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DISCLAIMER

The information on this site does not constitute legal advice and is for educational purposes only. If you have a dispute or legal problem, please consult an attorney licensed to practice law in your state. Additionally, the information and views presented on this blog are solely the responsibility of Justin Bathon personally, or the other contributors, personally, and do not represent the views of the University of Kentucky or the institutional employer of any of the contributing editors.

Monday
Apr202009

Dissertation Up

My Dissertation is posted. Here is a link. Direct pdf. (If neither of those work, search PQDT Open for Bathon).

It is really quite boring unless you enjoy considering principalship preparation issues and cross-referencing that with state data. The title is:

EXAMINING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SCHOOL LEADERS AND OF LOCAL SCHOOLS WHERE INDIANA EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP PREPARATION PROGRAMS PLACE THEIR GRADUATES

... so you know it has got to be boring. I still have to write a couple articles out of it, so maybe I will post some of the more interesting findings and recommendations over the coming months.

Monday
Apr202009

Destined for Doom: Sports Stadium Edition

The money spent on sport in this country is obscene. Norman Chad does a nice job of putting it in historical perspective in light of NYC's recent stadium investments and it is worth a quick read.

Once again, we are front-row witnesses to public money gone mad. I don't say this as a backseat driver in the wake of a brutal economy; I would say this if money were growing on trees. For when you spend public dollars on play things rather than real needs, when your priorities put entertainment dollars ahead of education dollars, you are destined for doom.

I certainly think it is wise to question our investment in sports in this country. I know my readers are not big fans of my anti-sport positions, but there is a difference between work and play and we too frequently put our priority on the play side when we should be working.

Monday
Apr202009

Supreme Court Previews at the School Law Blog

Mark Walsh has done a superb job as always in previewing the upcoming Supreme Court cases related to education and instead of duplicating the effort, I will just point you over there. Mark usually attends the oral arguments as well, so be sure to watch for that also. 

Forest Grove Sch. Dist. v. T.A.

Safford U. Sch. Dist. v. Redding

Horne v. Flores

We are lucky to have a great resource like Mark in our field and since he is funded under a business structure instead of a university structure, be sure to patronize him plenty to make sure his employer is aware of his value.

Friday
Apr172009

AERA 09 Wrap

Yeah, didn't get a chance to blog nearly as much as I had planned. I just got back to Lexington, so let me write up a few thoughts before I forget them and I will try to return to several of them in the next couple weeks:

  1. Went to a wonderful session with Bill Koski, Kevin Welner, Mike Rebell and Anne Newman. Take away (which I hope to come back to in more detail) ... we may be a couple of years away from a pretty substantial push for due process hearing officers for all education law disputes (like the ones we have in special education).
  2. I am not really sure yet of the whole empirical legal scholarship stuff. I know that Scott B. is a big fan and Mario Torres is doing a lot in this area related to education as well as Michael Heise (see this blog), but I still have some reservations. Maybe I will do more on this later.
  3. I got the chance to meet William Trent and some of his students doing work at the University of Illinois. Impressive stuff. 
  4. Nothing is private in my field of education leadership. Nothing. It is too small a group and rumors spread like wildfire. Everything is either impressive as hell or the end of the world. There is too much overreaction to the yearly ups and downs of programs.
  5. The UCEA Taskforce on Evaluating Leadership Preparation Programs is showing some promising signs. Hope to have more details on that upcoming. 
  6. That said, the use of longitudinal data sets to tie school leadership to students, or alternatively their preparation programs, is still a long, long way away. Maybe more on that later too.
  7. Prezi is a cool new tool. Check it out. Here is the one I used for the presentation off the paper I did with Jon Becker & Scott McLeod. Jon had the great idea to use it.

Overall, this was a great conference. I enjoyed Scott B.'s company (and may have even convinced him to come along again). There is a lot of room for good legal scholars related to education issues still (the proposal deadline is very early is you are interested). I am still very early in my career, so I am hopeful that by the end of my career we will see a lot more development in this critical area for education reform.

Wednesday
Apr152009

AERA: Day 2

My Internet access is somewhat limited here, so sorry the blogging has been light. A few reflections on the day:

  1. The Law and Education SIG is so enjoyable. It really is my favorite professional group and for you fellow edjurists out there, I highly recommend that you consider it.
  2. The numbers are substantially down this year. You can notice it not just in the number of folks in our SIG and whatnot, but just in the number of people in town and at restaurants. 
  3. It is becoming harder and harder for me to live in 2 worlds. I have traditionally done a lot with the law group and a lot with the principalship preparation group. It is tougher and tougher to continue in both and be effective at either.
  4. San Diego was cold today. Not Minnesota cold, but sort of unpleasant. Based on my first 2 days in San Diego, I thought it was pleasant here all the time.
  5. AERA is quite the bureaucracy. I have had quite the time getting a simple check cut and finally was told ... it was not going to be cut at all.
Monday
Apr132009

AERA: San Diego Blogging

San Diego is beautiful. Let's just start there. The hotels, the places to eat, the convention center, and the beach ... the beach is fabulous.

Over the next couple days I will be blogging in a live way (although not live-blogging technically) several sessions and events at AERA. I am an officer in the Law and Education Special Interest Group, so I will certainly be attending all those sessions if you want to track me down. I hope to get some videos and pictures so that folks can get a sense of what goes on here and may at some point consider joining the Law and Education SIG.

Friday
Apr102009

Wecasting or Liveblogging School Board Meetings

Wes Fryer liveblogged and UStreamed a school board meeting last week and wondered a little about the legal implications thereof.

Short answer: Yes, you probably can video record or liveblog school board meetings unless someone tells you not to because it is going to disrupt the meeting or a local rule exists prohibiting recording.

Long answer: Okay, I am going to cheat here and let the Citizen's Media Law Project do it for me. Also check out their state specific rules.

Let me just add to the long answer that FERPA and other privacy issues could potentially come into play in schools more frequently than other arenas. School boards should be going into closed sessions for these issues anyway, but if you notice them making a mistake and talking about private issues in public, you may want to help them out and keep the student's or teacher's information off the airwaves, or in this case the "series of tubes." Otherwise, I think the long answer works just as well for school board meetings as it does for Congressional Hearings.

Practically, the liveblogging I don't think will ever be a problem. Public officals are becoming comfortable enough with folks typing away on laptops that I don't think that would ever be a disruption. The video recording could be a disruption, but the less of an issue you make it, the better. Wes' plan to record with a camera phone I think was good - it doesn't really get in the way of anything. Now, if you brought in three extension cords, lighting, an overhead mike, etc... then it is likely going to be a disruption. Also, practically, it is probably not worth annoying board members and being as polite as possible. Asking ahead of time is probably a good idea, but have a fallback plan in case they say no to the initial request.

One of the commenters in Wes' liveblog noted that he would like to see a trend emerge of webcasting school board meetings and I also think that would be a good idea. For instance, Wes had a viewer from New Zealand watching that central Oklahoma school board meeting. That's just cool - and probably a good thing for our democracy.

Friday
Apr102009

How Can Schools Regulate Off-Campus Internet Speech? 

We'll do a little mail today as I have a couple a need to get to (I try to be pretty responsive to reader requests or questions as much as I can without practicing law, so feel free to contact me):

A reader from Michigan writes in with a question/musing:

"How is it a school district thinks it has a right to scan students' Facebook pages and assign consequences to those that express dislike for certain teachers or use profanity in any way."

This is an excellent, excellent question and I want to address this in two parts, the legal part and then the ethical part.

First, legally, what the courts have done is establish a mechanism by which schools can reach outside of the four corners of the school and regulate off-campus behavior. Here is the mechanism: (1) the court looks for a "nexus" (connection) with the school district. This can literally be anything and the courts have been pretty liberal in establishing this nexus. When the Internet was still new, courts were more reluctant, but now we are seeing them permit quite a bit of regulation of the net. (2) Once the nexus is established, then we run through the traditional student speech analysis. (a) Is it speech? - Is it meant to convey an idea? If yes, continue, if no - regulate. (b) Is it lewd, vulgar, plainly offensive? Here is where your profanity comes in and school authorities feel comfortable regulating. (c) Does it promote illegal activities, such as drug use. Yes = regulate. No = continue. (d) Does it cause a disruption? This is the biggie. There is a lot of legal history here establishing what is and is not a disruption, but the administrator's perception will usually get quite a bit of deference. Typically, if you have a nexus, you probably have a disruption - as the disruption is the nexus.

Anyway, that's the legal standard that courts consider. As you can probably tell, it is pretty broad and gives schools quite a bit of leeway in regulating off-campus student speech.

Second, though, I want to talk about the ethical issues here. I addressed the legal "how," but there is a second "how did it get to this point?" type question embedded in the musing, so I also want to address that. How it got here is a complex deal, but let me throw some motivating factors out there. (1) Columbine. The effect that incident, and the other school shootings in that period, had on schools is so profound that I think we are just now starting to come to grips with it. One major effect though was to make schools much more proactive in regulating everything related to students. Before Columbine we did not think our students would kill us or others, after Columbine, we were not so sure anymore. (2) Bullying and Cyberbullying. The Columbine events also woke us up to bullying issues and especially those bullying issues that occured online. A Secret Service report concluded that bullying was a substantial motivating factor in these incidents and that woke up the national conscious to this issue. States responded with anti-bullying statutes and some, like Kentucky, even created online harassment misdemeanors to punish kids who bully. (3) Sexual predators & Porn. In the late 90's and early 2000's adults really had no idea what was going on online. In fact, one can make a pretty cogent argument that most adults still don't 'get it.' When people don't understand something, they fear it - and we feared the Internet for a long time and possibly still do. All a lot of average American's hear about the Internet is the bad things, like predators and porn. (4) Lots of other factors from teacher facebook incidents to the rise in smaller, private school administrator preparation programs which spend all their time telling "war stories" and scare the heck out of future school administrators. 

All those factors combined to create an environment where school regulation of off-campus speech was not just allowed by courts ... but it was encouraged by society and school boards. At some point administrators thought it was their job to regulate off-campus speech - which, in my opinion, it isn't their job nor has it ever been. But, at some point we crossed a threshold where the bounds of the school were extended beyond the four corners of school property. We sort of put schools in charge of student discipline all the time, not just between 8 and 3. How long this will continue I don't know. Certainly questions like yours show indications of a push-back, where school personnel start to say, "what a second ... why am I regulating what kids do at home?"

Thursday
Apr092009

We Have To Get Rid of Time-Out Rooms

Following up on my post yesterday, I am going to make a follow-up plea today that we start eliminating these rooms. Last night I had access to some school data on usage of time-out rooms and I was absolutely in shock. Unfortunately, I cannot share this raw data and you will just have to take my word for it, but it was stark. Students were being forced into the "time-out" room sometimes more frequently than they were in the classroom. In one school year, one of the students at this school spent 80 hours in the time-out room. Some teachers referred students to the time out room on a daily basis. Sometimes for nothing more than not having their homework finished. Some administrators, in taking in a troubled student from another district, planned for the student to spend the majority of his days in time-out. Before they even met the kid.

This has got to stop

The question is how do you make this stop.

Legislation would be a good idea. A bill in Missouri attempted to do just that, and hopefully those bills will become more popular across the country until a few get passed and hopefully that will start the ball rolling. Some departments of education are passing guidance, but I see this as being above the DOE level. 

Secondly, Colleges of Education have to do better on preparing administrators and teachers for this. The disparity between teachers in how they used this room in the data I saw (some teachers never, some teachers daily) speaks to the lack of preparation for this issue.  

Third, though, I think there is a huge potential for lawsuits here to bring these rooms down. First, this is false imprisonment. Certainly my post yesterday had the makings of a viable false imprisonment claim and the beauty of a false imprisonment claim is that it is an intentional tort, so immunity laws would not protect and teachers could be personally liable as well. It wouldn't take many of these cases to shock administrators and teachers into changing their behavior. There may even be a criminal charge that could be applicable (I would have to do more research on that to be sure).  

Next, there is a lot of due process issues entangled in this - and my feeling is that schools are not getting them right. Really, this is a suspension, plan and simple. Since it is a suspension, all the due process that accompanies suspensions should accompany this ... but my feeling is that it is not. From the number of incidents I saw yesterday, the principal would be spending all her time filling out paperwork for these things if it was being done properly. Students and parents need to be aware that their rights are probably being violated in a ton of these cases, and again, a few highly publicized lawsuits would help. 

Bottom-line: This needs to stop. The padded room concept has gone way past its original intentions and there is simply no way to justify the expansive use of these rooms today. How did we even allow this to happen in the first place?  

Wednesday
Apr082009

This was inevitable ...

I have always been against the "safe room" concept that is becoming more and more popular in schools ... because this is where that concept inevitably leads:

Tuesday
Apr072009

Suing a School Over Bullying

The news making the rounds this week is the school outside Cleveland that is being sued over a student's suicide, which the parents claim is a result of unaddressed bullying. It is quite the interesting case and, if it doesn't settle, will make for a nice test case. The parents are clearly angling for a Title IX based claim under the Davis Standard.

Teasing, verbal intimidation and name-calling — terms such as "gay," "queer" and "homo" — would lead to pushing, shoving and hitting in the classroom and hallways, according to the lawsuit.

An administrator even saw Eric crying in the hallway the day of his death but took no action, the lawsuits claims.

Eric's mother, who works at Roosevelt Elementary in Euclid, calls the filing a final effort to get the Mentor School District to admit it has a problem.

"Quite frankly if they had said, 'Bill and Jan, we're really sorry, we're going to work really hard to make sure this doesn't happen again,' I wouldn't be doing this," she said. "Instead they looked me in the face and said, 'Oh, we didn't know this was happening.' "

The homosexual based bullying issue is really interesting because few courts have recognized that as a legitimate claim under the Davis standard - and it doesn't strike me that the homosexual issue was at the heart of this bullying case. Also, you can see the parents positioning to make a "deliberate indifference" claim. However, at other points in the article it does seem like school officials did take some actions, even if they eventually proved inadequate. In addition, the case also directly calls in to question the Olewus Bullying Prevention Program, which is a very popular program around the country and is going to cause a lot of schools to watch this case. 

Overall, I don't think the parents have a lot of solid legal ground here. Even the Ohio Anti-Bullying Statute directly states it does not give rise to a private right of action. But, the finality and shock of a suicide will put the judge to the test, so don't be surprised if he or she eventually finds a way to let this parent recover, assuming it doesn't settle ... which I think it will. The district doesn't want a few years of headlines on this issue.

 

Friday
Apr032009

Food Allergy Bullying

This post was written by Abigail Mack, a Master's student in one of my classes here at UK. When I do my YouTube Assignment, I try to find ways to reward the best work and I thought this post warranted publishing. Enjoy.


Allergy bullying occurs when one individual intimidates a person, usually a schoolmate, by threatening to expose that person to food that they are allergic to.[1]  This phenomenon is dangerous and possibly deadly form of bullying for children with food allergies.   Many parents were already concerned about peanut products in their children’s school lunches, but many schools have taken steps to protect students with peanut allergies.  Some schools have a “peanut free” lunch table, while other schools have adopted various measures including making peanut butter sandwiches offsite or providing very young students with a 504 Plan for their allergy.[2] Despite these precautions, parents now have to be concerned that a bully will force their child to encounter a peanut product.  Incidents of allergy bullying have doubled in the last five years, forcing some schools to ban peanut products on school grounds.[3]

Incidents

New York –During the spring of 2007 in Mastic, NY a group of girls harassed fourteen year-old Sarah VanEssendelft with peanut butter sandwiches when they decided they no longer wanted VanEssendelft sitting at their lunch table.  One day they all brought the sandwiches to lunch so that VanEssendelft could not sit with them.  A few days later, a boy in one of VanEssendelft’s class brought a peanut butter cup and ate it in class, which sent her to the hospital for four days.  Since the incident VanEssendelft’s mother has applied for a 504 plan, the school banned eating in all classrooms, and the school will consider future allergy bullying as discrimination against a disability.[4]

Kentucky- Officials arrested an eighth grade girl after she put peanut butter cookie crumbs in a classmate’s lunch box.  The bullying victim did not eat the crumbs and she did not have an allergic reaction from exposure.  However, the bully is now facing felony charges in juvenile court for wanton endangerment.[5]

Legal Issues

Allergy bullying falls under the terms of most state’s anti-bullying policies.  As of April 2008 thirty states had adopted an anti-bullying policy aimed at defining, preventing, and outlining the consequences associated with bullying in school.  Most of these policies encourage an early reporting system aimed at preventing initial incidents from continuing and escalating.  State anti-bullying policies do differ.  Some states do not define bullying categorically, meaning that their policies do not define harassment based on gender, sexual orientation, and other categories of discrimination. 

For More Information on Bullying and Allergy Bullying see:

State-by-State Anti-Bullying Laws in the United States

Word Spy. “Allergy Bullying.” Retrieved March 29, 2009

 “Life Threatening Food Allergies in School: What Schools are Doing for Kids who are Allergic to Peanuts:”

 “Peanut Butter and Deadly Taunts:”  

 “Bullying Case Grabs Attention:” 

 

Abigail Mack 



[1] Word Spy. “Allergy Bullying.” Retrieved March 29, 2009 from http://www.wordspy.com/words/allergybullying.asp

[2] Karen Plumley, “Life Threatening Food Allergies in School: What Schools are Doing for Kids who are Allergic to Peanuts.” Retrieved March 29, 2009 from http://specialneedseducation.suite101.com/article.cfm/food_allergies_in_school

[3] Lauren Cox,“Peanut Butter and Deadly Taunts.” Retrieved March 29, 2009 from http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AllergiesNews/story?id=4659705

[4] Ibid.

[5] Claire Gagne, “Bullying Case Grabs Attention.” Retrieved March 29, 2009 from http://www.allergicliving.com/features.asp?copy_id=172 

 

Thursday
Apr022009

The Interesting South Carolina Rejection

I find this one very interesting. If you haven't heard, there is a growing controversy in South Carolina because Governor Mark Sanford's refusal of some of the Stiumlus money. Not just any Stimulus money, but specifically $700 million for K-12 and higher education. Here is the NPR Story. So, of course, schools are getting restless and teachers have even begun to pubically rally in Columbia. There is lots of speculation out there that he is doing it to prepare for a presidental run, but it is not just that he is doing it ... it is HOW he is doing it. Listen to this:

You can judge for yourself, and I would love to hear your comments especially from my cohort of S.C. readers, but I like the clear articulation of positions here. Gov. Sanford is willing to publically say that he supports fiscally harming kids in the short term in the hopes that they are fiscally better off in the long term. Whether or not you support this position, and I probably don't given that a good friend of mine is a teacher at S.C. State, the directness and clarity of the position is laudable. (Of course, that kind of clarity and directness is ususally what gets your thrown out of office, too).   

Wednesday
Apr012009

Coaches, Calipari Edition

So, yes, we hired Jon Calipari. For 2.9 million a year, plus a slew of benefits (cars, tickets, country club membership, camp profits, etc). Here is his employment contract, it is one of the more interesting I have ever read (who gets 3 million for wearing the right pair of shoes?). 

So, lots of people around the campus asked me what I thought about it (and why I had not posted yet - the blog is becoming more popular around here!), and my response is that I am mixed.

I like winning. My wife can tell you that I really get into the games and I am quickly becoming one of those crazed Kentucky fans that everyone talks about. On the other hand, as I have said earlier, I have serious legal reservations about schools being responsible for sports. And, on top of all that, I have concerns about money and priorities at the place that writes my checks. 

So, first, I don't have a problem with the money. Any academic department here would love to put that to good use, but the fact is that sports here at UK pays for itself and has money to spare, which winds up benefiting academics. The SEC and ESPN have a 2.25 billion dollar TV deal. Forbes ranked us #2 (to the Tar Heels) in the value of our basketball team and it said we have an operating income of 16 million dollars. Given our likely investment in a new arena, even that number is going to balloon in the coming years. So, it is not a money issue. Sports for UK is a financially profitable enterprise and that doesn't even count the value of having millions of kids in Kentucky and the nation wearing UK gear and helping us advertise our school. Sports benefit UK and winning helps in that regard. So, pay the man that runs the show (and it is a show ... pure entertainment ... UK basketball IS Kentucky's professional franchise). 

I also don't have a liability problem with this. Kids that get into big time college basketball know what they are doing and they know the risks. Also, although students do get hurt playing sports at UK, we have plenty of money to cover those risks.  

However, I do have a slight problem with the attention we pay to sports, though. We at the College of Ed. are in a Dean search right now (I am excited about our candidates) and the President of the University doesn't play much of a role as it is mostly handled out of the Provost's office. The Law School was also in a Dean search this year. The Dean of the College of Law and the College of Education at the flagship institution are incredibly important positions to the Commonwealth. These people are policymakers and their decisions affect everyone's future in the Commonwealth. We are literally educating governors in both of our Colleges (law)(education), yet these positions receive so much less attention. There are not reporters covering the candidate's front door to watch for someone to leave the house, for instance. And, it is not just that we pay less attention, it is also that we just flat pay less, period. The Dean of the College of Education oversees a 15 million dollar budget and the Dean of the College of Law oversees an 8 million dollar budget, yet these folks make only around $200,000 because there are no Nike contracts or ESPN deals. These people are just engaged in the hard work of actually preparing Kentucky's future and although there might not be television or corporate sponsors, one would think that our leadership would recognize this and commit to personally overseeing who fills those positions.   

This is sort of where I think we are missing the boat here.  What message are you sending teenagers in Kentucky right now? Our states #1 academic institution ... the best minds we got ... its #1 priority is sports. Talk about sending the wrong message to kids. Kentucky needs more doctors and lawyers and teachers and innovators and entrepenures, but the State just told all the kids in Kentucky that basketball is where it's at. 

Tuesday
Mar312009

Its the RIFing Time of Year

Districts are letting their teachers know they are RIFed about now. A lot of teachers are going to be RIFed this year. I could link to some examples, but it is easier for you to just check your local paper, because it is going to happen everywhere.

This site is tracking all the RIF's in California, totaling over 27,800 and is providing a little social networking space for them to vent. If you are a RIFed teacher, I am sure they wouldn't mind if you joined in the common frustration.

Sunday
Mar292009

Coaches - Not My Favorite Aspect of Education

Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to make my dislike for school-employed coaches public. If you have had me in class, you are already aware of my feelings in this regard.

My university just fired our basketball coach, Billy Gillespie, perhaps you've heard. So, I went to a few games this year and I watch them on TV when I can and I understand that our basketball team is probably all the general public knows about the University of Kentucky. But, we spend a lot of money on it. They make a lot of money, but we also just throw money around somewhat recklessly. For instance, we are going to pay our coach six million just to fire him (although the university is going to spend a lot of legal dollars trying to pay less). The point is that sports are overshadowing academics at the University of Kentucky - and since I am on the academic side, I am not particularly fond of that.

But, it is not just the attention and money that shifts away from academics, sports are probably the most legally risky thing that schools do. Kids die ... quite frequently, actually. And when that happens, lawsuits ensue. Here is another one just from today, just in my local paper. Of course here in Kentucky earlier this year we had the case of Max Gilpin, which gained national attention when a student died playing football - and he wasn't the first to die in that district. The Gilpin case was the first, though, where the coach was charged with reckless homicide. I could cite lots of other examples too and that is not even accounting for all the sports injuries, which happen pretty much constantly.

Now, the counter argument is that the benefits of physical activity far outweigh the potential risk of injury or death. The problem is that coaches don't coach to make kids healthy ... they coach to win - frequently at all costs. When kids play they will get hurt, but the risk of getting injured or killed when they are exhausted or pushed to their limits increase substantially. Why is it that schools have to take on that risk? Why not cities? Why not private companies, like in professional sports?

From a legal perspective, employing coaches is just not a great idea. I understand that tradition dictates we do it and there are community benefits by rooting for the home team, but school administrators need to be very, very careful with their coaches and not get too enthralled with winning. Let's not take our eye off the ball, to use a sports analogy, by putting winning before our student's health.

Friday
Mar272009

C-SPAN Tinker Session

C-SPAN had a program on the 40th Anniversiary of Tinker v. Des Moines, with Mary Beth Tinker and Maryam Ahranjani, a law professor at American University (who I think could have been a little more in touch with the educational world and the impact of Tinker - wonder if they know there are J.D./Ph.D.'s out there?). But, it is worth watching for Mary Beth Tinker's thoughts, which start at 2:30, and the references back to the audio from the oral arguments. 

Friday
Mar272009

Don't Get Discouraged

We have to relish stories like the one in North Dakota where students have been redirected from schools to sandbag lines to save their towns. We may bicker about on day to day issues, but it is nice to remember that when emergencies hit, we are still all on the same page.

Wednesday
Mar252009

Some more ed. law blogs

The Ed. Law Blogosphere continues to grow. That is not to say we haven't lost a few along the way, but nevertheless it is nice to continually see new folks around the country trying their hand. 

So, here are some I want to point out to you. All of them have existed for a while, but I wanted to be sure that I featured them as I add them to my blogroll. 

I have been enjoying a great conversation with Nancy Willard and Mike Tully the last couple of days (which should eventually be posted in the blogosphere somewhere), so I want to point out their blogs: 

Substantial Disruption is Mike Tully's blog. Mike cut his blogging teeth on the old At the Schoolhouse Gate, the previous CASTLE ed. law blog. - Mike links to a lot of good articles on various speech and bullying issues.  

Nancy Willard's Weblog, from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. Nancy's posts are usually lengthier posts that examine an issue in depth and correspond with her consulting work around the country. 

Also, the state specific ed. law blogosphere continues to expand. The latest entrant, and one I am sort of excited about, is the Northwest Education Law Blog, which is published by a team from the Williams Kastner law firm that serves Portland, Seattle and surrounding markets. I am excited to have an ed. law blog representing the Northwest because quite a few good cases come out of there. 

And finally, we have Jeff Marcus, who is blogging on N.Y. related special education law issues at Developments in Special Education Law. He pulls largely from special education hearing officer decisions, which is sort of an untapped area of education law in general. 

As always, if I have left anyone out, just let me know here at the blog or you can contact me. My searching of the blogosphere is not what it used to be, so don't feel bad pointing out your work to me. 

Tuesday
Mar242009

Some Butt-Art Video

I hadn't come across this video before on the Stephen Murmer, butt-art case and settlement. If you are new the case (lucky you) here is the background, the complaint, the school press release and the settlement. This is one of those classic cases that we ed. law professors are going to be citing for decades to come.