Always the Question: Do Kids Have Rights?

Two stories came across my desk in the last couple of weeks. In both, a high school student tries to be funny with not-so-great outcomes (including for the districts).

In both, not only the district gets sued, but so do the principals of the schools involved

The first story comes from Tennessee via the New York Times (you will get through the paywall; I'm gifting it).

A Student Sues After Suspension for Mocking Principal on Instagram

A 17-year-old student in Tennessee is suing his school district and two top school officials for the three-day suspension he received after he posted satirical memes about the principal on social media when he was not on campus.

Shades of The Breakfast Club.

Now none of these memes were of a racial or sexual nature.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group also known as FIRE, said in a statement that the student “intended the images to be tongue-in-cheek commentary satirizing a school administrator he perceived as humorless.”

And here's where it does get sticky. The student, labeled I.P., did this at home, not at school, and not on a school computer. However, because nearly all students have a phone AND an Instagram account, the memes went quickly throughout the school. So did I.P. "disrupt the school day?" 

This district has a social media policy.

The policy says social media use that is “unbecoming” of a student, or the distribution of photographs, video or recordings that are “embarrassing, demeaning, or discrediting” to students or staff members could be subject to discipline, including suspension.

Do you see that Mack truck-sized hole in that wording? I have seen several cases where districts pass policies that basically say you can't bad-mouth or make fun of administrators but who decides?

Courts in the United States have previously ruled on whether schools have the power to oversee or discipline students’ behavior off campus and outside of school hours. The Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that a Pennsylvania school district had violated the First Amendment rights of a student by suspending her from the cheerleading squad after she posted vulgar messages about the school on Snapchat while she was not on school grounds.

“The Supreme Court has been clear: Unless a student’s off-campus expression causes a substantial disruption at school, the job of policing their speech falls to parents,” the lawsuit said, “not the government.”

Now I looked up Seattle Schools' policy on social media and it's not exactly clear either. And let's keep in mind that SPS is alleging in their social media lawsuit that social media companies "created a youth mental health crisis."
 

There's Policy 2022 about "Electronic resources/Use of the Internet" but it's not about using social media. There's the Students Rights and Responsibilities Handbook but not a lot there either.

It will be yet another fascinating court case to watch. 

The second story I have for you comes from a simple Google search. I was looking up information about former Garfield High School principal, Ted Howard. I was trying to remember how long he had been principal there. (Howard left SPS briefly under Superintendent Denise Juneau to be CAO in Tukwila and is - checks notes - Assistant Superintendent of Strategy and Climate in Seattle Schools.  

Here's what popped up on that search. 

In the United States District Court, Western District of Washington at Seattle, it is X student, Plaintiff v. Seattle Public School District #1, Ted Howard, principal at Garfield High School and Katrina Hunt, also principal of Garfield High School, dated October 5, 2022. 

The main issue - which should trouble everyone - is when a student gets interviewed about behavior issues, by whom, and the chain of policy around emergency vs long-term explusion. 

I am not putting in the name of the student even though he is now an adult.

In the 2017-2018 school year, he was a GHS student. He actually only had one class at GHS, Statistics,

because he had completed most of his coursework at Seattle Central College through the “Running Start” program. 

 

In early January or February of 2018, he had gone to his Statistics class early and was watching car crashes and industrial accidents on his phone. His three tablemates looked at what he was watching and a discussion about school shootings evolved. 

 

He claims the other boys said he looked like "a school shooter" and he jokingly said, "Oh yeah, definitely." The Plaintiff spoke of pulling a fire alarm and then start shooting to which one kid said he should kill himself before anyone else. But the three tablemates do not agree this was what was said except for the Plaintiff talking about pulling a fire alarm. One tablemate stated that "he interpreted those statements as either a joke or a plan to shoot students."

As most remember, on Valentine's Day in 2018, the Parkland High School shooting occurred. Then on Feb 16th, the Plaintiff posted an image to Snapchat of cartoon gun with a photo of one member of the crew team at the barrel and another team member photo at the trigger. The Plaintiff says it was just "sarcastic" and "comical."

That day, one of the Statistics class tablemates filed an incident statement with administration. He told a school counselor, the assistant principal (Hunt) and a security officer. Principal Ted Howard met with the plaintiff that afternoon to "collect more information." The counselor stated that the Plaintiff had visited her several times previously because of upset over a domestic dispute with his father. 

After the conversation, Howard called SPD and officers came to interview students. SPD told Garfield administrators NOT to contact the Plaintiff or his parents until SPD finished their initial investigation. Plaintiff was not in school that day due to illness and so SPD talked to him at home. SPD then arrested him "and booked him into juvenile detention for felony harassment" and he was later released to his parents. 

The next week was mid-winter break and Howard sent a letter to the GHS community about the arrest of the student "for making threats to harm fellow classmates at an unspecificed time in the future." The letter did not name the student.

 

It appears that the student/family may have been waiting for the school to call them about the issue but no one ever did. Before he was expelled, the student had said he did want to finish high school at GHS .

I would say here's where it got sticky. The parents got a lawyer. Because Howard got the police involved, the mother would not allow her son to be interviewed by the school (keeping in mind that not once after what this student was alleged to have said and done did the counselor, the assistant principal or the principal wait until he was back in school to talk to him).

The student did not go back to Garfield after mid-winter break on his own volition. 

On March 1, the student was given written notice that the District "had decided to impose a long-term explusion." But on Monday, Feb. 26th, the Plaintiff's lawyer sent the district notice of the Plaintiff's intent to appeal his emergency explusion. The lawyer's understanding was that a hearing should have been within 3 school business days from the day the appeal was received. She told the district that she needed to first receive the Plaintiff's school file and any other pertinent materials. 

But time dragged on and the hearing got scheduled for May 10th. The Plaintiff did not object to this date even as it was clearly not in the 3-day timeline. 

At the hearing, the District's hearing officer reversed both the emergency explusion and long-term explusion, finding "that GHS did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Plaintiff had committed 'credible' or 'focused" threats of violence."

In December 2021, the lawsuit was filed under "violation of due process" and "a claim for negligence." One point was that the Plaintiff said there should have been an investigation before any letter was sent out to the GHS community.

In the end, the Court rejected the district's claim of summary judgment and said the Plaintiff would get partial judgement on "the due process claim regarding the long-term explusion." 

 

Interestingly, the footnote states that it looked like there was "evidence of negligence" but "not necessarily conclusive proof of negligence." So the district screwed up but was it conclusive? No.

Sadly, the district tried to complain that they COULDN'T interview the student because, after the school called SPD, the family lawyered up. 

 

Well, if your kid is arrested on a felony and thrown into juvvy because the school called the police, what exactly did the school think would happen? (I'll note that this student's parents had the money for a lawyer and if they hadn't? He probably would have spent some time in juvvy waiting. Not great.)

 

Also fascinating is that the Plaintiff asked to strike several materials. One, an email that Howard sent on Feb. 17. 2018, two, emails from concerned students and parents after the emergency explusion, three, summary of opinions from Defendants' expert, Dr. Kurt Hatch and four, "a probable cause certification produced by SPD." This would all make great reading but I have no time to request these items.  The Court did deny this request but "without prejudice" and "Should the Plaintiff wish to object to the admissibility of these documents at a later stage, he may do so."

 

I would assume that if the school never interviewed the student neither did their expert.

 

I believe the judgement means the student received some payment. I might try to see how much this cost the district but I'm not sure that's the point.

 

Former Principal Howard certainly had many issues of student behavior on his watch (he was there for 16 or so years). But some of these incidents, including this one, are head-scratchers.

 

- Doesn't the district have some kind of protocol for what principals do in these situations?

- When did Howard inform the district about what was happening? From this case, it might not have been immediately.

- Why did Howard bring in SPD before interviewing the student himself? 

 

I absolutely agree with the emergency explusion especially so soon after the Parkland shootings. But even students should get due process OR the district needs the superintendent to clearly explain what the policy is for situations like this. 

 

I see no reason not to explain to middle/high school parents about what could happen to their child if that child decides to be "funny" or "sarcastic" about shooting people. It could spark at-home discussion about the parameters of free speech. 

 

Quite the contrast to what happened at Ingraham High School and it's one reason I wrote this story. Does each principal just get to make their own decisions about high-level safety issues? If that's true, if I was still a parent in SPS, I'd be worried.