Tag: assault

TN. Multimillion dollar suit filed against school for failure to protect, bullying, assault and battery

The court-appointed guardian of a 16-year-old Washburn School student has filed a $30 million dollar lawsuit against more than a dozen parties.

The case, filed last month by the victim’s court-appointed guardian, Katherine Parks, said the then 15-year-old was brutally attacked by four classmates, leaving her with injuries to the face and head, it said.

Parties in the suit named include director of schools Edwin Jarnagin, the Grainger County Board of Education, and all the named attackers’ families.

The suit says one of the four classmates confronted the victim, identified as “SL,” hit her head on a metal pole several times, and then the other three girls kicked and punched the victim several times.

“While this beating was going on, S.L. remembers seeing a teacher walk by. The teacher took no action to stop the assault on S.L. or to help her in any way,” the suit said.

After the victim’s foster mother picked the girl up to take her to a hospital, she spotted an ambulance and stopped for help. The suit added “The workers at the substation examined S.L., determined her condition to be one of life and death…”

The severity of the injuries is reason why, according to lawyers from the plaintiff at the Vogel Law Firm, so much and so many people were named in the suit.

“We send out kids to school not to fail to be protected — to go and to learn and have a positive experience,” said associate attorney Rosie Brown. “If teachers and administrators and other school supervisors are turning a blind eye to situations that could lead to an incident so serious as this, then there’s something that needs to be done about that.”

Student attacked on a school bus. Driver may face charges for failure to protect.

For the last two decades, HWC has been arguing that school  administrators and school bus drivers have an ethical and legal duty to  protect every single child on the bus as if they were in the school building. We assert it is the administrator’s duty is to create and supervise a  reasonable effort to observe and identify problems and problem  children before they are allowed on the bus.  Some of these bus incidents  arise spontaneously and without warning.  However, when children telegraph their  intentions (and they almost always do) the adults in charge need to be proactive.

If a child, or group of children in this case, is likely to present  a risk to safety on the bus, either the child’s parents should be responsible  for providing the trip home or the school must provide enough monitors on the  bus to ensure everyone’s security.

A driver should never be put in the position  of driving a bus on our streets with children that the administrators and  faculty know are likely to present a threat to safety, whether it is a special  education student in emotional turmoil or young criminals.

The bus driver’s main priority is to operate the bus safely.  In order of  priorities for the driver: 1) make sure the bus is pulled over and parked  safely, 2) communicate the problem to the police so they can provide backup and  3) intervene when necessary to protect the safety of children on the bus,  provided they have the physical capability and the training to do so.  As you  can see on this video, the driver was faced with multiple assailants.  HWC has a  strategy for clearing the narrow center isle, using a force level that is  appropriate and lawful given the severity of this beating.

Three students are accused of beating a younger student aboard a Pinellas County school bus.

A student exiting the school bus was viciously attacked by three other classmates. The bus driver called for help but did not intervene to protect the student to stop the beating. The student had his arm broken and the driver is being investigated.


WFLA-TV News Channel 8

The youths have already been charged.

Cited reason for the attack? The victim did not want to buy drugs from the attackers and instead turned them into the school. An investigation revealed one of the suspects had tried to sell drugs to the victim in a school bathroom. The victim notified officials at the school. Later that day, the suspects and victim rode the same school bus home.

Officials said the bus driver from Lealman Intermediate School called for help when three students “ganged up” on a 13-year-old student, kicking and punching the victim. Officials said the victim tried to crawl under a seat on the bus as the suspects punched and kicked the victim for roughly a minute, police said.

The victim suffered a fractured arm. Police say one of the suspects, Joshua Reddin took the victim’s money after the beating.

All three teens are charged with aggravated battery. Reddin is also charged with unarmed robbery. All three have been released from police custody.

Dozens of Maine educators assaulted in wake of ill-advised changes to restraint rule

For those not familiar with the situation in Maine…

Maine’s Department of Education changed the rules on restraint ignoring opposition from schools, educators and parents.  As a result Maine’s DOE now has a restraint rule that only allows educators to physically intervene if the student presents an imminent threat of physical harm to self or others.

This is problematic as it does not allow Maine educators to physically intervene to stop a situation from becoming physically dangerous.  The rule also does not allow educators to physically move a student who is disrupting a classroom.  Any student not wishing to be in class can throw a tantrum, and either hold all the other students hostage to her behavior or force the removal of the entire class.  This can result in emotional contagion, and can act as a reinforcement of the aberrant behavior.  Educators also cannot physically intervene if the student is destroying property.

The children most affected by this rule have serious destructive and self-destructive episodes that involve direct assaults on others, self-destructive behaviors and destruction of property. These episodes may begin with an initial destruction of property and quickly escalate to serious assaults on self or others. The elapse in time can often be measured in seconds.

Our concern is not the value of the property but the serious and possibly irreparable damage to the child’s relationship with his or her caregivers as they sit idly by during the onset of one of these episodes. When a child perceives the adults who are entrusted with his care and welfare unresponsive to his demonstrations, an escalation of the destructive impulses can ensue until the child finally crosses the threshold where the adults are compelled to interrupt his destruction.  Creating the perception in the mind of the child of indifference to his destruction of property or self-injurious gestures is patently neglectful and will likely reinforce and encourage an exacerbation of aberrant behavior.  It matters not whether the property being destroyed is valued at $3.00 or $3,000.00, the damage to the child’s relationship with his educators and caregivers and his prospects for success in life is predictable.

There is no social situation where the destruction of public or private property will be tolerated, except for the artificial one DOE decided to create by this regulation.  We should all be able to agree that the goal of Education and/or treatment is to prepare and enable children to ultimately achieve success as adults.  What a rude awakening it will be when the student is charged criminally for wanton destruction of property once he is beyond the protective cocoon of the classroom (and in the classroom if schools and teachers start calling police and filing charges).

As a result, educators are getting injured and classrooms are being routinely disrupted. For instance, an educational technician was scratched, bitten and thrown against a wall. The ed tech did not touch the child, but rather suffered the injury in order not to break Maine’s  physical intervention rules.

As a result of the chaos and assaults this ill-advised rule has produced, four education associations in Maine (Maine Superintendents, Maine School Board Association, Maine Education Association, Maine School Superintendents, and Maine Principals) have asked the state to revise the rule stating that educators and students are being harmed by the rule in increasing numbers.

Things have gotten so bad in the state of Maine, that the legislators have threatened to force the department to reopen the rule.

However, a better route would be for Maine’s government to simply nullifying the rule, by executive order or legislation, as the Department of Education had no authority to enact the rule in the first place.

Why Maine’s DOE restraint rule is outside the scope of its authority:

The powers of an administrative agency are delegated by the legislative branch of government.  Maine’s legislature never gave DOE authority to enact a restraint rule or any rule that dictates what local schools, parents and treatment teams could include in an IEP/BP.  Maine’s legislature also never gave the DOE authority to dictate how local schools  treat, discipline or sanction students.

Supporting Law: Maine Statute: Title 20-A  specifically reserves these powers to the local school boards and local administrations stating “It is the intent of the Legislature that the control and management of the public schools shall be vested in the legislative and governing bodies of local school administrative units.”

Maine’s current restraint rules were developed by a stakeholder group through a little-used process called consensus-based rule-making.  Basically consensus-based rule-making is a process where like-minded unelected state administrators get together and collectively determine outside of the legislative process whose rights they want to curtail.

In this case, the DOE overstepped its legal authority and took over duties expressly reserved to the local schools.  The DOE encroached on the 14th amendment protections of individual autonomy to determine what treatment to receive, or not.  The DOE further encroached on IDEA’s mandate that students be entitled to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE).

The Supreme Court has held that a child is deprived of FAPE if the school system has violated IDEA’s procedural requirement.  In this instance Maine’s DOE is not allowing licensed, qualified professionals, guardians and parents working with and familiar with the child and his needs to develop an appropriate IEP.  The law is that only the licensed professionals and, in the case of minors, parents/legal guardians have the authority to determine what goes into a treatment plan.  It matters not what the unelected administrators at Maine’s DOE think.  The DOE consensus are outside the student’s treatment team and have no more right to dictate to the team/family what plan is in the student’s best interests than they do telling your physician which medication to prescribe.

Fortunately the fix is easy.  Nullify the rule and let the local school districts establish their own policies pursuant to Maine’s already existing statutes.

Read the letters from Maine MEA, Superintendent’s Association, Principal’s Association and School Boards to DOE.

Read stories from the press on this issue:

Dozens of Maine educators assaulted due to restraint rules

Maine restraint law puts schools in a bind

Maine educators decry restraint rules that put teachers in harm’s way