Legal Analysis of Woodlawn High School East Baton Rouge School District

Created By: Sean C. Tate For: EDL 661 Professor: Dr. Evan Mense

Sean C. Tate

Legal Analysis

EDL 661

Legal Analysis I. School Policy/Procedure Tardiness, the act of not reporting to class on time, is a major problem for Woodlawn High School, which for the rest of this paper will be referred to as the school. The tardy issue has several different facets that cause the problem. This paper will explore exactly what the schools tardy policy is, the problems associated with the tardy policy, the possible legal ramifications that could arise from the policy and finally recommendations on how to correct the tardy policy. First and foremost, the Woodlawn High Schools Student Handbook consists of six items that falls under tardiness. These six items are: 1. All students who report to school late must report to the attendance office immediately upon arriving on campus (Newman, 2009). 2. Students who check in late will be given either an excused or unexcused admit to class. No student is to be admitted to class without a written admittance from the attendance office (Newman, 2009).

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3. Students who check in late and do not have one of the state-approved excuses will be charged with an unexcused tardy (Newman, 2009). 4. Students who are late reporting to class and not in their classroom when the tardy bell rings will report to the office, to have their tardy recorded and to be given an official admit to the tardy room (Newman, 2009). 5. If a student is more than two minutes late reporting to the office to have his/her tardy recorded, that student will be considered cutting and will report to the Assistant Principal for disciplinary action (Newman, 2009). 6. The procedure dealing with students with unexcused tardies will be as follows: a. First tardy- 1 hour TOR b. Second tardy- 1 day TOR c. Third Tardy-2 days TOR d. Fourth Tardy- Suspension (Newman, 2009) The following are appendages to the tardy rules. 1. After the fourth tardy and a short-term suspension from school the process begins all over again with the procedure for a first tardy. If a student repeats the cycle, the length of the suspension will increase each time a student incurs his/her 4th tardy (Newman, 2009). 2. Students receiving three tardies in one day will receive a two-day suspension for willful disobedience to the school rules (Newman, 2009). 3. Each hour a student cuts a class he/she earns a day of TOR (Newman, 2009). In accordance with the schools tardy policy the East Baton Rouge School Districts tardiness policy has five items associated with the tardy policy, as stated in the student rights and responsibilities handbook these five items supersede the individual schools policy. These five items are: Page 3 of 11

Sean C. Tate

Legal Analysis

EDL 661

1. Principals or designees may deal with first through third tardies according to individual school plans (East Baton Rouge School Board , 2009). 2. A student who accumulates four unexcused tardies is assigned to clinic or Time-Out Room. The parent/guardian is contacted by the principal or a designee (East Baton Rouge School Board , 2009). 3. A student who refuses clinic or Time-Out Room is suspended, pending a parent/guardian conference. If the parent comes that afternoon or the next morning, no suspension is officially recorded (East Baton Rouge School Board , 2009). 4. If the parent/guardian does not come for a conference as requested, the student is officially suspended for two days and is assigned to a Discipline Center (East Baton Rouge School Board , 2009). 5. The whole procedure beings again (East Baton Rouge School Board , 2009). II. Policy/Procedure Legal Analysis As I analyze the tardy policy, I will be looking at several things. First and foremost, does the school policy correlate with the district policy? Secondly, does the school actually conduct the tardy policy in the manner outlined in the handbook? Finally, is the way that the school functions actually legal? Does the school policy correlate with the district policy? The answer to this is clearly, no. As one can see, the first four steps as outlined by the district policy is up to the individual schools, however it is as this point that the two policies shift. The district policy clearly states that when students have accumulated four tardies they are then to be assigned Time-Out Room, it is only after a student refuses to attend the Time-Out Room punishment and the parent neglects to come to the school is

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suspension discussed. In the school policy, the fourth tardy results in a suspension, no questions asked. The next discrepancy is in the fact that the district policy states that when students are given a suspension the parent has the chance to come to the school that day or the next morning to work through the issue to where the suspension will not be recorded, and the student will be given another opportunity to attend the Time-Out Room, however the school policy does not even mention this fact.

Finally, the district policy states that after the suspension takes place the whole process starts over again, the school policy states that the procedure begins again, however it extends the length of the suspension. Therefore, does the school policy and the district policy correlate, the answer is simply no. Does the school actually follow the policy that it has laid out in the Student Handbook? In October, of the 2009-2010 school year, the school initiated a new tardy policy. The amount of tardies were growing so rapidly that students would often be tardy to simply go to the tardy room so that they would not have to attend a certain class period, which the student was then allowed by the assistant principal to make up any work missed or to take a test later than what would have occurred if the student had arrived to class on time. Therefore, the administration noted these pandemic episodes of tardiness and decided that they needed to change the policy. The policy was changed by having students report to the office to obtain a tardy slip which allowed the student access back to class, instead of to a tardy room; the students were then assigned lunch detention. During this lunch detention, the students were to get their lunch and

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Sean C. Tate

Legal Analysis

EDL 661

report to a classroom where they were to eat their lunch and copy lines. The next step in the new policy involved the student actually going to lunch detention, if the student was tardy to lunch detention they were then given a day in the Time-Out Room, if the students failed to show up to lunch detention, they were suspended for a day. There were three problems with this procedure, first and foremost this new policy was never written down and given to the students. Secondly, the new policy worked around the district policy because instead of simply suspending students for being tardy, the school could now suspend students for willful disobedience. Finally, students figured out how to work the new system. As the faculty member over assigning students Time-Out Room for being late to lunch detention and seeing the list for those students that did not attend lunch detention grow longer and longer, it came to my attention that the students understood that if they were late then they were punished but if they did not even show up then nothing would happen to the them, since the list gad grown too long to suspend all of the students that did not show for lunch detention. When this was brought up to the administration they asked me to come up with solutions, it was the end of the year and I tried several different strategies, such as putting the students that did not go to lunch detention into TOR while being a little more lenient on those that actually attended lunch detention, but were late. However, the list had grown so long that there simply was not enough room for all of the students in the Time-Out Room. Finally, it was decided that I simply did not have enough administrative powers in order to deal with the issue. Therefore, the school year ended with a question on how to handle tardies. Finally, could there be legal ramifications for the tardy policy that Woodlawn High School has in place? The first legal item that would be brought up is that of Clause 2 of Article VI of the United States Constitution otherwise known as the Supremacy clause. This states, that the Constitution or Page 6 of 11

Sean C. Tate

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EDL 661

Federal Law supersedes all state and local laws. An example of this can be seen in the Toussaint v. McCarthy trial of 1991, in this case prisoners, even though they were classified as the worst classification of criminals, still had certain rights granted to them by the federal government. The court case stated that the prisons must abide by federal regulation even though the individuals are criminals (Toussaint v. McCarthy , 1990). I feel that the same should be upheld in relation to district policy and individual school policy, class handouts demonstrate that the districts policy supersedes the schools policy and therefore the schools policy needs to be changed to coincide with the districts policy. Another, possible legal issue falls under the FERPA, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Acts, regulations. In Kestenbaum v. Michigan State University, 1982, Kestenbaum filed suit against Michigan State University over the fact that the university would not hand over a magnetic tape that had Kestenbaums private information for a school directory on the tape (Kestenbaum v. Michigan State University, 1980). The Supreme Court ruled in a split 3-3 decision that the tape was to be turned over to Kestenbaum, however the dissent stated that this should not have happened due to the fact that the school needed this list of students to complete the functions of the university (Kestenbaum v. Michigan State University, 1980). The court case relates with the new tardy policy, due to the fact that the administration does not allow students or parents to actually see their childs name on the tardy list. They will tell them what hour they were went, but will not hand over the document there child signed or allow them to see the document being that other students also sign the same sheet. This would, as a certain administrator suggests, limit the privacy of the other students that are on the same list. This as seen in Kestenbaum v. Michigan State University, is a matter of the individual student whose parent comes in and asks to view

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the sheet that their child signed, FERPA regulations suggest that the parent be granted the access to this sheet. Finally the issue of Due Process, which as defined by the 'Lectric Law Library's Lexicon as simply fairness. Since the students were not formally made aware of the new tardy policy, no letter outlining the new policy was sent home and returned signed, the students legally cannot be held to the new tardy policy, since it is not fair to hold someone to a rule that they do not know about. The only policy that can be enforced is the one that is currently in the student handbook. The other issue of Due Process associated with this is that a student should be told what the crime committed was, give the student a chance to respond to the allegation, inform the students parent of the allegation and then allow the parent as stated by district regulation, should have the chance to talk over the reprimand with the child and administrator and then have a reprimand decided upon. The district policy clearly states that parents are allowed to come to the school and handle the incident before a child is suspended. Since, the school does not follow district policy and more so the current tardy policy is not even written down, the school could also be sued on failure to follow Due Process. Recommendations I have several recommendations for correcting this problem. The first recommendation would be to make sure that the schools policy and the districts policy are the same. This would stop frustration on the part of the students whom have come from other schools where the policy was different. If the schools policy were uniform with the rest of the districts students would have no excuse for not knowing the policy, if they transferred from a school from within the district. This would also ensure that the Supremacy Clause is being adhered to. Secondly, in order to follow FERPA regulations the school should make it to where the student must sign a separate sheet for each time that the student is tardy that is only signed by one student. This will Page 8 of 11

Sean C. Tate

Legal Analysis

EDL 661

allow the school to show the signed sheet to the parent upon request. This would also allow the school to uphold the privacy of the other students that currently sign on the same sheet that the child would have signed their tardy on. (SEE APPENDIX FOR EXAMPLE OF TARDY SHEET) Thirdly, the schools policy needs to be modified so that it can be something that the school can actually enforce. As the end of the year numbers on tardies showed, students actually had more tardies with the new policy than there were with the older policy. However, neither policy was the best that it could possibly have been. Finally, whatever policy the school decides on needs to be written down and inserted in the student handbook to replace the out of date policy, which the 2010-2011 handbooks are already published. Part of the policy needs to be contacting the parents of the students so that they are notified so that they might be able to remedy the problem. This past school year, I had two students whom I wrote up for skipping multiple times, I contacted the parents whom were unaffected by this information and simply did not care. The largest problem is the fact that when I wrote these students up and followed up on the issue, the administration suggested that they simply did not have the time to deal with the issue and therefore the students continued to skip class. This problem brings up my last recommendation which is to simply hire someone whose sole responsibility is dealing with the tardiness issue.

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Appendix Tardy Sign In Sheet Student Name Hour Teacher Name Time Student Signature On Time to Lunch Detention Late to Lunch Detention Failed to show up to Lunch Detention

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