The interior of a residence or the interior of business not open to the public, unless the residence is the location of an adversarial encounter or use of force by law enforcement.

If a request for body cam footage is denied pursuant to these provisions, the law now allows the requester to file either a mandamus action in civil court or a complaint in court of claims. To receive the requested relief, there must be clear and convincing evidence that the public interest in recording outweighs the privacy interests and other interests asserted as reasons to deny release.

It is unknown how, or if, this new law will impact the case of Cincinnati Enquirer v. City of Cincinnati Police Department set for oral argument before the Ohio Supreme Court on May 19, 2019. Cincinnati Enquirer stems from a plainclothes police response to a call for adult children to leave the home of a parent, resulting in the use of force and a call for additional police reinforcements at the home. As expected, the responding officers were equipped with BWCs. The Cincinnati Enquirer requested the BWC footage and the request was denied based on the claim that the images constituted a Confidential Law Enforcement Investigatory Record (CLEIR). A CLEIR is not a public record if it pertains to a “law enforcement matter” involving a specific suspicion of misconduct and the investigating agency has the authority to enforce the law. The Cincinnati Police Department further claimed that disclosure of the footage would compromise the prosecution of the defendants (two adults in the home) by revealing work product. Nonetheless, the footage was disclosed after defendants plead guilty. If reviewed in conjunction with this new legislation, the court may provide further directive on the relation between BWC or dash cam recordings and the broader personal information revealed by such footage.