In the 71 years since Brown ended racial segregation in public education and ushered in an era of equal educational opportunities, the United States has undergone myriad far-reaching educational and legal transformations.
Among the key statutory post-Brown developments are the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, now the Every Student Succeeds Act; Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, originally intended to ensure gender equity in intercollegiate sports but expanded to redress sexual harassment and discrimination; and the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Moreover, hardly a year passes that the Supreme Court does not address at least one education-related dispute.
Seemingly countless articles and books on school law highlight the importance of maintaining legal literacy by translating abstract legal principles into sound working policies to help educators avoid litigation.
School Law and Board Policy
Seemingly countless articles and books on school law highlight the importance of maintaining legal literacy by translating abstract legal principles into sound working policies to help educators avoid litigation. Materials are available on education law generally and in specific areas such as special education and school safety. Further, many colleges and universities offer school law courses for SBOs and other educators, focusing on its application to real-world issues.
Attorneys and higher education faculty can help educators, including SBOs, appreciate the value of school law by teaching them to focus on such bedrock principles as due process and equal protection—essential concepts in policy development. If faculty members and lawyers fail to treat the law as a practical discipline, they shortchange its real value, rendering it simply another class or collection of information likely to be ignored rather than valued.
School law presents the intellectual challenge of proactively preparing educators to develop policies. Being proactive is challenging because legal changes, including in education law, are typically reactive insofar as modifications usually occur as a result of litigation or legislative responses to unmet or unresolved needs.
In balancing the proactive and reactive dimensions of education law, professional development sessions should not become “Law School 101.” Rather than trying to turn educators into lawyers dealing with procedural matters such as jurisdiction and process serving, instruction should afford SBOs a broad understanding of the law to accomplish two important goals.
- Instruction on school law should teach SBOs to keep their knowledge of this ever-evolving area current by using materials from ASBO and other organizations, such as the Education Law Association, as they develop sound policies to enhance school operations.
- Instruction on school law should equip SBOs and other education leaders with sufficient awareness of the legal dimensions of issues so they can better frame questions for their attorneys. SBOs and those with whom they work should, therefore, recognize the need to consider their attorneys as partners not only in problem-solving but also in developing proactive policies before difficulties arise.
Being proactive is consistent with the approach of preventative law wherein educational leaders can identify potential challenges in advance while working with their attorneys to avoid litigation rather than winning cases that could have been avoided. Thus, when districts select attorneys, it would be wise to hire lawyers who specialize in education law.
Conclusion
In sum, perhaps the only certainty in school law is that as it evolves to meet the needs of rapidly changing educational environments, it remains of utmost importance. Moreover, the seemingly endless array of new issues, including the role of technology, students’ rights, and school safety, among others, highlights the need to remain vigilant on how legal developments impact public education.
The challenge for SBOs, then, is to harness their knowledge of education law to help make schools better places where children can learn.