National Education Finance Conference Deadline

The National Education Finance Conference has just extended their deadline for session proposals until January 31.

I went to this conference two years ago and it was quite enjoyable and the topics were extremely relevant to scholars studying anything impacted by education finance. It is in Indy so it should be driveable for many folks. 

Announcing Our New Partnership with the Education Law Association

I am very pleased to announce that beginning on January 1 of next year, the Edjurist is going to be a formal partner of the Education Law Association. We at the Edjurist are going to use this as an opportunity to relaunch our blogging efforts, so look for several changes to the platform in the next month or two. 

As part of the relaunch, we will be looking to add some new voices to the blog. If you are interested in being an active contributor to this space, please let me know. 

Let me just take this opportunity to say that this partnership is the culmination more than a year's worth of discussion about online, open access efforts at ELA. This blog will be one of the primary outlets for that type of information. I am very pleased to see ELA moving in this direction. 

But, also, this partnership is the culmination of nearly a decades worth of blogging. I started blogging when in law school, around 2004, I was told of blogs and immediately looked to subscribe to the education law blog. There was no education law blog. So, I started one. Since then, I have kept this effort going just as a side project. Through the years, several other education law blogs developed, which I was happy to see. However, I always thought a partnership between the Edjurist and ELA was a great opportunity to benefit both organizations, both in bringing ELA into the digital age, but also in making this little side project started nearly a decade ago into a formal partner of the premier education law organization in the world. So, I cannot say how proud I am to finally see my little project reach this point and to work together with ELA and its members to continue bringing great education law information to educators throughout the world. 

Openness is Really Important for Education Law

Clay Shirky has a new TED talk out on how the Internet might influence the structure of democracy, making it much more open source. Worth watching and thinking about school law. 

Now, your average school leader or education lawyer is not going to jump into open source coding using some unknown programming language ... but they can absolutely start open source coding. 

Consider this: What if you put out your school policy in a open, editable Google Doc.? Currently we write school policy in Word. What if we did that in Google Docs? Subtle change, enormous difference. 

First, this solves several problems that schools have. 

1. Not everyone has Word on their home computers and struggle to open the Word files. 
2. Tablet computers also struggle with Microsoft Office, so another plus. 
3. You can hyperlink, embed videos, and more. Referencing a state policy on an issue, just link to it. Really want to put an explanatory footnote on a policy, embed an instructional video. 
4. Multiple people can work on the document at once and no more passing around dozens of versions by email attachment. 
5. The public always has the latest version of school policy. No more out-of-date links on school website (which is actually a pretty big problem), just link to the Google Doc (editable or not). 

And that is just solving the easy problems, let alone the much more important issue of people actually caring or knowing these things exist. Taking an open approach to school policy not only would engage teachers, students, and the community ... it will probably improve the policies (because right now, most of them are not very good)! 

Whether or not you like that idea (and most school attorneys will not), we need to be moving toward opening our education law rather than seeking to further close it off in more and more committees and documents that no one ever even knows exists. Our schools are for our communities (they pay the bill). If we can leverage technology to give it back to them, we should. 

Political Donations on State Owned Devices

As the political season heats up, now is a good time to remind folks that making political donations on school or university owned devices is a bad idea ... for what I hope are obvious reasons (remember who paid for that computer). Even though I think this is obvious, I'm doubting that too many public employees will consider it before they enter their credit card info.  

As Sherman Dorn notes on Twitter, it is probably a good idea to make such donations on your phones (less likely to be state owned). My wife even adds that apparently you can now even make donations by texting to some political campaigns.

(oddly, making a donation to a super-pac might be more palatable ... but then public employees don't have that kind of money). 

Anyway, please exercise your right to make your financial voices heard ... just not on a device you didn't pay for yourself.   

Just Don't Ban It (Again)

So, schools adopting social media policies is becoming very fashionable these days (ridiculously so, and lots of smart folks can tell you why, but whatever). New York City Schools is the latest to apparently be considering it. 

Here's the thing. I do not care all that much legally what you put in that policy, with one exception ... just don't ban anything. You cannot ban Facebook. You cannot ban Twitter. You cannot ban teachers from talking to kids outside of school. If the First Amendment says anything, it is that you can share your ideas without governmental interference when they have no legitimate reason to regulate. That a person is a teacher is not a legitimate reason to regulate all their speech, all the time. It isn't. Trust me. 

To show you, let's get conservative just because that is how our current Court leans. Let's say a school board wanted to ban a teacher from religious speech (participating in this prayer social website, for instance). Would that fly with the current court? No freaking way. None. Facebook is not different. Why? Well, look at this site - the Hawaii Catholic Youth and Adult Ministry Facebook Group. Can we ban teachers from talking to students on that site? No, we can't. They have both an expression and free exercise right to do so. Thus, we cannot ban Facebook. We also cannot ban teachers from talking to students on Facebook. Bans do not work in this space. There is just far, far too much constitutional history on the other side of that argument and way, way too many different scenarios that would be banned all in one fell swoop. 

Now, you can choose to block these things on your school Internet, that's fine. You can encourage responsibility. You can institute discipline measures for disruptions. You can, well ... be creative. But, banning teachers from using social media in anyway is a step to far, constitutionally speaking. 

New Education Law Text Takes a Different Approach

It is not often I review textbooks on the blog. In fact, I am not sure I ever have before. Mostly that is just because I am so firmly entrenched with this one, as it was the one I learned with and even helped a bit on an edition or two ago. Now, I use that one for my principal classes, but do not use a textbook for my teacher leader or undergraduate classes.  

But, recently I was made aware of a new textbook on education law that takes a different approach to publishing, namely, no publisher. John Dayton's new book, Education Law: Principles, Policy & Practice, has taken a self-publishing approach. It is a very comprehensive (480 pages) look at education law. It is also not a casebook, meaning John actually wrote all of the text. There is also a Kindle version coming soon. I have just briefly scanned the book and find it to be very well constructed and particularly strong on constitutional issues. It was clearly a labor of love and I recommend you at least give it a look on Amazon. To those folks teaching law out there, I'm sure if you contacted John he could get you part of the book to review even.

What is really interesting to me about the book, though, is that it signals a new potential path for publishing that changes the game. How, you ask?

(1) First, this type of publishing keeps costs much lower. So much of the price of a textbook is wrapped up in the publisher's overhead costs and not in the actual printing of the book. Pearson, all of those teaching in universities know, has an enormous staff. I have a personal Pearson representative that stops in my office about every three months. That is a salary John Dayton does not have to pay, nor does Amazon, nor does the start-up partner CreateSpace, and most importantly nor do any customers. In essence, all the cost of this book entails is the compensation for the time John spent writing it, the very small amount he paid CreateSpace to help with the process, and the cut Amazon takes. The author, usually the professor, is not in this for the money. There is some money, don't get me wrong, but ask your standard textbook author whether they care about the royalties and I bet they do not. There are so many other, and better, reasons to do it anyway (although I'm not sure vita-boost counts as better). Nevertheless, very few professors are motivated by the royalty money. Bottom line? 

Most popular text in education law: $172.30
Second most popular and one I favor: $110.99
This new textbook: $35.99 

Ask your students out there which one they favor. 

(2) Copyright. As an author, when you work with a standard publisher you lose the copyright to your work. The publisher holds and controls the rights to the future use of the book. This is a bad thing for everyone but the publisher. When a book runs initially, I do not mind the publisher recouping their costs even with a little extra added on for profit. What I do mind is the publisher keeping the rights of that book under lock and key long after their investment as been paid off and the book is marketable. Standard copyright these days is around 100 years. Thus, any traditional book (or journal article for that matter) is useful only while marketable and only to those capable and willing to pay the price (see #1, above).

Take away this traditional copyright game, however, and a whole new world opens up. An author has so many more options both in the near term and in the long term. The author can share the book with whomever he/she pleases. Can choose to use it in their own classes free of charge. Can partner with professional organizations to make snippets public. Can create websites that do so many different things. Can put the text out in ePUB, so it is digital and interactive. Can update the text whenever. And on and on. The long-term, though, is even more interesting to me. Once an author recoups the initial costs, why not release the text to the public with a Creative Commons license? Let the world share and remix and build from the text? Why not? So many awesome possibilities ... that are not behind a 100 year firewall.  

(3) Flexibility - When I write my textbook, I am going to put YouTube videos in it. No, not as some add on CD or some outside website with a crappy URL ... I mean seriously right in the text, sometimes in place of the text, right there seamlessly in the book. Why try to describe Savana Redding's case when she can describe it for herself? Seriously? When the few (and believe me, still few) publishers that have solicited me to write for them hear this, their eyes get really big and they cock their head a bit in confusion and look for an exit. But, I am serious. Traditional publishers ... are traditional. Print offers very little flexibility. Black, white, 8 1/2 x 11 ... that's about it. Digital text is different.

Ultimately, why I wanted to write this post is just to let you know it is okay to think differently about publishing. To have different expectations of authors, publishers, booksellers, and consumers. The inertia in the traditional publishing model is deep and long-lasting. We are going to be printing books in publishing houses for a great while longer. But, it is not the only model now. In niche fields like ours, it may not even be the best model. Certainly this book is a test case and we shall see in a few years the results. But, whether or not this effort is successful, it will not be the last effort (yes, that is a personal promise). Information is different now and it needs to be treated differently. This was one bold step forward along that path.

Bravo, Professor Dayton. Thank you for being a leader.    

Coaches Thanking God for Victories

It is one of my favorite times of year. My vita has SIU, IU and UK featured prominently ... all good basketball schools (at least SIU was). Anyway, it has been awesome enjoying March at these places. 

After their win v. VCU, Coach Tom Crean of IU was interviewed by CBS. The first thing he mentioned in the interview was,

“We pray before every game, and one of the biggest things is God gives us the tools and the courage but it is our responsibility  to do the work.”

Struck me as a bit odd, but certainly not out of the ordinary. In fact, I eagerly googled his comments for this post thinking there would be some debate, but found no controversy at all. It is so normal we do not even notice anymore, I think. 

But, here is IU's representative, who gets paid a lot, on the biggest stage starting with "We pray before every game." Are we okay with this? Indiana University (an awesome school, might I add) is public and has 40,000 students, a fair number of which I'm guessing are not that into prayer toward this particular "God." Heck, I'm an alumnus and I'm not sure I'm totally okay with it. 

From a legal perspective, I certainly do not like this. I know it would be a difficult situation to challenge, but if challenged, I would worry about the Establishment Clause implications. And, it is very hard to make a Free Exercise claim on the other side of this. 

So, thoughts? Is this worth trying to tamp down? 

*P.S. - And, don't even go there. No, I am not doing this because UK plays IU this week and they beat us once already this year. Crean was just the one I happened to catch (because I was watching the game as an IU fan). 

Is YouTube Cleaning Up Our Classrooms?

It might have in Nashville - where this teacher was dismissed after students caught him raging in the classroom on video. Students catching teachers doing [insert bad thing here] on YouTube happens all the time. Just go to YouTube and search. I think you will be surprised.

But, harder question, is this good for our classrooms? Openness is generally a good thing, so hard to find much fault in it, understandably. But, sometimes the actions that are needed for students are actions that do not come off well in video. I'll remind you that corporeal punishment is still legal in a large number of states. That is not going to come off well on video even though legislatures still consider it an appropriate disciplinary tool.

The classroom in Nashville was clearly out of control and students were not showing the proper deference to the teacher. Now, a good teacher would not let it get to that point and would have better ideas for resolving that situation than flipping over desks. But, to think all of our teachers are going to know what to do when presented with that situation is naive. There are over 3 million teachers in the U.S. ... but there are certainly over 3 million smart phones in the classroom right now. Thus, there is a high potential that each teacher might be recorded at some point ... that point being their lowest more often than not. Thus, teachers are much less likely to reach those low points. Is that good? Probably, but let's also acknowledge that lowpoints are not necessarily bad points in a teacher's career. A low point can be a great learning experience for both the teacher and the students if handled properly. Specifically, those low points can frequently show students just where the boundaries of that classroom lie and, sometimes, students will at least respect that point. 

As you can see, I'm not real sure of my thoughts on this one, so I'd be happy to hear yours. 

The Case of High Heels and the First Amendment

Well, I have already written a few pages as a result of this story ... so wanted to pass it along (video is not embedding well, so click link to see the story). 

Thoughts? 

Just to kick it off ... I'm okay with the regulation in this case. I'll say more after people lambast me for that position. 

Whatever you think about this case, it is a wonderful teaching tool and I hope some of you use this scenario in your classes. 

H/T to @jonbecker for bringing it to my attention.

Stop Strip Searching. Stop it.

School administrators - stop strip searching. Stop. Don't do it again. 

Sch. Law Profs - stop telling your students they can strip search. I don't care what narrow legal exception exists, there is so little to be gained outside of an immediate threat (i.e. a gun). 

It is stupid and unnecessary and nearly always ends poorly (and with lawsuits). 

Here is the latest: 

P.S. - Isn't it a bit ironic that the person fired in this case for doing the search was named Redding? Poetic, a bit, isn't it. 

Wonderful NOVA Documentary on the Dover Intelligent Design Trial

I have used this in my church/state teaching now for years, but this is the first time I saw the entire 2 hour special in a single YouTube video (YouTube recently changed its rule to allow uploading of content over 15 min. in duration). I use the very first part, the teaser trailer, to set up a vivid church/state & instructional issues discussion that always goes well. 

McCarthy on Student First Amendment Rights and Cyberbullying

My mentor and titan of the field of education law, Martha McCarthy, rarely makes video appearances. So, we have to treasure the few that we have. Recently, she was installed as the new Presidential Professor at Loyola Marymount University. As part of the introduction, she gave an hour or so lecture on student expression issues, particularly online expression and cyberbullying. It is a great watch for the content, but it is an even better watch to get a sense of her teaching ability. As you can see from the video, it was a fantastic learning experience to have studied under her. 

HELP WANTED: Rethinking the Edjurist - Thoughts from ELA Chicago

Well, this has been a very interesting conference for me so far this year. The program has been fantastic, thanks to Tom Hutton and our very own Suzanne Eckes. If you are a person that has an interest in Ed. Law, you need to think about being a member and coming to the conference (next year Savanna). This year, a cool thing happened, an attendee said that she was here because she learned about the conference from us at the Edjurist, so I am quite proud of that and would encourage you to at least consider the same decision.

So, some thoughts regarding this blog:

1. Great presenting with Mark Walsh of Ed Week and the School Law Blog, again. We were invited to present a session on technology and blogging and we had a great crowd. For those of you at the session, a post is coming here with some of the data and links we mentioned in the session. But, the session was interesting in that not only was it very well attended but it was also attended with generally enthusiastic crowd that was excited to see new ideas with technology.  

2. ELA seems to be turning a page regarding their acceptance of technology. For years (and still continuing) I think people looked at me and other techy folks as a little crazy. We (I) was outside the norm and therefore someone to either be ignored or to marginalize. Well, something has changed this year. Now, there is not just acceptance but nearly genuine excitement about what we can accomplish using some of these new tools. Other contributing professors are also pushing the Edjurist and taking some ownership. This development is so extremely heart warming. Obviously, personally, having developed this resource has been a passionate love affair, but it has always been a risk. To see it transition to something that is mainstream and something that other scholars feel is a core resource to our field is almost enough to bring me to tears.  

3. Because of that, I am having some serious thoughts about making some big changes here at the Edjurist. Now that I have another outlet to put some of my more controversial (and less research based) thoughts on technology and education at Education Recoded (please, go check that out and add it to your reader) it is probably time for the Edjurist to mature a little bit into something a bit more mainstream and more scholarly. It may also be time to consider a more formal partnership with ELA or another organization (I'm listening to offers) that will provide a bit more of a formal justification for adding these posts to people's vitas (which is the end-all for keeping your job as a professor).

4. Some of the changes I am considering are: 

• Expanding our contributor base. Perhaps doubling or more our list of contributing scholars would get more and more relevant content out there to you readers. 
• Taking and publishing submissions from non-contributors, so that anyone, including people that are not legal scholars, can publish information here. 
• Creating different types of publications here. From simply updating blog posts, to perhaps more extended scholarly articles (with citations). In this way, I could see elements of the Edjurist evolving into somewhat of a peer-reviewed journal. 
• Peer-reviewed posts. With our (expanded) team of contributors, we could potentially take some of the posts and elevate them to peer reviewed status. While it won't count as a peer-reviewed electronic journal article (and I do not intend to post those), it does provide a level of confidence to the posts that things like tenure committee's could take some additional faith in. 
• Many, many more teaching resources. In the past, I've put up my own courseware, but I want to expand beyond that to including resources, organized by topic, that anyone could use, but particularly those teaching education law. I have been requested, by Kevin Welner amongst others, to do this in the past, so perhaps now is the right time to make a larger push here. In the past, I and Jon Becker have worked with NASSP to build a set of online school law resources. Perhaps it is time to work with them again to get some more of those available. 
• Integrating tweets and other online resources. In the past year, a substantial base of people on twitter have developed enough to keep some relevant and fresh information on school law coming in from twitter. 
• Building and syndicating a free newsletter that administrator organizations can publish in their magazines each month. This is a bit of a stretch, but if there is a substantial interest, perhaps something to pursue.   

So, if anyone wants to chime in on some rethinking here, please let me know either in a comment or just personally. 

Hugging and Other Crimes Against Humanity

This story got a lot of play today where a middle school student was suspended for a mutual hug of his best friend, a female classmate. Here was the rationale: 

“We cannot make an opinion or judgment call on whether a hug is appropriate or not. It’s very difficult to police that on campus,” Christine Davis, the  public information officer for Brevard County Public Schools, told ABC News.

Davis said the school puts policies and procedures in place to help keep the students  focused on learning.

Really? If you can't make a call between an appropriate hug and an inappropriate hug you should be fired. It tells me that you don't know kids and that you don't know their lives. Is it harder to make all those judgment calls? Sure. But, that's what you get paid to do, so stop shirking your responsiblity through made-up policies (no law requires anything like this). 

Want to know why our school systems can't produce the passionate, dedicated, emotionally committed leaders of the next century ... it's because we feel we have to sanitize our schools and students away from such crimes against humanity as hugs between friends.  

When (it's probably not an if) these questionable school leaders lose their jobs ... "no hug for you." 

I'm Still Alive (Very Much So, In Fact)

I need to update some things around here. So here goes: 

Personal Updates: 

1. I'm writing for a new blog at BigThink called Education Recoded. It is sort of a second generation project for me as I am really beginning to find my unique voice. The title I think sort of sums up my intentions there, so read this post as to the great project I'm undertaking. BigThink has a mass audience, so it is a pleasure and honor to write there (I promise I'll keep writing here as well).

2. I have some new model legislation out on virtual schooling. Check that out. Thanks to NEPC and their leaders Kevin Welner and Gene Glass for including me. That was a fun project. I have some more on virtual and supplemental online education coming out soon, so I'll update on that as well. 

Team Updates: 

The CASTLE Directors at UK. This team is rocking! 1. CASTLE. We're rolling now. Scott has a new book out. We have a new policy brief series, the first of which went up last week. Two of our directors are doing consulting work in Cambodia as I post this with additional countries under negotiation. We are hosting 2 outstanding visiting scholars this semester. We are building an outstanding staff. We are on the cusp of launching new programs at UK (couple more approvals to secure). It is going as well as I could have hoped for and we are just getting rolling, so ... smiles. 

2. Law and Policy Group. As I've mentioned on here before, we have an extremely strong education law and policy group at UK and that group is finding their footing and starting to produce results. Our first conference last year was successful, so we are doing a second so if you are in or around Kentucky, come check that out. Also, Neal Hutchens has led the effort to develop a new refereed journal, the Kentucky Journal of Higher Education Policy and Practice and, of course, don't forget the new higher education group blog that is rolling along impressively: HigherEducationLaw.org.  This group is starting to come together nicely. 

Site Updates: 

1. I changed the commenting platform to Disqus. I hate to lose access to all the old comments (I still have access if you need them), but the spamming was killing me and I think Disqus is a better filter for that kind of stuff. Plus, Disqus is a much more powerful platform. You can login with multiple existing web ID's and you can track and reply to comments even across multiple different blogs and platforms. It is a huge improvement, so it was time to pull the trigger on that. 

2. I've disabled much of the page content I had at the top. With all the other stuff already mentioned in this post and in my push toward tenure over the next year or two, I do not have time to keep all of those updated and accurate. So, for now at least, I think it is best to just put those on hold. 

Ain't That a Kick in the Wallet

Illinois is no longer funding regional superintendent positions. Not a huge deal except that they all have continued to work for the past 2 months without pay. And, Friday, a judge told them that's the breaks and thank you for volunteering and you're welcome to continue to do so. The legislature might step in and override the governor, but short of that these educators are out of jobs, practically if not technically. 

Of course, guys like this make everyone else look bad :) 

Anyway, back on point, as a person who was fond of my regional superintendent while working in Illinois, this is a real shame. Were there too many regions. Probably. Was their bloating and waste at this level? Yeah. But, did Illinois need to eliminate the entire structure? Surely not. 

I'm sure the legislature and governor's office will negotiate some new regional structuring, but sometimes Illinois just can't help but embarass itself in the process. 

An Injunction Against the Missouri Facebook Law

Late this Friday afternoon, only 4 days before the law was scheduled to go into effect, word came that a judge in Missouri has issued an injunction against implementation of the Missouri anti-social networking (Facebook) law between teachers and students. Here is a local story on it (thanks to my good friend Dave Doty @canyonsdave). Also, thanks to the Missouri State Teachers' Association, who filed the suit, for following up on twitter with their press release. 

First, this is just a preliminary injunction. This is not a final judgment and the matter is still to be decided. 

But, the language the judge used is outstanding. Please, give it a read: 

[The law implicates the First Amendment and the Missouri Constitution.] "Even if a complete ban on certain forms of communication between certain individuals could be construed as content nuetral and only a reasonable restriction on "time, place and manner," the breadth of the prohibition is staggering. The Court finds ... social networking is extensively used by educators. It is often the primary, if not sole manner, of communication between the Plaintiffs and their students. Examination of the statute indicates that it would prohibit all teachers from using any non-work-related social networking sites which allow exclusive access with current or former students. It clearly prohibits communication between family members and their teacher parents using these types of sites. The Court finds that the statute would have a chilling effect on speech."

Well, yeah. Of course. In an upcoming article in the Journal of School Leadership, I predicted as much if a state tried to ban Facebook in this way. This judge is clearly on the same wave-length. I just don't see how a law similar to this one has a chance of being constitutional. There is just too much protected speech that will be chilled. The example I used in the article is my.barackobama.com - where teachers and students must be free to interact in any reasonable interpretation of the First Amendment. Those kinds of examples are probably not what the legislators in Missouri were thinking of when they wrote the law, but putting a broad ban on social networking is going to chill all kinds of clearly constitutional speech. I think the judge understood that and really had no choice but to issue the injunction. 

This is a great victory for the Missouri teachers. But, it is just the first decision in what promises to be an extended legal battle that will probably eventually wind up in the Missouri Supreme Court. 

Kentucky on iTunesU

Today we launched the Kentucky iTunesU network (link will ask you to open iTunes and say yes) at Woodford County High School where the school is moving this fall to a 1-1 iPad environment. It was a project of the Technology Leadership Lab at the UK College of Education, which is now CASTLE. It was also in partnership with the Kentucky Department of Education, Kentucky Educational Television and Woodford County School District.

Thus, in particular, I would like to thank Marty Park, Brian Spellman and Greg French, respectively, for being part of the core team that made this event happen. Dr. Scott Hawkins, the superintendent, and Rob Akers, the principal, were also instrumental because they let us invade their school (and convinced their district to move toward 1-1 tablets). Also, thanks to the speakers for coming and sharing their thoughts: Gov. Steve Beshear, President Eli Capilouto, Director Shea Hopkins and Commissioner Terry Holliday. There are also a lot of other people to thank that made this event possible, my law student Chase Bannister, the press teams at UK, KDE and KET, the various teachers and staff at Woodford County High School, and many others. 

Here is some of the media coverage of the event:

LEX 18 (Video)

WKYT (Video)

Kentucky Herald Leader (Newspaper)

State Journal in Frankfort (Newspaper)

WUKY (radio)

So, this was a fabulous event. I'm proud we brough this to launch (been working on it for about a year and a half (far too long)) and happy that it might be useful to students around Kentucky. So, thanks to all for helping ... and now it is on to the next project. 

Till the Law Comes to Call ...

No more ministers leading a prayer before football games for one of our southern Kentucky counties (down at the Cumberland Gap - which is worth reading about if you have a minute). 

All of this nonsense is well and good until the law comes to call. I get it. I'm from a rural area and we prayed before each high school game too (yes, I my playing time consisted of rooting from the sidelines, of course). The principal and superintendent in that district probably knew full well that it was wrong (there is plenty of precedence out there on it), but the coach probably begged and the local board president has probably mentioned how lovely it is that we have God on our side against Hazard or whomever. But, when you get caught (like they did), it is just best to own up to it and change your behavior. Doubling down on behavior like that only digs a deeper grave. 

So, everyone keeps their job, the district loses no money, the football team will probably not lose any more games, and life goes on. A couple years from now, few will even remember it. 

That's what you do when the law comes to call. 

Missouri: Enter the ACLU

Well, this was just a matter of time. The ACLU is suing the state of Missouri against their Facebook law. 

Actually, you have to give the ACLU some credit lately. They are also watching schools for limiting some speech by blocking certain websites in a discriminatory fashion. Just in Missouri this last week the ACLU got a consortium of districts to unblock some pro-LGBT sites that they had been blocking. 

You can think what you want of the ACLU and there has been occassions where I have disagreed with their positions, but for now the ACLU seems to be on the side of proper and healthy technology integration in schools.