Districts Are Afraid of Lawsuits, and That's Making Schools Unsafe

Why do so many districts seem to have terrible policies, especially around safety and discipline?

One explanation that a lot of commenters have mentioned is lawsuits, that districts are afraid of lawsuits.

And I think that's a real thing.

I think districts legitimately are afraid of getting sued.

And one of the reasons pendulum has swung in the way that it has is because they've they've gotten sued and they don't want to you know have staff members putting their hands on kids they don't want to have students being excluded from school due to disciplinary reasons so there are all these policies that like nobody really likes nobody's really happy about where we are but when districts are driven by fear of lawsuits that's sometimes the kind of thing that we end up with and i think it's a matter of time before the pendulum swings back because of additional lawsuits.

Like recently I shared a $27 million settlement story from a school district in California where a student was bullied and ultimately killed by his peers and the school had not really done very much.

And I think it's that kind of thing that ultimately will get schools to change their policies.

But one thing I think we can do in the shorter term is you know a share things like this i think the the number of people who have said to me that my videos have been shared with them including people i know in real life is just astounding to me so like please know that you're making a difference simply by sharing some of what you're hearing that that makes sense to you whether that's for me or from someone else or if you're hearing about things that were getting bad in another district and then they changed course, like share those stories because everybody feels like they're stuck, right?

Like people need to know that there are different ways to approach some of these issues and to make school safer and to make school a place where students want to learn and teachers want to teach and And aides want to work.

We just have to make this a viable environment.

And so many of the policies that are the result of lawsuits are making school environments viable for neither students nor staff.

The other thing I think we can do is, in addition to just kind of raising awareness, is to advocate and say, look, I am not willing to put up with this.

This is not quite an ultimatum yet, but...

yes i i hear that we have this policy because we're afraid of lawsuits but i want you to know as a professional this is not okay with me i am not okay with this like i think we need to say more of that to the extent that we can and i know that every individual person does not who you know who's employed by a school district doesn't have total freedom to say that you know it is your job it is your livelihood and that's one reason i feel compelled to say so much about these topics that like frankly these are not my main interests these are not my main areas of expertise But when I see the kinds of things that are happening in classrooms, I feel like I have to say something because I know you can't always do that.

And a lot of people who are sharing these videos are doing so through anonymous accounts.

And people say things like, I wish I could send this straight to my principal, but I can't.

Or I'm a principal and I wish I could say this to my district, but I can't.

So I think starting to have some of those more serious conversations of like, this is not okay, I'm not making an ultimatum here, but we really need to grapple with this.

The third thing I think can happen is actual lawsuits.

And if you have left a position and have injuries, that we're not compensated for.

If you are a parent whose child has been injured or traumatized, please know that none of us want our school districts to be sued, but we also realize that many of the unacceptable things that we're dealing with right now are because of lawsuits that have pressure in the other direction.

So please see that lawsuit potentially not as just a way to be compensated or to have justice for yourself, but as a way to balance out some of the terrible imbalances that we have right now.

So that's not advice.

If you're looking to keep your job, I would not recommend suing your employer, but I know a lot of people have already left and have done so with injuries, with medical bills, with surgeries and with physical therapies they need, and children have been traumatized by some of these policies.

So please consider doing something to put the pressure for things to move back in the right direction.