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In the summer of 2019 I will graduate with a Masters of Education in Education Administration with a Principal certification. Upon graduation, I have my sights set on pursuing a leadership role in secondary schools. These roles may include a campus principal or a campus athletic coordinator.

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Step 2, Option 2: Professional Association Websites

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Step 2, Option 2: Professional Association Websites

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This is a link to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Some of the topics explored here are Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) which is supported or may be supported by the Every Student Succeeds Act and School Safety which tackles issues from tragedy to natural disasters. This site also includes links to other resources for assistance in Safe School.

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Topics - Common Core, Differentiated Instruction, 21st Century Skills

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This is a link to the National Education Association. Currently some of the main topics are Social Justice and the Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. When mentioning Social Justice, there are many stories on Human Rights and Civil Rights topics. Again, the topic of ESSA is brought up and giving the teachers and students a voice.

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Our Current Focus

More Issues

In support of common issues and public education.

Research reports reviewing data on educational issues and policy papers concerning NEA members, educators, and the public school community.

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In support of common issues and public education. Research reports reviewing data on educational issues and policy papers concerning NEA members, educators, and the public school community.

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An article concerning a Coach's On-Field Prayer in Education Week.

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Even when the U.S. Supreme Court declines to take up a case, one or more justices can send a signal that the issues involved are important and that perhaps the court would grant review under the right circumstances.

That's what happened with Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the high court on Jan. 22 declined to hear the appeal of a high school football coach who was dismissed by his Washington state school district for praying on the field immediately after games.

The court declined the coach's appeal after nearly two months of consideration at its closed-door conferences. But four justices signaled that they were troubled by the coach's dismissal and the handling of his case by two lower courts. They signed an opinion that said unresolved factual questions made the appeal unsuitable for high court review, for now.

The opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., also signed by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Brett M. Kavanaugh, raised questions about how those four would interpret two Supreme Court precedents that have been widely felt in education, one dealing with First Amendment protection for public employee speech and the other involving free-exercise-of-religion claims raised against government policies.

"I think Alito's statement opens lots of doors, both in this case and in other cases, inviting opportunities to revisit issues that perhaps we thought were settled," said Ann E. Blankenship Knox, an assistant professor of education at the University of Redlands in Redlands, Calif., who writes frequently about school law issues. "For a denial, they're giving us quite a bit to deal with."

Post-Game Prayers

The Supreme Court's action came in the case of Joseph A. Kennedy, a coach at Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Wash., who contends that he has First Amendment free-speech and free-exercise-of-religion rights to express his faith while on the job.

Kennedy was the assistant varsity football coach and the head coach of the junior varsity team at Bremerton High in the fall of 2015 when his post-game prayers became the center of controversy.

Kennedy was sometimes joined by players for his post-game prayer, and he would sometimes give short motivational talks.

In September 2015, Bremerton district officials advised Kennedy that he could continue to give inspirational talks, but could not lead or encourage student prayers. The superintendent informed Kennedy that he was free to pray while on the job if it did not interfere with his job responsibilities and as long as it was "non-demonstrative" when students were engaged in nearby voluntary prayers.

The coach complied for several weeks, but sought an accommodation from the district to continue his post-game prayers. The school district rejected his argument that his job responsibilities ended when the football game did.

When the coach continued to pray at the end of two more games, the district placed him on administrative leave. Kennedy did not seek the renewal of his year-to-year contract the next season.

The coach sued the school district in 2016, seeking reinstatement as a coach and a ruling that he had the right to pray on the field after games.

A federal district court denied a preliminary injunction for Kennedy. In 2017, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, also ruled against the coach. The appeals court held that Kennedy was speaking as a public employee and not as a private citizen when he prayed on the field.

"Kennedy spoke at a school event, on school property, wearing [Bremerton High School]-logoed attire, while on duty as a supervisor, and in the most prominent position on the field, where he knew it was inevitable that students, parents, fans, and occasionally the media, would observe his behavior," the 9th Circuit court said.

'Troubling' Opinion Below

The Supreme Court considered Kennedy's appeal privately for more than two months. The court's denial of review and the statement by the four justices suggests a fair amount of internal debate over the case.

Alito, in the statement joined by his three colleagues, said the key question was whether Kennedy showed he was likely to prevail on his free-speech claim. But the federal district court that heard the case did not make a specific finding about the reason for Kennedy's termination, Alito said, and the 9th Circuit panel "was even more imprecise on this critical point."

"We generally do not grant such review to decide highly fact-specific questions," Alito said. "Here, although [Kennedy's] free-speech claim may ultimately implicate important constitutional issues, we cannot reach those issues until the factual question of the likely reason for the school district's conduct is resolved. For that reason, review of [Kennedy's] free-speech claim is not warranted at this time."

In the section of the statement that is prompting debate in school law circles, Alito went on to say that the 9th Circuit's "understanding of the free-speech rights of public school teachers is troubling and may justify review in the future."

Alito said the appeals court applied a key 2006 Supreme Court decision on public-employee speech rights, , in a way that would allow school districts to fire teachers and coaches "if they engage in any expression that the school does not like while they are on duty, and the 9th Circuit appears to regard teachers and coaches as being on duty at all times from the moment they report for work to the moment they depart, provided that they are within the eyesight of students."

That means schools could bar teachers from folding their hands or bowing their heads in prayer at lunch, if the teachers were visible to students, Alito wrote.

Michael Berry of the First Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas-based legal organization that is helping to represent the coach, said he found Alito's statement "encouraging" but that he was "unwilling to read too much into it."

The lawyer representing the Bremerton school district did not respond to a request for comment.

Blankenship Knox of the University of Redlands, who is co-writing a law review article about the Kennedy case, said she found Alito's discussion of the Garcetti decision and how it was interpreted by the 9th Circuit provocative. She noted that Alito was a member of the majority in the decision, which held that public employees did not have First Amendment protection for on-the-job speech that was related to their duties.

Alice O'Brien, the general counsel of the National Education Association, said the real test for the high court's conservative justices will be whether they see as much First Amendment protection for public employees expressing certain ideological views as they seem to view for those employees seeking to express their religion in the workplace or to avoid paying union service fees to which they object.

"For example, would the [justices] be as solicitous of a football coach taking a knee to protest the murder of young black men as they are of a coach praying on the field?" O'Brien said via email.

'Drastically Cut Back'

While Alito gave legal experts plenty to chew on over interpretations of Garcetti, his statement contained another bombshell of sorts.

Alito wrote that the coach's focus on his free-speech claim over his free-exercise-of-religion claim "may be due to certain decisions of this court," including the Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith. In that ruling, the court cast aside a long-prevalent "strict scrutiny" test for evaluating government action that infringed the free-exercise-of-religion guaranteed in the First Amendment.

In Smith, a case in which the state of Oregon denied unemployment compensation to American Indian counselors who had ingested the hallucinogen peyote as part of their religious rituals, the court said government actions that infringed on religious exercise need only be justified under an easier-to-meet rational-basis test.

Alito said that the court in Smith had "drastically cut back on the protection provided by the free-exercise clause." (He also mentioned a separate statutory decision of the high court that may also be problematic.)

"Of course, simply because Alito mentioned those two cases does not mean that the court would vote to overturn them," Joshua Dunn, a political science professor at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, wrote in his school law column in the journal Education Next. "But the very act of mentioning them indicates that it is on their minds."

Alex Luchenitser, the associate legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he was troubled by Alito's statement and the support it seems to show for allowing public employees greater latitude to express their religious beliefs on the job.

"It seems that Alito wants to roll back Garcetti in some way and find some safe harbor for religious speech," said Luchenitser, whose group filed a brief on the Bremerton school district's side in the 9th Circuit.

On the free-exercise clause, he said, "We would be very concerned that any attempt to overrule Employment Division v. Smith would pave the way to sue under the free-exercise clause to override state and local anti-discrimination laws, including laws protecting students based on sexual orientation and transgender status."

Berry, of the First Liberty Institute, said Alito's mention of Employment Division v. Smith "raised some eyebrows in the legal community," but he doesn't think it necessarily means the Supreme Court would overrule the nearly 30-year-old decision if given the chance.

"For educators who are going to be reading the tea leaves on this, I would say stand by," Berry said. "There may be more to come on this."

Published in Print: February 13, 2019, as Reading High Court's Tea Leaves in Denial of On-Field Prayer Case

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Reading the Tea Leaves in Denial of Case Involving a Coach's On-Field Prayer

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Even when the U.S. Supreme Court declines to take up a case, one or more justices can send a signal that the issues involved are important and that perhaps the court would grant review under the right circumstances. That's what happened with Kennedy v. Bremerton School District , in which the high court on Jan.

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Education Dive has an article highlighting the liability of school safety and where it falls.

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While a school's primary goal is to educate students, another priority is providing a safe environment. It's a responsibility enforced in federal, state and local laws, but ultimately, students can - and do - get hurt. And when they do, many blame the school or district.

Getting scraped up during recess, for instance, isn't new. Neither is getting made fun of by a classmate. Some medical experts call falls and broken bones " inevitable ," and some scholars cite teasing as an " important preparation for life ." But more severe issues, including sexual harassment, cyberbullying and school shootings are increasingly penetrating classrooms, spurring legal disputes over who's responsible.

"School safety is moving from the schoolhouse to the court of public opinion and the law," said school safety consultant Kenneth Trump. "But every case is unique - the legal issues vary, the allegations vary, and that's what makes it hard to pin it down to a handful of specific issues and put it in this neat little box."

Hundreds of lawsuits point the finger at schools or districts when students get injuried. Among the most recent was a suit against Broward County Public Schools and the county sheriff's office - both of which a federal judge said didn't have a legal duty to protect students - after the Parkland, Florida, shooting. These cases span different issues and reached varying verdicts, but they involve the same question: To what degree are these entities liable for students' safety?

Below, we've broken down a list of cases involving a school or district's role in student safety. Here's what happened and what they mean in the debate:

M.S.D. of Martinsville v. Rebecca Jackson

What happened: In March 2011, two students at West Martinsville Middle School in Indiana were injured in a shooting: One, who was shot twice in the stomach, was targeted by the shooter - a former student known to threaten and harass his peers -

Though the shooter threatened the victim several times - and threats were reported to teachers before the shooting - teachers didn't tell the administration, court documents say. Additionally, in the suit, the victim's mother said the district didn't protect her son because certain school entrances were left unlocked and monitors weren't properly warned about the shooter being a threat, among other alleged safety breaches.

While the district argued the suit should be dismissed because it couldn't have reasonably prevented the shooting, an appeals court disagreed.

What this means: This ruling shows schools or districts can be found liable if evidence proves the event could have reasonably been prevented, either because officials had reason to believe it would take place or if their response protocol wasn't sufficiently implemented.

Scarlett Lewis, et al. v. Newtown Board of Education and Town of Newtown

What happened: In one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

In her decision, the judge said, "...Faculty and staff had to make split-second decisions ... and subjecting their decisions to scrutiny, aided by hindsight, would no less serve the public interest than subjecting a police officer's discretionary decisions to second guessing."

She added, "Emergencies, by their very nature, are sudden and often rapidly evolving events, and a response can never be 100% scripted and directed."

According to this ruling, school officials can have similar protections to police officers. Even if a school has a safety protocol, it's hard to force people to have scripted emergency responses without taking split-second judgment into account. And if someone gets hurt, it's not necessarily something for which a school or district is liable.

Sexual misconduct

Mitchell v. Cedar Rapids Community School District

One day, the 9th-grader got her mother's permission to go to a friend's house after school, but she skipped last period. The 12th-grader raped her that afternoon. While the school day had ended when the rape happened, the girl's mom didn't know her daughter missed last period, and there were no special requirements for handling absences in her Individualized Education Program (IEP). Her mother sued the district for negligence, failing to monitor her daughter and notify her in a timely manner.

The district argued that because the rape didn't happen during school hours or on school grounds, it wasn't legally liable. But the Iowa Supreme Court ruled it could have been prevented.

What this means: This ruling doesn't imply a district or school is legally obligated to protect students outside of school hours or off school grounds in non-school activities. However, it does show that in certain cases, if evidence shows it either could have predicted or prevented such an incident from happening, they could be liable.

Shawnee Mathis, et al. v. Wayne County Board of Education, et al.

After the coach first heard about the incident, he allegedly didn't report it. One boy's parent later told the school, and the 8th-graders who were responsible were suspended for 10 days. The other boy's parent went to the school with concerns about what happened, but the suit alleges the principal didn't seem too troubled by it.

The boys continued to face harassment and were later pulled out of school. The school took some steps to prevent locker room misconduct, but in a disciplinary hearing, a committee of school officials chose not to suspend the 8th-graders for the rest of the basketball season, and the Wayne County Board of Education moved up their reinstatement date.

tudents and families who file suit often face many hurdles in proving a school or district is liable. According to the What this means: S Associated Press, districts in some states - including Virginia and Georgia - have "absolute immunity" from state-level lawsuits, while others, such as Florida, cap amounts schools must pay in damages. It's possible for a school to be held accountable, but it can be a high bar to hit.

Bullying/harassment

Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools

When the victim and her parents filed a harassment complaint with the school, the site's creator was suspended for five days for the so-called "hate website," which violated school bullying, harassment and intimidation policies. She sued, claiming her First Amendment rights were violated, because her site was private and was created outside of school.

"foreseeable " that the website would "create a substantial disruption in the school, " therefore allowing the school to control the student's speech.

Wyke v. Polk County School Board

What happened: The mother of Shawn Wyke, a 13-year-old who died by suicide, sued her son's district in Polk County, Florida, alleging administrators knew he tried to commit suicide twice at school before his death. When the dean of students found out about Wyke's first attempt, he called the student into his office and read Bible verses, according to court documents. He thought they made Wyke feel better and that he did all he could that day.

Wyke's mother sued the school board, the vice principal and the principal, alleging there was inadequate intervention and prevention training for school employees that contributed to her son's wrongful death. A district court ruled the district could be found liable due to a failure to notify Wyke's parents about what happened, and their knowledge of his two attempts made the incident foreseeable.

What this means: Hundreds of students die by suicide each year, and many parents or guardians argue schools could have done more to prevent this. But in the past, courts often haven't deemed schools and districts liable for student suicides unless it was clear officials knew a student was suicidal and did nothing, or if they intentionally made things worse.

However, the sampling of cases to examine is relatively limited. Since this suit was filed, several schools and/or districts are facing legal action for their alleged liability in similar incidents. The outcomes of those cases will reveal a lot about where the line is drawn for schools' and districts' legal responsibilities.

Brewington v. Philadelphia School District

More than a year later, the boy's mother sued the elementary school and the Philadelphia School District, alleging the lack of padding on the gym walls was dangerous and constituted negligence. The school argued it was immune from the suit, but in a December 2018 ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected this claim.

The court said this incident qualified as an exception to the immunity provision, giving the boy's mom a right to sue. According to the "" if an agency doesn't put adequate safety features in place for normal or reasonable use of property, it can be sued. In this case, the court found, the lack of padding could constitute negligence.

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To what extent are districts, schools liable for students' safety?

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While a school's primary goal is to educate students, another priority is providing a safe environment. It's a responsibility enforced in federal, state and local laws, but ultimately, students can - and do - get hurt. And when they do, many blame the school or district.

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The topic that I would like to explore more is the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  I have been working in a school with a large number of students that seem to fall between the cracks because of various issues.  As an administrator, I would like to provide a learning environment where that is limited or non existent and is able to uphold to the new standards that the law has set.

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Step 4: Angelo State University Library Resource

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Step 4: Angelo State University Library Resource

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From Education Week

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The topic of choice is the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2016.  This law sets the grounds for accountability for all school in the United States as it replaces its predecessor the No Child Left Behind Act (Plans , 2015).  Accountability is one of the main goals to a successful organization.  A school has no exception.  As a principal, the knowledge of the requirements of the new law will be essential to running a well structured school culture.  Just like the accountability within the school building, the accountability of a school system will help us rise above the rest.
The issues brought up in the topic of the ESSA is notably school accountability.  As mentioned in a report found in the Angelo State Library from the Government Accountability Office (2017), with the ESSA being so young there is a need for a review of each state's plan for education accountability. This will be a process that will take many trials and errors on the state's behalf so the plans of accountability will hold up to the ESSA standards. Other issues found in the ESSA regard funding and grants. Some of these issues carry over from NCLB and some are new to assist in the success of students (Plans , 2015).
As a new administrator, I will be facing the changes of the ESSA. Understanding how to implement these changes now will be helpful for when I do assume the new position that I hope to obtain.  I know that I will face many situations in the role of principal.  The knowledge of the ESSA and the accountability that it holds will serve useful when those situations arise.
References
Plans, A. (2015). The every student succeeds act: Explained. Education Week. Retrieved from http://www.ride.ri.gov/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/Information-and-Accountability-User-Friendly-Data/ESSA/CoP/Education_Week_Every_Student_Succeeds_Act_Explained.pdf

United States Government Accountability Office, (2017). Every Student Succeeds Act : early observations on state changes to accountability systems. Retrieved from https://easydb.angelo.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat00792a&AN=ram.908568&site=eds-live