eSchool News » Litigation

Judge: School can move girl in ID-tracking case

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:28:49 +0000

“Today’s court ruling affirms [the district's] position that we did make reasonable accommodation to the student,” the district said.

A Texas school district can transfer a student who is citing religious reasons for her refusal to wear a so-called “smart ID” card that is part of an electronic tracking system, a federal judge ruled on Jan. 8.

The parents of 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez had requested a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the school district from transferring their daughter from her San Antonio high school while the lawsuit on whether she should be forced to wear the ID tracking badge went through federal court.

Last fall, the Northside Independent School District began experimenting with a “locator” chip in student ID badges on two campuses, allowing administrators to track the whereabouts of 4,200 students with GPS-like precision.

Administrators say the chips make students safer and will help boost attendance records that are used to calculate badly needed state funding. They say the technology could bring in an additional $1.7 million in funding.

(Next page: What the ruling said)

Chicago sued for alleged discrimination against black teachers

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:56:13 +0000

The Chicago Teachers Union has sued the nation’s third largest school district, saying Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s campaign to reform or close underperforming public schools discriminates against African-American teachers and staff, Reuters reports. The federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday and announced on Thursday is the latest battle with the city since teachers staged a week-long strike in September. It alleges that more than half of the tenured teachers fired in the most recent round of school closings and turnarounds were African American. But blacks make up less than 30 percent of the tenured teaching staff in the district and 35 percent of the tenured teacher population in the failing schools, the lawsuit claims. The suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois seeks an immediate moratorium on any additional school closings in the city. The school district declined to comment on the lawsuit while it is pending, but said, “We have an obligation to expand high quality school options to all families and children in every neighborhood and turnarounds is just one tool that allows us to provide those options.”

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FTC expected to settle Google patent case

Laura Devaney — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:00:23 +0000

After months of negotiations, federal regulators and Google could reach a deal as soon as this week over how the search company uses its acquired stockpile of patents to target its competitors, according to sources close to the investigation, Politico reports. Google will most likely agree to curtail using key patents it picked up when it purchased Motorola Mobility to block competitors that are infringing those patents from getting their products to the market…

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Court upholds $1 million for student in school harassment case

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:34:03 +0000

One of the biggest awards ever issued for racial harassment in high school – $1 million – was upheld Monday by a federal appeals panel that said it was fair for a jury to conclude a school district should have done more to stop demeaning, threatening and violent conduct directed at a student, the Associated Press reports. The decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan left in place the award for Anthony Zeno, a former student at Stissing Mountain High School in Dutchess County. The award had been reduced from the $1.25 million a jury originally awarded the now 23-year-old haircutter during a 2010 trial. The appeals court said the award wasn’t unreasonable given that payouts for harassment in similar cases have ranged from the low six figures to $1 million in one other instance. The appeals court’s opinion noted that Zeno is “dark-skinned and biracial, half-white, half-Latino.” It said he “had been menaced, threatened and taunted” at a school where minorities represented less than 5 percent of the student population…

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Lawsuit targets ‘locator’ chips in Texas student IDs

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:26:22 +0000

A Texas student is suing the Northside Independent School District over its SmartID student-tracking technology.

To 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez, the tracking microchip embedded in her student ID card is a “mark of the beast,” sacrilege to her Christian faith—not to mention how it pinpoints her location, even in the school bathroom.

But to her budget-reeling San Antonio school district, those chips carry a potential $1.7 million in classroom funds.

Starting this fall, the fourth-largest school district in Texas is experimenting with “locator” chips in student ID badges on two of its campuses, allowing administrators to track the whereabouts of 4,200 students with GPS-like precision. Hernandez’s refusal to participate isn’t a twist on teenage rebellion, but it has launched a debate over privacy and religion that has forged a rare like-mindedness between typically opposing groups.

When Hernandez and her parents balked at the so-called SmartID, the school agreed to remove the chip but still required her to wear the badge. The family refused on religious grounds, stating in a lawsuit that even wearing the badge was tantamount to “submission of a false god” because the card still indicated her participation.

A state district judge had been expected to decide Nov. 28 whether Northside Independent School District could transfer Hernandez to a different campus. But the family’s attorney said late on Nov. 27 that the hearing was cancelled after the school district asked that the case be moved to federal court. A new hearing hasn’t been set.

“How often do you see an issue where the ACLU and Christian fundamentalists come together? It’s unusual,” said Chris Steinbach, the chief of staff for a Republican state lawmaker who has filed a bill to outlaw the technology in Texas schools.

U.S. sues Mississippi officials over student arrests

staff and wire services reports — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:08:50 +0000

The U.S. Justice Department sued Mississippi state and local officials on Wednesday over what it called a “school-to-prison pipeline” that violates the rights of children, especially black and disabled youths, Reuters reports. The suit alleges that police officers in Meridian, Mississippi, routinely arrested students who were suspended from school, even when they had no probable cause to believe the students had committed a crime.

“We found that children have been incarcerated for being suspended from school for things like dress code violations or talking back to teachers,” said Roy Austin, a senior civil rights official in the Justice Department.

The police department acted as little more than a “taxi service” between schools and a juvenile detention center 80 miles away, where students did not have access to lawyers or counselors, the suit says…

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Court: School board eMail is a public record

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:47:06 +0000

Messages in which board members discuss school district business are public records.

A decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court should serve as a reminder that eMail correspondence through school-issued accounts is not private, though critics of the ruling fear it could result in a substantial cost to local districts.

Pennsylvania residents can read the eMail messages of elected officials under a decision in favor of a local newspaper, the Morning Call, recently upheld by the state Supreme Court.

In January, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ordered Easton Area School District to turn over a month’s worth of eMail messages to and from the official eMail addresses of school board members, the superintendent, and the district’s general eMail address.

The court found that eMails to and from individual members of the school board are records of the school district’s activities under the state’s Right to Know Law. The state Supreme Court’s decision last week not to reconsider the case means that the Commonwealth Court opinion will apply to similar cases in the future.

Attorneys for the Morning Call and Pennsylvania Newspaper Association called the decision a victory for the right to access government records under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law.

“In the media law community, this is thought of as one of the more important decisions that has come down in the last year,” said attorney Michael Baughman, who represented the newspaper.

But Easton Area School District solicitor John Freund said the case imposes an unfunded mandate on school districts and other public agencies, forcing them to cover the cost of combing through records to identify and black out information that is not public.

“They’re going to have to spend the time … to ensure that what is appropriate to release is released and what is inappropriate to release remains confidential,” Freund said.

In the case of the Morning Call’s request, that means redacting students’ names, addresses, and federally protected information from about 4,000 eMail messages, he said.

Former Morning Call reporter Christopher Baxter in 2010 requested all eMails sent and received between Oct. 1 and Oct. 31 for the nine school board members, Superintendent Susan McGinley, and a general district mailbox.

Parents considering legal action over school yoga

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 13:51:00 +0000

A group of parents is bent out of shape by free yoga classes at schools in this San Diego County beachside community, fearing they are indoctrinating youngsters in eastern religion, the Associated Press reports.

“There’s a deep concern that the Encinitas Union School District is using taxpayer resources to promote Ashtanga yoga and Hinduism, a religion system of beliefs and practices,” the parents’ attorney, Dean Broyles, told the North County Times. In an Oct. 12 email to district Superintendent Tim Baird, Broyles called the yoga program unconstitutional and said he may take unspecified legal action unless the classes stop…

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Texas schools head to trial over school finance

staff and wire services reports — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:23:45 +0000

Texas lawmakers cut $5.4 billion from public schools nearly 18 months ago, and now districts are headed to court to argue that the resulting system is so inefficient and unfair that it violates the state constitution, the Associated Press reports. Simply restoring funding to levels prior to the 2011 legislative session won’t be enough to fix the fundamentally flawed way Texas funds its schools, lawyers for the districts say. They point out that the cuts have come even as the state requires schools to prepare students for standardized tests that are getting more difficult, and amid a statewide boom in the number of low-income students that are especially costly to educate. Putting the money back would make things easier, they say.

“That’s not all it’s about, but that would be a start,” said John Turner, an attorney representing about 60 of the school districts suing…

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Teachers, bosses charged in NJ school sex scandal

staff and wire services reports — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:12:23 +0000

Six months ago, a student came to Triton High School Principal Catherine DePaul with a disturbing story: She believed another student was involved in a sexual relationship with a teacher at the school, and she’d seen explicit text messages the two had exchanged, the Associated Press reports. At that moment, local prosecutors say, a cover-up was put in motion that ultimately unraveled Thursday when DePaul, an assistant principal and three teachers were charged with offenses ranging from child endangerment to sexual assault and official misconduct. Each of the five adults has been suspended from the school in the Philadelphia suburb of Runnemede, and each could face at least five years in prison if convicted. The teachers — all men in their late 20s or early 30s — are accused of striking up relationships with female students during the 2011-2012 school year…

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