“Principals must be able to balance the school’s interest in maintaining a safe and orderly environment against the rights of individual students to be free from unreasonable discipline” (Hachiya, Shoop, and Dunklee, 2014, p. 145). This is a delicate balance to be sure, but one that is the responsibility of an administrator. Students have constitutional rights to free speech and expression, as well as the right to due process. This is very true with suspension and expulsion. Due process is very important here as well. A hearing must be held, and all parts of the Pupil Fair Dismissal Act must be followed.
Historically, schools have operated under the doctrine of in loco parentis. This doctrine provided rights to the school to act in place of
The proposed expulsions and suspensions from their disability behaviors deprived them of their right to a free and appropriate public education in accordance to the EHA. The Judge ordered the school district from making other disciplinary acts other than a two-to-five-day suspension against any disabled child for disability-related behaviors and ensured that the “stay-put” provision would be in place and no student would be removed. This went to the Ninth-Circuit appeal where the previous decision was affirmed and modified to allow up to a ten-day suspension.
The primary responsibility of student discipline falls on the school officials. Disciplining students helps with keeping order in the school, and the main reason for discipline is to keep the safety of entities of the school. However, discipline can be hard when the issues happen outside school grounds, especially for issues that occur through social media platforms, also known as off-campus speech. Off-campus speech is very tricky to deal with, and as school personnel, we need to make sure we do not take action based on students’ opinions until we know the facts and the law behind our actions.
The case also states “A prohibition against expression of opinion, without any evidence that the rule is necessary to avoid substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others, is not permissible under the First and Fourteenth Amendments” (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District). Because the students didn 't necessarily disrupt the education process, their First Amendment freedom of speech should not have been violated by the school officials.
Some students in School had big issues, like Doug Hann. Hann was a student from Brown University, and varsity football player at the University. He was living in the dorms at the University. He was expelled from the university for doing bulling to the black people. In October 18, 1990, Hann was screaming bad words towards the black people, he was celebrating his birthday and he was drunk. It was not the first time that Hann was caught saying inappropriate words to the people, 2 years before he was drunk at one bar and he curse scream words to a black people. So the president Gregorian from the University in January 25, 1991 affirmed the expelled decision by the Undergraduate Disciplinary Council. In my opinion,
...as not required to await the outcome of criminal proceedings against the students before taking their own actions against them (Goldberg v. The Regents).
A new policy is needed and most certainly should start out with holding schools to handle their own discipline situations, rather than relying on school security and police (Wilson, 2014). School administrators must be able to differentiate between what is a true discipline situation and when a student simply made a mistake. The rate of school suspensions have skyrocketed over the last thirty years from 1.7 million nationwide to 3.1 million and growing today (ACLU, n.d.). Each school needs to create policies of when to get school security involved and what the school’s security job involves. Unless there is a true threat to the safety of the school and/or its student’s law enforcement should never be called (Wison, 2014). The instinct to dial 911 at every infraction has to stop. Furthermore the schools must develop a gender and racial fairness; black children should not be receiving harsher punishments for similar infractions of white students (Wilson,
What are the steps to due process? What significance are the court cases Goss v. Lopez and Dixon v. Alabama in maintaining a well-ordered school?
In document D the court sided with the students, but the students must serve ten days, but the ten day suspension will not be shown on their records. It must pose a threat, there was no threat so they sided with the students.In document C, the school suspended the student, but that was because the student caused a threat against the targeted student, S.N. If the student did not target S.N. and say the students name and harm her directly then there would probably be no suspension.J.S created a MySpace profile (“the profile”) making fun of her middle school principal, James McGonigle. The profile did not name the principal or his school, but did include a photo of him and contained some vulgar and offensive language.J.S. did not name the principal or the school, she did not directly target the principal even though a photo of the principal was on the page.This evidence helps explain why schools should not limit students’ online speech because it didn 't cause a substantial disruption.
Students’ rights in schools are limited or just taken away. Kids are forced to do whatever the officials at their school, either the principal or the teachers, tell the students to do. One of the main right that gets taken away or limited is students’ first amendment rights, which is the freedom of expression. Students can gets suspended by just doing things the staff at the school does not like, including saying things that they don 't like or supporting a religion that the school does not support. Also, if something is said about the school or the people attending the school is said on social media that student can also get in a lot of trouble. Students should be able to have more first amendment
Schools inevitably must deal with disciplinary action when it comes to misconduct in students. However, at what point should the courts and law enforcement intervene? “Zero tolerance” policies started as a trend in the school setting during the 1990s in “response to the widespread perception that juvenile violence was increasing and school officials needed to take desperate measures to address the problem” (Aull 2012:182-183). However, national statistics indicated a decrease in juvenile’s share of crime during the influx of zero tolerance policies in schools (National Crime Justice Reference Service 2005).
LaMorte, Michael. School Law: Cases and Concepts. 4th ed. London: Allyn and Bacon, 1993. Lane, Kenneth, Mary Jane Connelly, Julie Mead, Mark Gooden, and Suzanne Eckes, eds.
When the school learned of this planned protest, it created a policy stating that any students wearing armbands would be suspended for disrupting education. When the students showed up to school, they were suspended. They did not return to school until after January 1st, the date the protest was supposed to end. The Iowa Civil Liberties Union asked the school to rethink their ban. The school
The laws of the schools are to protect the students, faculty, and staff. Administrators must know the law so that everyone is treated equally and fair. With the state statutes, the school boards have the right to adopt and enforce rules and regulations necessary to operate and manage schools. Parents have to right to place their children in any institutions they feel their children will excel, whether that is a private or public school.(Essex, 2002, p. 6)
These kids don’t misbehave in the classroom for no reason. They are probably releasing those emotions that are bottled up from them at home in school. Not coming from a stable background can have quite the effect on trying to learn in a classroom. The problems that need to be fixed are trying to make schools feel more like a “safe haven” rather than a prison. Afterschool programs need to be put into place, to allow kids to stay at school for long so they don’t get involved in street life, or so they can just not have to deal with the outside problems of the world for a little bit longer. Also, school need to change. They need to try and make learning more fun, and more integrated with the children they are teaching. An easy an example of this is teaching these kids about their history, so they have many people to look up to besides just Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks. Only teaching black and Latino kids about people that don’t even look like them or go through anything they have gone through, makes them bored and uneager to learn. Also, more rewards in to be into place to make kids feel more welcomed and wanting to do good in class. Even though it may seem out of the ordinary for some, suspension needs to stop. Allowing these kids to take a break from somewhere they already don’t want to be is ushering them towards a life of hating school. Suspension not only hurt the school district but also hurt the
By definition, in school suspension is “a program to which a student is assigned because of disruptive behavior for a specific amount of time.” (Effective Program, 156) Many schools that have in school suspension programs have a zero-tolerance policy. This deters bad behavior by having swift and serious consequences for breaking school rules.