EDUCATION EXPERT BLOG: EDUCATION LAW AND SCHOOL LIABILITY ISSUES

For schools, daycare centers, after-school programs, and camps, children with disabilities often present significant supervisory challenges. If these children’s needs are not adequately addressed and a child is seriously injured or killed, negligent supervision may be viewed as a proximate cause. But what constitutes reasonable supervision of children with behavioral...

The uncertainties surrounding the Massachusetts teacher murder of Colleen Ritzer last month and the death of student Kendrick Johnson in Georgia earlier this year illustrate how the unexpected can occur and school safety and security is a serious concern schools administrators are faced with on a daily basis. Schools have...

School negligence cases involving teachers, coaches, camp counselors, bus drivers, and other personnel resulting in injury to a child are ever-present in the news. Negligence that results in sexual abuse, death, injury, and sports accidents all present opportunities for costly negligence claims that may entail large settlements or grave jury...

Bullying Legal Standards Over the last several years, U.S. states have enacted laws that require public schools to develop policies and procedures to stop bullying.  New Jersey may have the toughest anti-bullying law in the nation, requiring schools to include in their policies that a teacher can be disciplined for not...

Schools have a duty to protect students from harm, including the harm inflicted or created by its own staff. While acts by a staff member resulting in injury to a student generally fit into the category of negligence, a teacher or an administrator as a state actor can generate a...

An elementary school principal claimed that a first grader violated the school’s sexual harassment policy. The boy’s crime? He was sitting behind a female classmate on the floor and put his fingers inside the waistband of her pants and touched her skin. He was accused of sexually harassing a classmate...

Wherever there are public and private schools and organizations that provide activities for children, there are stories about school sexual harassment and abuse. In West Virginia, a fifth-grade teacher started a “sex club” with some of her students. She brought them to her home to “teach” them, by demonstration, about...