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School Legal Entanglement Plan

This Legal Entanglement Plan seeks to examine the policies, programs, strategies, and practices of a particular school with respect to its moral, legal, and ethical implications. The plan is developed based on a three-step process that will help in addressing the issue that could potentially become a liability or legal entanglement if left unaddressed. The plan will help in addressing the issue since it will be communicated to appropriate stakeholders.

Step 1 – Analysis

Moral and Legal Issues in School Strategies

One of the moral, ethical or legal issue facing Carson Elementary School in West Price and could escalate into a legal entanglement is school bullying, which poses significant threats on the welfare and well-being of students. Bullying is a broad concept that involves intentional aggression, power imbalance between the perpetrator and victim, and repetitive aggressive behavior (Cornell & Limber, 2015). Carson Elementary School recognizes that preventing bullying is critical toward enhancing the safety of all students within the classroom setting and school environment. In this regard, the school has established policies that seek to prevent or lessen bullying incidents. The policies are based on guidelines by Cincinnati Public Schools district and act as the basis for determining how to deal with bullying incidents.

As part of the school’s strategies toward meeting this moral and legal obligation, the administration and teaching staff focus on encouraging positive behaviors among students. Moreover, the school has established strategies for dealing with problematic behavior including suspension or expulsion of students who are considered to pose threats to the health and wellbeing of others. Teachers and other staff in the school receive intensive training on preventing and/or lessening bullying (Lake, 2018). While the strategies have been relatively effective in promoting student safety in the school, they could be problematic morally or legally on the premise that some of them are primarily reactive rather than proactive. For example, the establishment of measures for dealing with problematic behavior at Carson Elementary School are seemingly focused on the impact of such behaviors rather than preventing them from occurring. Therefore, the school could experience legal and moral issues if such behaviors end up harming a student. The Legal Entanglement Plan in the final part of this paper seeks to provide a proactive approach toward preventing problematic behavior in order to avoid any potential legal ramifications relating to school bullying.

Values in School Policies, Programs, and Practices

Carson Elementary School has undertaken suitable measures toward preventing and/or addressing bullying in the school based on policies established by the Cincinnati Public Schools district. However, there is lack of accountability on how the administration and teaching staff are held accountable in preventing bullying incidents and promoting the safety of all students. The strategies also lack transparency through which parents can work collaboratively with the school to prevent such incidents. Additionally, there is lack of transparency on how the school’s bullying policies are implemented and measures teachers and other staff undertake to ensure that all students are safe within and outside the classroom environment. The school teaching staff has embraced values education approach as a means of promoting safety and positive behaviors among students. During this process students are taught on moral and social principles that seek to enhance morality and positive actions among students. However, there is lack of acceptance and respect among students because of lack of transparency and accountability in enforcing these moral and social principles. The school’s administration and teaching staff have also failed in promoting collaboration with parents towards enforcing these moral and social principles as well as preventing bullying. The Legal Entanglement Plan will help address this by providing guidelines on collaboration between parents, teachers, and the school administration.

Collaboration in Addressing School Bullying

From the above analysis, parents and caregivers need to work together with teachers and the school administration to promote safety of all students. Collaboration between these different stakeholders is vital toward ensuring that students adhere to the moral and social principles for modeling positive behaviors in the school setting and at home. Parents and caregivers will help in reinforcing these positive behaviors and principles to the students as well as dealing with problematic behaviors. Collaboration is also crucial toward promoting transparency and accountability in implementation of bullying policies in the school environment. Following engagement with parents and caregivers in the school, these stakeholders have highlighted the need to promote collaboration with teachers and school administration as a means of ensuring transparency and accountability. They have reported that some of the student safety issues in the school emerge because of lack of clarity on policies adopted by the school to prevent and/or lessen safety issues. Therefore, collaboration will help them understand and play a leading role in enforcing positive behaviors. Parents and teachers influenced the topic for the Legal Entanglement Plan through providing feedback and opinions regarding the measures employed by the school in promoting student safety. In light of the feedback and opinion, the topic for the Legal Entanglement Plan is “Collaboration between different stakeholders in Preventing Bullying at Carson
Elementary School.”

Step 2 - Knowledge Base

Case Law Review

School bullying has been the subject of numerous court cases across various jurisdictions in the United States. These court cases have significantly affected school policies on ruling including accountability for enforcement of policies and practices that enhance the safety of all students within the school environment. One of the court cases that applies to how bullying is handled fairly, consistently, and ethically in a school is Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999). In this case, Aurelia Davis sued the county’s Board of Education on behalf of her fifth grade daughter, LaShonda who was allegedly a victim of sexual harassment by another student. The plaintiff argued that school officials failed to prevent her daughter from suffering sexual harassment, which is an example of school bullying. Davis further contended that the school’s officials were complacent in creating a safe learning environment and therefore robbed her daughter of educational benefits granted by the law (Legal Information Institute, 2018). The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Davis by arguing that the school was guilty of indifference to LaShonda’s sexual harassment and ignored several complaints. This case highlights how schools are held accountable for preventing and dealing with bullying and other student safety issues.

In Flores v. Morgan Hill Unified School District, 324 F.3d 1130 (9th Cir. 2003), six LGBT students filed a lawsuit against the school district on allegations that they experienced anti-gay harassment for a period of seven years. While these students reported incidents of anti-gay name-calling, anti-gay rumors, physical assaults and anti-gay vandalism, employees in this school district repeatedly ignored the reports. Some of these employees even participated in the anti-gay abuse of these students. The school district was found guilty of promoting harassment of these students on the basis of their sexual orientation and was fined $1 million and injunctive relief. The injunctive relief involved establishment of a comprehensive training program for the school administrators, staff, and students to prevent this form of student bullying. The ruling in this case highlight the need for concerted efforts between different stakeholders in dealing with bullying in the school setting. In light of this ruling, Carson Elementary School could benefit from establishing a collaborative framework for the different stakeholders including parents to engage in fighting bullying in school. The Legal Entanglement Plan seeks to promote the creation of such a framework for the benefit of the students, teachers, and the school.

Another court case that emphasized the significance of collaboration in preventing and/or dealing with bullying in school is Ketchum v. Newport-Mesa Unified School District (Orange County, Super. Ct. 2009). In this case, student athletes filed a lawsuit against the school district on allegations that they had been subjected to anti-gay and anti-female cyberbullying as well as verbal threats while the school and its administrators failed to address it. They argued that the school and its administrators promoted the emergence of a hostile learning environment for female, lesbian, and gay students by failing to act on multiple reports of such harassment or bullying. The school was found guilty and required to provide a written apology to the students as well as establish compulsory training to administrators, students, and teachers on homophobia and sexism. Similar to Flores v. Morgan Hill Unified School District (2003), this case demonstrates that dealing with bullying in schools require collaboration between stakeholders.
In Shaposhnikov v. Pacifica School District (2006), the plaintiff who was a competitive dancer had been subjected to physical harassment and anti-gay slurs for a period of two years while in middle school. As a result, he filed a lawsuit against the school district and parents of perpetrators of the bullying (Public Justice, 2016). Both the school district and parents of students who bullied the plaintiff were found guilty and agreed to financial settlement. The case demonstrates that parents have a responsibility in preventing and/or lessening bullying in schools. However, parents’ role in the process requires transparency, accountability, and collaboration from teachers and other staff as advocated for in the Legal Entanglement Plan.

Literature Review

Cornell & Limber (2015) state that bullying in schools is a national epidemic that has contributed to the development of different nationwide initiatives to lessen this problematic behavior among students. These nationwide efforts are adopted on the premise that lessening bullying in schools is part of a wider civil and human rights movement. Recent court cases on student bullying have provided regulatory guidelines through which schools establish anti-bullying policies and strategies. Based on recent Supreme Court decisions, one of the emerging trends that are likely to affect Carson Elementary School in relation to promoting student safety is demonstrating accountability in preventing bullying and harassment incidents. Schools are required to take proactive actions toward preventing harassment and bullying in the learning environment. This would entail establishing policies that specify students’ actions that are tantamount to bullying or harassment.

Hormann (2017) states that school officials and teaching staff are required to establish safe learning environments for all students that is free from bullying and/or harassment. This requirement has become significant in the modern school setting because of increased cases of bullying and bullying-related suicide. School administrators and teachers are required to assume a leading role in preventing and handling bullying because failure to do so and being deliberately indifferent creates a hostile school environment that is not safe for all students. However, schools face tremendous challenges in maintaining flexibility when determining appropriate prevention strategies against bullying, particularly when dealing with children who are still learning how relate appropriately. School administrators have been left to second-guess on the most appropriate bullying prevention measures, particularly in elementary and middle schools despite the standards established by existing regulations and Supreme Court rulings. In this regard, Carson Elementary School is likely to face problems on determination of the most appropriate prevention strategy against bullying. This challenge will be exacerbated by the need to ensure that policies and practices are based on collaboration between the different stakeholders.

According to Brown (2014), preventing and handling bullying in schools requires values education since a values-based strategy is regarded as a suitable approach toward promoting positive behavior among students. Bullying is regarded as an indicator of negative behavior and the existence of a hostile school environment that endangers students’ safety. Therefore, a value-based approach addresses the root causes of bullying and would help in creating a collaborative framework to achieve this. While this approach could benefit Carson Elementary School, enforcing values i.e. moral and social principles is a relatively complex process. The use of such an approach would require changes in the school’s instructional strategies and nature of the learning environment and school setting.

Lewis (2016) states that preventing and handling bullying in schools requires compliance with policies for standards of care and supervision established by the school district. These policies provide guidelines for school administrators and teachers to prepare for problems, keep documented records, enhance student supervision, educate the various stakeholders, and report cases to relevant authority. These components are part of a comprehensive plan for promoting positive behaviors among students while lessening the likelihood of bullying and harassment. For Carson Elementary School, the implementation of these processes would require adhering to the standards established by Cincinnati Public Schools district. However, complying with these policies and guidelines can sometimes be complex and characterized by numerous difficulties. These challenges and complexities are attributable to the need to involve different stakeholders in devising and enforcing bullying policies.

Step 3 - Legal Entanglement Plan

Carson Elementary School needs to address students’ bullying, which could result in significant moral and legal ramifications if left unaddressed. The first step toward this process is for the school to establish safety policies and practices to guide students’ interactions. These policies and practices should focus on identify potential risk factors and vulnerabilities for bullying incidents and corresponding measures to prevent and/or handle them. When developing safety policies and practices, the school’s administrators and teachers should consider the nature of the current learning environment and threats that today’s students are likely to encounter in the school setting.

Once the policies and practices are developed, staff, students, teachers and parents should be trained and educated on them. This training will be geared toward creating a collaborative framework in which different stakeholders work together toward enforcing these policies and practices. Additionally, the training will help increase transparency and accountability in the implementation of safety policies and practices that focus on preventing and/or lessening bullying. Third, school administrators and staff should be required to enhance supervision of the school and the learning environment. This would help in identifying any emerging issues that could result in bullying. The final step would entail constantly reviewing, adapting and updating the policies and practices based on emerging issues in the school setting.

References

Brown, J. (2014). The Role of Values Education in Primary School Bullying Prevention and Mediation. Retrieved from University of Notre Dame Australia website: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1107&context=theses

Cornell, D. & Limber, S.P. (2015, May-June). Law and Policy on the Concept of Bullying at School. American Psychological Association, 70(4), 333-343.

Hormann, B. (2017, August 12). Parent Testing School Liability in Bullying Case. 13 ABC. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from http://www.13abc.com/content/news/Parents-testing-school-liability-in-bullying-case-440051443.html

Lake, H. (2018, January 5). Cincinnati Public Schools Make Changes on Bullying After Gabriel Taye’s Death. WCPO Cincinnati. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from https://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/cincinnati-public-schools-make-changes-on-bullying-after-gabriel-tayes-death

Legal Information Institute. (2018). Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from https://www.oyez.org/cases/1998/97-843

Lewis, M. (2016). Legal Entanglement Project. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from https://www.livetext.com/doc/2232960?print=1

Public Justice. (2016, January). Jury Verdicts and Settlements in Bullying Cases. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from http://www.publicjustice.net/sites/default/files/2016.01.31%20Winter%20Edition-Bulllying%20Verdicts%20and%20Settlements.FinalALLlinkschanged_0.pdf