The father of a high school pole vaulter who was suspended from the team, sued the school district and requested a restraining order that would have allowed the student to return to the team.  The father claimed that twice during practice, the student was injured when he was instructed to practice pole vault in the rain.  Later, when the coach asked the student to vault in the rain, per his father’s instructions, the student declined to do so.  As a result he was suspended from the team.

The student’s mother got involved and the athletic director explained that if a student doesn’t practice, he can’t compete.

The father then escalated things, emailing members of the school board and the superintendent asking them to change their policy to prohibit pole vaulting in the rain and to allow students to refrain from unsafe practices without punishment.

The student was allowed to compete, but refused to use the pole vault the coached asked him to use.  He didn’t win.  The father and son questioned the coach’s knowledge about pole vaulting, and the student said he didn’t think the coach knew what he was doing.

The next day was no different.  The student told the coaches he would not follow instructions from the high school coach because it conflicted with coaching at his private club. The student was removed from the team.  According to the superintendent, if the student did not practice, he would not be permitted to compete and that the administration trusted the judgment of its coaches. The father tried to take it to the board, but his policy proposals were rejected.

On to federal court.  The suit claimed that father and son were exercising their constitutional right of free speech by communicating with school officials and administration regarding his proposed policy changes. He claimed his son’s removal from the pole vaulting team was in retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights.

It is well settled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Likewise, parents have the right to express their opinions and advocate for the rights of their children. These rights, however, are not absolute.  In fact, school officials may regulate speech that materially and substantially interferes with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.  That’s the Tinker standard we all know well.  The court sided with the coaches, stating:

High school football coaches, as well as government employers, have a need to maintain order and discipline. Requiring coaches to tolerate attacks on their authority would effectively strip them of their ability to lead. It would also do a great disservice to other players who wish to play on a team free from strife and disunity; a team cannot function as a unit with groups of players and the coaches pulling in opposite directions.

Bottom line: when players voluntarily join a team, they implicitly agree to accept the coach’s authority.  When the government manages a voluntary program it may restrict conduct, including speech, that threatens the purpose of the program.  Tinker does not require teachers to surrender control of the classroom to students, and it does not require coaches to surrender control of the team to players.

It was undisputed that the student, per his father’s instructions, refused to abide by the coaches’ rules regarding practice. Of course, it is reasonable to conclude that a player’s refusal to follow such rules would lead to disunity on the team and resentment from the players who agreed to be subjected to the rules.  Moreover, it is unlikely that dismissing an athlete who refuses to practice on account of his own personal assessment that the conditions were unsafe would run afoul of the First Amendment.  Because the student could not show that he would likely succeed on his claims, he was not entitled to a restraining order that would have reinstated him as a pole vaulter.

The case is from Ohio and is Stokey v. N. Canton Sch. Dist., No. 5:18-CV-1011, 2018 WL 2234953, at *5–10 (N.D. Ohio May 15, 2018).

DAWG BONE:  LET THE COACHES COACH.

That’s what a school board member and her husband maintained after the board member became the subject of an investigation over alleged bullying of a student.

This case, Manley v. Law, No. 16-3846, 2018 WL 2148188 (7th Cir. May 10, 2018), stemmed from a dispute between the board member and a student outside a high school play. The two got into an exchange that “escalated quickly,” because the student was leafletting for board candidates who were not aligned with the board member.  The student claimed bullying and “a wave of support for the student crashed” against the board trustee.

The school board launched an investigation into the board member’s alleged bullying. The board member and her husband filed suit trying to stop the investigation. After that didn’t work, the couple asserted that the school board and superintendent violated their federal constitutional rights by conducting the investigation and publicly criticizing the board member for her handling of the dispute with the student.

The couple claimed that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protected their “emotional well-being” and entitled them “to feel that the government treated them fairly.”  The trial court dismissed the suit and the couple appealed.

In a published decision, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court, stating:  “American politics in not for the thin-skinned.”  According to the appeals court there is no constitutionally-protected interest in feeling that the government has dealt with an individual fairly.  The court stated:

As far as we know, no court has gone so far as to say, as the plaintiffs argue, that the United States Constitution requires state and local government officials to avoid upsetting other public officials and candidates affected by their actions or words. This unprecedented theory’s threat to robust public debate is obvious. The district court properly rejected it.

Likewise, there is no general constitutional protection for the board member’s “emotional well-being.”  If there was, we’d all be in federal court!

DAWG BONE:  BOARD MEMBERS NEED TO HAVE THICK SKIN.

Tomorrow:   Pole vaulter lands himself right off of the track team, no thanks to his parents.

The NFL last week issued a rule that it will fine NFL teams if their players refuse to stand during the playing of the National Anthem.  Players can opt out by staying in the locker room during that time.  This is certainly going to spawn a legal challenge.  It will be interesting to watch.

Yesterday, we talked about the Klein ISD case involving the student who says she suffered harassment and retaliation when she refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. The District sought dismissal of the suit but weren’t entirely successful and here’s why…

To hold a school district liable for a constitutional violation, there has to be evidence of an official policy, custom, or practice that led to the violation.  The court observed that official policy can arise in various forms.  It usually exists in the form of written policy statements, ordinances, or regulations, but may also arise in the form of a widespread practice that is so common and well-settled as to constitute a custom that fairly represents official policy.

This suit raised challenges to the district’s written policy and also claimed the district had a widespread practice that led to the violation of the student’s rights.

The student first targeted the parent-notification requirement contained in the district’s legal policy, which tracked Texas Education Code 25.082.  The thinking was that the requirement could potentially put a parent and child at odds if the parent refuses to request an exemption against their child’s wishes.  The Court dismissed this part of the case, however, because the mother actually sought an exemption on behalf of her daughter.  The daughter did not have “standing” to pursue this claim.

The court, however, declined to dismiss the girl’s custom and practice claims.  The lawsuit alleged an unwritten custom or practice of implementing the policy to require students to stand during the Pledge and then disciplining students who refused.  The student cited several incidents in which she was disciplined and singled out when she refused to stand.

The court observed that the Klein ISD Board of Trustees is the final policymaker for the District. The suit alleged that the board had knowledge of the harassment and retaliation and did nothing to deter it.  According to the court, the suit stated sufficient facts to support a plausible inference that requiring the student to stand during the Pledge, and disciplining and harassing her amounted to a widespread practice so as to constitute a custom of the district. The trial court, therefore, allowed the student to proceed on her free speech claim.

The equal protection claim also survived because allegations that the student was “singled out,” including a write-up for sitting during the Pledge, and was the target of derogatory comments, including a comparison to “Soviet communists, members of the Islamic faith seeking to impose Sharia law, and those who condone pedophilia,” supported an inference that she was treated more harshly than other students, based on her beliefs.

This suit is in its very early stages, and as the facts develop further the court will have to decide whether the claims have any evidence to back them up.  We will keep you updated…

DAWG BONE:  JUST LET ‘EM SIT.

Tomorrow:  “American politics is not for the thin-skinned.”

Since Francis Bellamy first penned it in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance has had its fair share of legal challenges.  Just ask Klein ISD.  A high school student and her mother have sued the school district stemming from the student’s refusal to stand during the Pledge.

Like most Texas school districts, Klein ISD’s EC(Legal) policy tracks Texas Education Code 25.082, and provides:

A board shall require students, once during each school day, to recite the pledges of allegiance to the United States and Texas flags.

On written request from a student’s parent or guardian, a district shall excuse the student from reciting a pledge of allegiance.

According to allegations in the suit, the student’s mother had requested an exemption, but the student was nevertheless subjected to repeated harassment from teachers, principals, and other students.  For example, the suit claims that teachers took the student’s phone, wrote her up, sent her to the principal’s office, made her change classes, and otherwise singled her out when she refused to stand during recitation of the Pledge.

The parent and daughter raised a whole slew of claims and the District sought dismissal of the suit.  One of the claims was a challenge to the constitutionality of the statute requiring students to recite the Pledge.

Now, wait a minute, Law Dawg-sub, haven’t courts already upheld the constitutionality of the statute requiring recitation of the Pledge?

Yes, in fact, the Fifth Circuit put that to rest in 2006, in Croft v. Perry. Using the national-Pledge precedent as persuasive authority, the appeals court held that the Texas Pledge and the statute requiring its recitation did not violate the Establishment Clause because the Pledge was a patriotic exercise, not a religious one.  Thus, the Fifth Circuit has rejected the argument that recitation of the Texas Pledge and National Pledge violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  There is more to this story, however.  Tomorrow we will look at what the student says violated her constitutional rights and see whether the District was successful in its bid to get the case dismissed.

The case is Arceneaux v. Klein ISD, 2018 WL 2317565 (S.D. Tex. May 22, 2018).

DAWG BONE:  THE PLEDGE IS A PATRIOTIC EXERCISE AND, THEREFORE, PASSES CONSTITUTIONAL MUSTER.

Tomorrow:  A Kaepernick copycat?

Today is Memorial Day and the day we turn our thoughts to the men and women who have lost their lives while serving in the United States armed forces.  At present, there are nearly 200,000 troops deployed in about 140 countries worldwide.  We hope for their safe return upon completion of their designated missions.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act (USERRA) offers employment protections to these men and women upon their return.  Congress enacted USERRA in 1994 to protect the rights of persons who leave employment positions to undertake military service.

USERRA prohibits employers from denying uniformed service members employment, reemployment, retention, promotion or any benefit on the basis of their membership in the armed forces.  Employers violate USERRA if an employee's service is “a motivating factor” in the employer's adverse action, unless the employer can prove that the action would have been taken in the absence of such membership, service or obligation for service.

So, how can a school district run afoul of USERRA?

A case out of Houston ISD a few years ago demonstrates the point.  In Mayeaux v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 986 F. Supp. 2d 842, 847 (S.D. Tex. 2014), the district fired a middle school ROTC teacher.  Ms. Mayeaux was also an active member of the US National Guard and attended military service one weekend per month and military training fifteen days every year.

One school year, military training caused Mayeaux to miss teacher training at her school.  Mayeaux unfortunately missed out on training over new rules that prohibited fundraising by selling “foods of minimal nutritional value.”  (Bah humbug!)  A short time later, when her students tried to sell candy bars to raise funds for a school trip, Mayeaux got hit with a disciplinary memo for “unauthorized” fundraising, followed by deeper scrutiny over her other fundraising efforts.

Mayeaux was reassigned pending a district investigation.  The investigation found fundraising violations and other financial issues.  Unfortunately for the district, however, the investigation report spent a great deal of time and focus on Mayeaux’s military absences and concluded that “[b]ecause of Mayeaux’s absences along with the financial problems previously mentioned in this report, Ms. Mayeaux was relieved of her duties…”  Mayeaux sued asserting a violation of USERRA.

The District was unable to get the case dismissed before trial.  To prove a violation of USERRA, Mayeaux had to show that her military service was “a motivating factor” in the employment decision.  According to the court, statements in the investigation report and by her supervising principal related to her military absences supported a finding that her military service was a motivating factor behind her termination.

But, what about her violation of fundraising policies and other financial issues?

The point here is that, to find a USERRA violation, the teacher’s military service didn’t have to be the only reason behind the employment action, but just one factor motivating the decision.  The investigation’s negative treatment of her military absences was enough to allow the case to proceed to trial.  As the saying goes, loose lips sink ships.

DAWG BONE:  BE KIND TO OUR U.S. SERVICEMEMBERS.

Tomorrow:  All Rise For The Pledge Of Allegiance… or not.

You all have probably seen headlines from around the state of our brothers and sisters in the struggle felled by the perceived evils of a candid text message, email or anything else that was written down, preserved, and ultimately disclosed.  If you work for or with a governmental entity, it could happen to you.

There are a couple of factors at play here.  First, the Public Information Act.  Inquiring minds are out there and they want your texts because they know you’ve caught on to the fact that you shouldn’t say the bad stuff in email.  You have caught on to that, right?

So, texts.  Subject to the Public Information Act.  Even the ones on your personal device.  Consider the definition of “public information” from Texas Government Code §552.002 (paraphrased):  information that is written, produced, collected, assembled, or maintained under a law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business either by or for a governmental body, including by an employee or officer acting in their official capacity and containing information that pertains to official business of the governmental body.

Some good news: the emails, texts, letters, notes and other documents you create and maintain that are not related to school business are also not subject to the Public Information Act (“PIA”).  That includes everything from the grocery list you emailed your spouse on your school email, to the happy birthday text you sent to your principal on your personal cellphone.  Since the contents are not related to school business, the documents themselves are not subject to release under the PIA.  Everything related to school business is.

The next issue is document retention.  What if a request comes in for emails that rolled off your school email after 90 days?  Or a text you deleted yourself?  Or notes you threw away after the last committee meeting?  Don’t panic.  For one thing, either you or your IT department can probably still retrieve any electronic information or data.  For another, there are primarily three special circumstances in which it would be a big deal to have irretrievably deleted or otherwise destroyed your notes or the type of routine communication generally found in texts and emails.  One, when the school is in the middle of a lawsuit and you have deleted or destroyed information that relates to the subject of the suit while it is ongoing.  That is a big problem and it can have a significant negative impact on the school’s position in litigation.  Two, when the information is responsive to a PIA request and you delete or destroy the information after the request is received.  There are criminal penalties associated with that.  The third is when the information could be considered the “education record” of a student under FERPA and there is some special circumstance in play such as a pending parent request for records, a hearing, or the student receives special education services.

Before you rush out and delete all your e-communications and trash all your personal notes, take some time to familiarize yourself with your CPC (Legal) and (Local) policy, administrative regulations or handbook provisions, and get the advice of legal counsel if you have any questions.  For more information on school records retention, check out the newly updated schedule SD on the Texas State Library and Archives website: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/slrm/recordspubs/localretention.html#SD

DAWG BONE:  IF THIS BLOG HAS TAUGHT ME ANYTHING IT IS THAT LOTS OF THINGS ARE BETTER OFF NOT WRITTEN

 Good morning, it’s Christine again.  And it’s true, I wasn’t fired over that piece I wrote two weeks ago, but I could have been.  The First Amendment doesn’t bind private employers (which is what WGTRK is) in the same manner it does public employers (which is what our public schools are). I would have fought it, but still.

So let’s explore an excellent case out of New York City and take a look at the First Amendment rights of public school employees on the job.  This case involves a veteran P.E. and Health teacher at the junior high level and her sex ed lesson to a group of 8^th graders.  The court’s outstanding opinion, which I highly commend to your reading, begins thus:

To a senior judge, father and grandfather, educated in the New York City public schools, there appears to be no more daunting undertaking than discussing sex and HIV/AIDS with a class of female and male thirteen- and fourteen-year-old eighth grade students.  Executing such a task would require great sensitivity, skill, commitment, and not a little courage.  This mission was given to plaintiff Faith Kramer, a veteran city school teacher of twenty-six years, holder of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Brooklyn College and a 6^th year certificate from Staten Island College, with no blemish in her outstanding record as a teacher of young adolescents.

Ms. Kramer was provided with a syllabus that directed that students be encouraged to use terms they understood.  In the classroom discussion students uttered the somewhat vulgar words they knew.  Because her charges departed from the nomenclature of polite discussion, Ms. Kramer was removed from the classroom, kept in a non-teaching detention for eight months, investigated, provisionally determined by her principal to have committed a serious violation of a school regulation, denied a satisfactory rating for the school year, and deprived of the extra income she had previously been earning from extra ‘per session’ assignments.  Ultimately, the charge of violating school regulations was not pursued, and plaintiff was never brought up on formal disciplinary charges.  She has been reinstated to her classroom duties.”

Ms. Kramer’s lesson involved helping the students understand conventional terms for various parts of the human anatomy and anatomical processes, and their role in the transmission of HIV.  Literally, there was a standard curriculum involved in this lesson, encouraging a technique in which students were to basically free flow “the vulgarism of the street” and their teacher was to offer them instead the “Latinism of the academy,” to help them understand the concepts of the vocabulary to which they were accustomed.  Remember, these are 8^th graders.  Let me just say that this opinion includes a “Glossary of Relevant Sexual Terms” that includes everything from “schmeckle” to “tricycle” (which was not found in the sources consulted), and frankly, none of it was that shocking to this jaded school lawyer, and some of it was actually sort of sweet (“peepee”).

Ms. Kramer went with it (as she had for something like 15 years) and on one particular year, parents complained.  Keep in mind New York has collective bargaining, but in the parlance familiar to Texas, she was placed on administrative leave with pay and kept out of her classroom for the remainder of the year.  The NYC public schools have a practice of allowing teachers to earn extra pay for extra duties – akin to our coaching stipends – and she was denied access to those opportunities during this period and in the next school year based on the appraisal implications resulting from this debacle.  She sued, alleging violations of her First Amendment rights.

So does the First Amendment act to safeguard Ms. Kramer from engaging in this vulgar lesson? No.  The court held that, as a public school employee acting pursuant to her official duties, Ms. Kramer was not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment with regard to the content of her lesson.  The court considered this “public employee” speech and not on a matter of public concern.  The court also noted that even if it had chosen to apply the more protective First Amendment standard afforded to student speech and sometimes afforded to teachers in the vast body of First Amendment jurisprudence, her claims would still fail.  Ms. Kramer’s speech was unquestionably “school-sponsored” as it was part of a lesson, and the NYC public schools board had a legitimate interest in ensuring that teachers implemented lesson plans in a manner considered appropriate by the board.  Referring readers to the aforementioned Glossary, the court concluded the speech at issue was pretty obviously vulgar and inappropriate.

The case is Kramer v. New York City Board of Education and it is available online.

DAWG BONE: TEACHERS’ FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS ARE LIMITED WHEN IT COMES TO THE CONTENT OF THEIR LESSONS

 Tomorrow:  It’s the Last Day of School in the Badillo House! 

 You may have heard there is a movie out now about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Well I (this is Christine again – which means that I did not get fired for that Pooperintendent piece two weeks ago – more on that tomorrow) am going to see the RBG movie later this week and I thought it might be fun to get up to speed on Justice Ginsburg and review some of her opinions.

 A little background:  Justice Ginsburg is 85, graduated first in her class at Columbia Law School in 1959, taught at both Rutgers and Columbia University law schools and became the first female professor at Columbia to earn tenure.  She was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980 and served there until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993.  Since then, Justice Ginsburg has purportedly never missed a day of oral arguments, not even when undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer.  So basically, she’s a vampire.  A wicked smart vampire.

Also this:  Justice Ginsburg first started law school at Harvard, where her husband Martin was also enrolled after completing two years of service in the U.S. Army.  During Justice Ginsburg’s first year of law school, Martin Ginsburg was diagnosed with testicular cancer, undergoing surgery and radiation.  Justice Ginsburg cared for her sick husband, her two-year old daughter, and was the first woman accepted to the Harvard Law Review.  When her husband graduated and moved to New York City to work at a law firm, only then did she transfer to Columbia, make law review there, and graduate first in her class.  This is staggering.  She might even be a werewolf.  She’s terrifying.

Apropos of the last week or so of school in which we all get a little crazy, I commend to your attention Justice Ginsburg’s opinion in Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding. This 2009 case is itself somewhat notorious: it is the strip search case in which an assistant principal directed his assistant to take a 13-year old girl to the nurse’s office where she was required to strip down to her underwear and stretch out her bra and panties, so they could check and see if she was concealing ibuprofen.  Mistakes were made.  The Court majority held that the search violated Miss Redding’s Fourth Amendment rights, but held that the school employees who had been sued individually were protected by qualified immunity because clearly established law did not show that the search violated the Fourth Amendment – essentially that lower court opinions on school strip searches were not consistent enough for this to be something the school employees should have known better than to do.

Justice Ginsburg concurred with the majority opinion that the search was unconstitutional, but she dissented as to the issue of qualified immunity, arguing that the law on student searches was clearly established and the facts of the Safford case were so extraordinary that the assistant principal who ordered the search should have been held individually liable.  I told you she was scary.

DAWG BONE:  DON’T CONDUCT A STRIP SEARCH

 Tomorrow:  First Amendment Rights in the Workplace

This time of year, we tend to get a lot of calls around the firm from clients dealing with employees in various states of certification.  We get questions about alt cert folks who keep failing or keep not taking their tests; we get questions about teachers who have been assigned outside of their respective areas of certification; and of course we get questions about those vacancies that schools just can’t find anyone to fill.  One solution to the perpetual hiring challenges public schools contend with is to grow your own – to incentivize current employees to obtain the education and certification necessary to fill those gaps.

TEA has heard the call on this issue as well, most prominently from the members of the Texas Rural Schools Task force, which was created to address the challenges unique to those districts, of which hiring is surely one.  According to the Commissioner’s April 30^th post, the 2018-2019 Grow Your Own grant program “will be used to encourage high school students to consider teaching as a career, as well as paraprofessionals and/or teacher aides to pursue certification.”  The 2018-2019 Grow Your Own grant recipients will be using grant money to fund some exciting stuff:

• 49 current teachers to receive master’s degrees in education to teach the Education and Training courses for dual credit;
• 195 paraprofessionals to receive bachelor’s degrees and teacher certification to become fulltime teachers;
• 24 teacher candidates to participate in a year-long clinical teaching placement; and
• 59 high schools to start or grow education and training programs for students.

Districts do not have to rely on the new TEA grant program to start growing their own, however; assuming availability of funds, districts can develop “grow you own” programs locally. What might otherwise be considered an impermissible gift of public funds (generally prohibited by the Texas Constitution) is not prohibited where the primary basis for the expenditure is to serve the public purpose of the school district, where the district retains sufficient controls to ensure the expenditure serves that purpose, and where the district receives the intended benefit of the expenditure.  A district hoping to initiate a grow your own program should start with careful planning to clearly establish program parameters and mechanics that will provide the necessary controls and ensure a return benefit.  With a clear and detailed plan in place, the school board can approve the program and make those necessary findings to establish their stewardship of public funds.

Districts looking for more information on the new TEA grant can find it here:

https://tea.texas.gov/About_TEA/News_and_Multimedia/Press_Releases/2018/TEA_awards_2018-2019_Grow_Your_Own_grants/

DAWG BONE:  DON’T OVERLOOK HOMEGROWN TALENT

 Tomorrow: The Notorious RBG

 How do we continue to cope as the number of innocent students and school employees senselessly killed continues to rise?  Around Texas and the nation, students have banded together in protest as school boards and administrators struggle to guide their communities and keep them safe.  Increasingly, we as school lawyers are asked to provide options.

While many schools contract for the services of school resource officers or have established their own police departments, some districts are giving further consideration to the possibility of arming district employees.  A review of your GKA (Legal) policy will tell you that there are exceptions under both the federal Gun-Free School Zone Act and the Texas Penal Code for possession of a firearm as part of an approved program and pursuant to written regulations or authorization, respectively.  Districts may use this existing legal authority to create what are commonly known as “school guardian” programs.  In developing a guardian program, schools have wide latitude to establish the parameters of their program.  This is in contrast to the establishment of a school marshal program, which is spelled out very specifically in the Texas Education Code. In developing a guardian program, schools must carefully consider and be prepared to address both personnel issues as eligibility, screening, training, and disqualification as well as logistical issues like firearm acquisition, maintenance, storage, and ammunition storage in their plans.

School marshal programs are, as noted above, much more explicitly prescribed in law and much more heavily regulated.  Texas Education Code Section 37.0811 allows for the appointment of not more than the greater of one designated school marshal per 200 students in average daily attendance per campus or for each campus, or one marshal per campus where students regularly receive instruction.  The Board of Trustees must make the appointment, and a marshal must have the appropriate licensing and certification by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

In addition to licensing requirements, school marshals are required to undergo specific training, including a psychological exam and eighty hours of instruction on such topics as prevention of school shootings, the use of deadly force, and handgun proficiency.  In contrast to school guardians, who have no special authority beyond the authority to possess firearms on school property, school marshals may make arrests and exercise the same authority given to peace officers under the Code of Criminal Procedure, subject to limitations established by the school district.

Whether or not to introduce a school guardian or school marshal program will require significant thought, community input, and careful planning in any district.  In one recent school board meeting I attended, the district’s SRO spoke to the issue of arming select staff members and reminded the board that when the police are called about a “guy with a gun in a school,” they aren’t going to stop and ask questions when they encounter the guy with the gun.  They are probably just going to shoot him.  That’s a lot to risk on a teacher’s salary.

DAWG BONE:  THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS TO GUN VIOLENCE – I MEAN THERE ARE, BUT THIS ISN’T A POLITICAL BLOG.

 Tomorrow: We’re Trolling the Commissioner’s Blog