lawprofessors

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995 Have you ever been lied about and those lies hurt you in some way (e.g. lost friends, lost job, expelled)?  Negative statements about ourselves, particularly falsehoods, make us hopping mad.  Can minors who spread false statements be liable for their statements?  Yes. This week (third week of November 2013), a Santa Clara County jury reportedly found several young girls (10 and 11 years old at the time of the incident(s)), along with their parents,  guilty of defamation  for lies they told about a private school teacher, John Fischler, alleging he molested them and peeked in their bathroom. One girl will have to pay punitive damages as she spread the lies with malice aforethought (basically intention to harm).  The other students and parents reportedly got off with a mere  $362,653  bill to the teacher, who had to defend against the allegations and had his workplace poisoned a...

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995 A frequent situation facing distressed parents is when their child is placed up for suspension or expulsion for possession or sale of a controlled substance, aka drugs.  Here are the basics. What is a controlled substance?  These are generally defined in the California Health and Safety Codes  �11053-�11058 .  You can read this code at your leisure but it covers all the usual suspects, such as the typical illegals: cocaine, cannabis/marijuana, heroine, ecstasy, speed, etc., and prescribed substances, such as Ritalin, Codeine, Oxycodone and other medications. In a nutshell, students are prohibited from carrying, storing, ingesting, passing along, or selling (etc.) controlled substances.  If a student is caught doing any of the above by the school, they will usually, at a minimum, be suspended.  They may be placed up for expulsion, even on a first offense.  Punishment  coul...

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995 Did you dread exercise as a child or did you long to run and play kickball during math or English instruction? It seems that the time allotted for Physical Education (PE) has dwindled over the years, but California students still have a right to receive PE on a daily basis (unless exempted). PE may seem like an obvious need: of course students should be taught baseball, basketball, how to run fast or just play with a team.  It is not as obvious as you may think.  Rather than ramp up PE to fight obesity, America chose other routes, such as attacking sugary drinks via taxes , attempts to stop the sale of extra large sodas , blame on fast food , while at the same time PE and children's activity levels dwindled over time. With the crisis of deteriorating schools, dwindling test scores and  America falling behind the world in education , PE became something easy to cut out of school curriculums.   Ho...