EdLawConnect Blog

As an investigative device, some employers, colleges, and universities have been asking employees, applicants for employment, and students for passwords to their social media accounts. Others have asked employees to sit down with managers to review their social media content or fully print out their social media pages. The practice remains a hot topic in the news because social media accounts, such as ...

On any given day, an online search for "sexting" news will likely not only uncover several sexting incidents, but a "scandal" and/or criminal activity. Since sexting seems to have originated as a teen phenomenon, educational institutions are often vulnerable to becoming involved in the news coverage and scandal, particularly if the sexting results in mass expulsions, the mishandling of evidence ...

On March 1, 2012, outrage erupted and national headlines were created when James Hooker, a 41 year old teacher at a high school in Modesto, California, announced that he quit his job, left his wife and family, and moved in with an 18 year old student, Jordan Powers. Both student and teacher have maintained that, while they met when the student was 14, their relationship did not become physical until she turned 18 ...

The old adage, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" may not be so reassuring in a day and age when anyone can post an insult about someone on a public blog or social media site for a virtual universe of internet users to see. This is especially so if a student or students have posted insults about an administrator or a teacher on a public website that are viewed by other members of school staff, students, parents, and the community.

School district administrators aren’t used to “thanking” Sacramento too often, given the annual slew of additional mandates and reduced funding from the Legislature. When the “Rodda Act,” the set of laws that provides for collective bargaining by school district employees in California, was enacted in 1975, however, the Legislature provided a little known exemption from the normal ...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider three cases involving cyberbullying. That refusal leaves school districts in a continuing quandary about how to respond to off-campus cyberbullying, and illustrates how reasonable minds can come to very different conclusions on whether school districts have the right to impose discipline, or whether such discipline violates the First Amendment.

In ...

Sometimes, when the Legislature attempts to impose restrictions on public entities across the board, it results in an “ill fitting” application to school and community college districts.  AB 1344, recently signed into law by Governor Brown, is the most recent example of this phenomenon.  This new law was designed to limit methods of public official enrichment that were utilized by City of Bell administrators, but it is not entirely clear how these limitations will apply both in general and to school administrators specifically.