Education Law

Year Round Discipline?

Why a we doing this? 

It's dumb and probably not authorized under law. 

Here's the situation. No other branch of government is going to stop a school from expanding their authority in this way. It is just less responsibility on the police, parks, etc. In fact, mayors and other elected officials I am sure love when schools on their own and without funding take on additional responsibility. 

But, the way the law works, once you start taking on additional responsibility, it is very difficult to get rid of it. For instance, several years back, I railed against schools taking on additional responsibility for regulating off-campus speech. But, down the road a bit now, patrolling Facebook and whatnot is now largely seen as a core duty of schools. There was no money for that ... it was just something that schools decided to do on their own (and no one stopped them). And then schools have the gall to talk about not having enough funding to do these things. 

So, again, I'm begging you schools to stay out of this stuff. If the Legislature wanted you to regulate in the summer, they would tell you to and they would pay for it. Otherwise, it is not your problem. I get the arguments that bad behavior might translate into the school year, but that is never going to go away no matter how much you try to regulate. 

Stop it.

Full post as published by Edjurist on October 12, 2010 (boomark / email).