Aug 31st, 2021School Year 2021-2022: Will Your School or BOCES Be Implementing Health Screenings?
When schools reopened for the 2020-2021 school year, it was clear that students, staff and visitors were required to undergo a daily health screening designed to determine if the individual was exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19, or may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. As of the date of this publication, and unlike for last …
Aug 31st, 2021Reasonable Decorum: Not Too Much to Ask
Unfortunately, videos of school board meetings descending into shouting matches, or worse, are becoming increasingly common. While there may be no 100% effective way to prevent people from engaging in obnoxious or bullying behavior during board meetings, school districts have tools at their disposal to facilitate civility. While perhaps hard to define, the expectation that …
Jul 29th, 2021New School Health Examination Form Required for 2021-2022 School Year
As a result of changes to Section 136.3 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education, for any student physicals conducted on or after January 31, 2021, the student health certificate must now “be on a form prescribed by the commissioner.” This means that, beginning with the 2021-2022 school year, school districts may only accept …
Jul 29th, 2021Analyzing the Impact of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.: What the recent “Cheerleader Case” Decided by the Supreme Court Means for School Districts
In a previous update, we discussed a legal case that has been billed as the most important student speech case in more than half a century: Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. More than fifty years ago, the United States Supreme Court famously declared that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of …
Jun 29th, 2021Eyeing Reformation for the New York Standard for Determining Substantial Equivalency
Education Law 3204(2) states that, “[i]nstruction given to a minor elsewhere than a public school shall be at least substantially equivalent to the instruction given to minors of like age and attainments at the public schools of the city or district where the minor resides.” However, the current system of determining substantial equivalence has left …
Jun 29th, 2021IDEA: Procedure Matters
When the IDEA was last amended and re-authorized (eons ago), Congress took heed of the schools’ argument that most IEP disputes can be resolved short of a due process hearing if the parents communicate their concerns. To address this, Congress built in a thirty-day resolution period after a due process complaint is filed and before …
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