As the college and professional football seasons come to an end, many fans- myself included- are reminded of this truth: not every hire can be a touchdown. A seemingly great candidate joins your team and suddenly they’re not hitting the mark. It could be due to disciplinary issues, ineffective work, or a number of other problems. Many administrators have dealt with difficult employees and have at times been required to make the decision to terminate their employment. When those employees happen to be at-will or probationary employees, some assume they can safely terminate their employment without developing the usual documentation. This, in fact, may not be a safe assumption.

When a school district analyzes locations for construction of potential facilities, water supply is often a key component of that evaluation. At times a location does offer easy access to an established and affordable municipal water supplier to whom a district can simply “hook up.” With an existing system, a school district will hope to pay a reasonable rate for water of a quality and quantity sufficient to meet its needs. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. A school district may need to examine obtaining an alternative water supply in order to meet the demand for its project or explore options to supplement its primary supply due to water quality, quantity, or cost concerns.

For as long as I can remember, school district administrators have been comfortable placing employees on paid administrative leave in the best interest of the district and reassigning even Chapter 21 contract employees to another department, position, or campus so long as the reassignment did not result in a change in the employee’s contract or pay, and the new position was in “the same professional capacity.”

It’s election season! That wonderful span when all Americans make the time and mental effort to reflect on and celebrate the fact that we are more alike than we are different and when we, as an electorate, focus on the real issues to be worked on instead of being distracted by curated, quasi-contextual soundbites that serve only to divide us and make political consultants rich. Or…something like that.

For anyone working in public schools, the category of “things I didn’t sign up for” seems to be expanding rapidly. It is increasingly routine, for example, to receive a subpoena for either testimony or documents in conjunction with your work as an educator. While no one would recommend that you ignore a subpoena, there are rules that must be followed by anyone seeking to issue and serve a subpoena. School staff are often unaware of these rules and can inadvertently make it easier to be subpoenaed, which can create a distraction from school-related duties and place school staff in the middle of legal disputes having nothing to do with them. More problematic is how frequently districts are asked to produce student or employee records via subpoena. If the subpoena is not properly served under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, this can impact a district’s ability to lawfully produce otherwise protected records.

As districts face an ever-increasing number of community “watchdogs” and social media warriors posting opinions on issues based on, at best, 50% of the actual facts, it is common to question what the legal remedies are for defamed districts, employees, and officials. On the other hand, districts may also question what recourse the public may have against them and their employees and officials when defending themselves in a public forum on a controversial issue. Below is a brief analysis of each of those situations.

Texas school districts are authorized to provide public school transportation. For those that do, motor vehicle accidents are fertile ground for claims against school districts. School districts may benefit from taking the time to review their risk management approach to the provision of transportation services.

For many school districts, posting information on district websites and social media has become a vital tool in how districts communicate with their parents, students and communities. Additionally, the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Legislature have created a number of legal requirements involving posting information regarding transparency and district operations. Posting this information the district website is one way to ensure compliance with the law. Everything from your District of Innovation Plan to your school calendar to the next week’s lunch menu are available to anyone, at any time, day or night, via your district website.

At this point we don’t need to impress upon you the meaningful impacts that a well-written District of Innovation (“DOI”) Plan can have on school operations. After nearly ten years of the DOI experiment, it’s no secret that these plans are powerful tools—especially if properly drafted. Whether your District is seeking to adopt a plan for the first time, to renew an expiring plan, or to amend an existing plan, you must ensure that you carefully consider including the latest and greatest exemptions. This quick article will address some of the most popular and emerging innovations worth considering.

We see it every year: parents trying to opt their child out of STAAR testing. Some claim it’s against their religious beliefs, some claim it’s bad for their children’s mental health, and some have no problem stating they just don’t want to participate. Below we’ll discuss the constellation of consequences that students may face for their parent’s choice of opting out, and what issues your school district might encounter if more and more parents begin to follow this trend.

The State Board of Education is proposing amendments to 19 Tex. Admin. Code Ch. 74, as well as revamping and rewriting the Dyslexia Handbook, proposed to be called the “Texas Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Handbook.”

In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled “students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Still, the First Amendment does not provide students absolute rights to such freedoms. Schools have a special interest in regulating on-campus student speech when it “materially and substantially interfere[s] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school,” or such a disruption could be reasonably forecasted, or the speech “impinge[s] upon the rights of other students.” Balancing those competing interests, Tinker provides the standard for evaluating whether the First Amendment protects a student’s speech. Since Tinker, the Court has revisited student speech on multiple occasions, each time carving out narrow exceptions to the general Tinker standard based on certain characteristics or content of the speech, to include Tinker’s reach to off-campus student speech.