SCHENECTADY Schools must act on student attacks State official: Rule extends to off-campus BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
If school officials have reason to believe a student might get attacked on the way home, they have a legal obligation to take action even if the attack is off-campus, said Jay Worona, general counsel to the New York State School Boards Association. That may come as a surprise to some Schenectady school district officials. In 2008, when students reported a string of incidents in which they were attacked on the way to school, officials said they could do nothing about it because they happened off-campus. They said the same thing at the start of the city’s suicide cluster in 2009. When parents reported that their children would not come to school because they were being ambushed by gang members on their way home, then-Superintendent Eric Ely said the district wasn’t responsible for offcampus attacks. Some of the victims later killed themselves. After a football game fight, Ely also said the district can’t punish students for actions they take off-campus. “We don’t have any jurisdiction off property. We’ll discuss it with the Police Department. When criminals do criminal behavior off of school property, there’s not a whole lot you can do,” he said. It turns out that’s not true either. State Education Department’s Carl Friedman, who handles discipline policy, said that if a student attacks another student, even hours after the school day, the attacker can be punished in school. Although neither rule is well known, the protection rule is a mystery even at the State Education Department. A call to the state Education Department yielded only guesses from the top offi cials in charge of transportation and discipline. They both said they believed districts are responsible for children until they get home — but they weren’t sure. They stressed that local districts could hardly be criticized for not knowing the rule since they themselves weren’t certain of it. Schenectady’s interim superintendent, John Yagielski, who has decades of experience in New York, said he was aware of the rule. But for most, it isn’t simple to understand, Worona said. It does not apply to the recent case in which a student at Yates Elementary School reported a bully waiting to beat her up outside. Because the student had already left the school — before running back in search of protection — the district had a smaller obligation to protect her, Worona said. Officials tried to protect her by sending her out with an aide. The bully attacked anyway, and Interim Superintendent John Yagielski said the district should have instead called the victim’s parents. They could have driven her home. But Worona said the district’s attempt fulfilled its legal requirement to protect the student. Yagielski said that’s no comfort to the administrators who made the wrong judgment call. “They’re doing a lot of secondguessing themselves,” he said. The protection rule came out of case law, not a SED policy. It was created through at least one case in which a district was sued for negligence, Worona said. Courts ruled that if a school officials knows the student might face harm, “you have the obligation to protect the kid, even off the grounds of the school, because he’d going from the open arms of school,” he said. That means districts must take action in the many cases in which teachers, administrators and counselors learn that bullies are planning to attack students after school. “The Supreme Court is very clear about this. You’re responsible for acts you know are more than likely to occur,” Worona said. Yagielski said that ruling, as well as new requirements to protect gay students and others who might be at greater risk of bullying, has made school leadership a far more complex task. “The pressure’s on,” he said. “Forget about the details. It really gets down to that issue: you’ve got to be more proactive. The responsibilities and expectations are greater than they’ve ever been.” .....................>>>>..............................>>>>...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00902&AppName=1
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