Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130529/news/705299912/

by mcallan83 • 13 years ago

110 95 13 years ago

fmstephe5• 13 years ago

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified.

Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)?

Other things I see include judges imprisoning children to increase revenues in private prison systems they have shares in.

How does it feel to actually live there?

smutticus• 13 years ago

Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. It might be related to the attacks on their unions and the privitization of education. I'm not totally sure. But regardless of your opinions on education privitization teachers are not regarded with the same reverence in American society that they once were.

fmstephe5• 13 years ago

Yeah, I have the impression this is true in a number of places. It does appear to be particularly pronounced in the US (from the view from my bubble).

I worry that reducing the respect given to teachers will result in fewer outstanding people choosing teaching as a career path.

From the smattering of events I noted above I do get the impression that teachers are operating scared. That they perceive that they are reluctant to make judgement calls that involve any kind of bureaucratic risk (as in the Kiera case). That zero tolerance approach seems to be a symptom of this fear and I have a lot of sympathy for both the teachers and the students. Its seems like a real shame :(

oneandoneis2• 13 years ago

Every teacher I know (and that's quite a few) shared this cartoon on FB recently:

http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-content/uploads/Grades_Carto...

Sad but true..

yummyfajitas2• 13 years ago

Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system.

The reason for this is simple deduction. If you believe teacher quality is the primary drivers of educational outcomes and outcomes are not as you desire, it must be caused by low teacher quality.

(Personally I don't accept the premise that teacher quality affects educational outcomes much, but my views are way outside the mainstream...)

Jare• 13 years ago

It's not an American phenomenon, most people who care about education (parents, students and educators alike) in Spain believe exactly the same thing. We haven't (yet) undergone a massive privatization of our education system, so privatization is not the core issue.

(I think this is the result of many factors conspiring to undermine the ability, energy and willpower of parents to be truly engaged with their kids' education, but that's material for an entire book)

tokenadult3• 13 years ago

People generally respect professionals more when they have the choice of shopping for the professionals who fit their needs. You would respect plumbers less if every time you needed a pipe fixed, you were assigned a plumber by your "plumbing district" and the plumbing district received revenues from your taxes whether your pipes leak or not. Teachers should take advantage of the opportunity to be treated like real professionals by supporting education reforms that give learners (and the adult guardians of minor learners) more power to shop for providers of education.

(By the way, I can tell that I am a good bit older than you are by the short time frame of your comment. Commentary about government-operated oligopoly schools not being staffed by teachers who are able to do their best for the learners in their care goes back many more decades than you guess.)

Something that HAS changed about teaching, as an occupation, in the United States in my longer lifetime is that now women have many more employment opportunities besides schoolteaching. When a woman can become a medical doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer, she may decide to take her talents into other labor markets besides the labor market for staffing schools.

http://www.personal.kent.edu/~cupton/Senior%20Seminar/Papers...

Again, I think if schools were more client-responsive, because learners had more power to shop, that would change management practices of schools and allow schools to reward better the teachers who do the best work. A teacher who does a good job is worth her weight or his weight in gold.

http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality

But the incentives in the current system, in which most schools get the bulk of their revenues from taxes, results or not, don't set up incentives for schools to value teachers who do well as schools should.

talmand5• 13 years ago

It varies from district to district though. In most districts I would assume things move along just fine and has been that way for years. In some districts teachers resign in protest because of the constraints placed on them due to emphasis on standardized tests which forces them to alter their teaching plans to the detriment of the students. In other districts teachers go to jail for allowing students to cheat on standardized tests or skip the middle-man to do the cheating themselves.

Much like most things in life, sometimes teachers deserve the criticisms they receive and sometimes they don't.

Personally, I feel the most likely culprit is a combination of the government and education administrators.

jessaustin2• 13 years ago

Perhaps we're supposed to revere them ("reverence", really, like for the Baby Jesus?), but I'm not so sure we ever did. The 19th- & early 20th-C fiction I read as a child that included teachers, seemed full of examples of "one-room schoolhouse" teachers who were routinely physically attacked by students and parents, widely derided by less-violent community members, and frequently paid late or not in full. (I'm sorry I don't have access to my childhood book collection at this time so I don't have any cites.)

I can see how respect would contribute to the goal of education at younger ages, but in high school the successful teacher will have more resources upon which to draw than just "reverence".

venomsnake3• 13 years ago

You are getting it wrong (disclosure - I do not live in the US).

Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort. With 30 million kids in tens of thousands of schools you are guaranteed to get a few cases of something "stupid and abusive from the administrators" daily. After all - a normal school day with no events hardly makes a headline. And with the power of the internet some local news get much more national visibility than decades prior.

Same is with TSA - you will hear of something bad daily, but a lot of people pass checks without problems.

You have to aggregate the news about school authorities, police and federal behavior over a very long time to try and find some meaningful trends (there seem to be some, and not comforting at least)

JonnieCache• 13 years ago

>Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort.

Indeed. Otherwise it wouldn't be news. Anything you see in the news is automatically not worth being afraid of. Your life will be ruined by something mundane, car accidents, cancer etc.

mcherm• 13 years ago

To me it feels much as you have described. These sorts of incidents, while the extreme cases are still rare, are increasingly common. And separate from the extreme incidents, the overall culture of infantalizing children feels quite harmful. I am expected not to send my children four houses down and across a street at the light to play by themselves at the park. My children are 10 and 7.

unimpressive2• 13 years ago

It's basically random, depending on where you live. (Another thing that hasn't changed since Paul Graham was in high school.[0]) I think that the shitty things you see on places like HN are on an upward trend, but it's always been kind of bad. If you want to get an education into how long this sort of thing has been going on, try one of the reddit threads that pops up every so often with a title like "Did you ever get expelled? What for?"

http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_y...

I especially like the anecdote about the guys school experience "77 years ago".

http://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1dksjq/16_y...

samolang2• 13 years ago

That "77 years ago" guy says he's 25 years old in another post.

rbanffy• 13 years ago

I believe we see them because they are outliers. If such events were the norm, they'd disappear in the background.

We don't read much about privacy violations in China after all.

davidw• 13 years ago

> Am I just seeing outliers here?

They are 'outrage posts' - stuff that gets attention because it makes you angry.

I do not think they are very healthy for the focus of this community because the number of outrageous injustices in the world far outweighs the number of good posts about startups and hacking. Also, they attract pretty much anyone because it's not hard to have an opinion about them, whereas "Clojure vs Erlang for a distributed system" is likely to attract a far more restricted group of people.

samolang2• 13 years ago

You have to remember that America is a large country. With so many people there are more likely to be these outrageous events that draw a lot of media attention.

rayiner9• 13 years ago

I went through public school here, and never suffered through anything worse than the general pettiness that is endemic to teachers and school administrators. There are problems with the American school system, but these outliers are not those problems. Heck, I remember in high school there was a huge protest over attempts to introduce minimum dress standards (e.g. no wife beater shirts, no spaghetti straps) in which the teachers participated in the protest.

And I don't see how this is an example of kids being "manipulated." At best this is an example of a school district not consulting its lawyer before giving a well-intentioned survey. The purpose was to try and identify kids who needed additional psychological support, not get kids to cop to their drug use so they could be prosecuted.

And you know what? It's not even clear the teacher was factually correct here. The school administrator argued that once the surveys were filled out, they would become student records (which are protected by a law called FERPA). I haven't done a close analysis of the issue, but if FERPA kept the documents from being obtained by the police, there was no 5th amendment privilege against incrimination because there was no real and tangible threat of disciplinary action. Moreover, there was no "custody" by the police which would invoke certain requirements for the purposes of the 5th amendment.

At best, the teacher was teaching his speculation about what is still unsettled law as actual fact about the 5th amendment.

carbocation2• 13 years ago

1. FERPA information can be released in a "health" or "safety" emergency.

2. Records created by a designated official for the purpose of referring violations to police are not subject to FERPA.

3. Institutions have relatively broad power to designate people as school officials with legitimate educational interests, and thereby to designate who may receive FERPA-protected records. Some sources recommend to schools that they designate police or security personnel as "school officials with legitimate educational interests" for this reason [a].

a = http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/University-Secur...

fmstephe5• 13 years ago

My concern is not with the intention behind the survey. I believe that the intention was very good. My concern is the idea that a teacher reminding students that they are not under any obligation to complete the survey represents manipulation. Teachers are in a position of real power, there are a great many situations where are expected to do what their teacher tells them. It really is very important to be allowed to remind students of those situations where they don't _have_ to obey.

I think that the legal considerations here are a distraction. I think (and I am assuming here) that the teachers actions were largely driven by his conscience. And the simple fact that arguments about this tend to circle around debates over the constitution, and other legalities, make me more worried about the United States than anything else.

nsxwolf3• 13 years ago

Dryden didn't have time to hire a constitutional lawyer and hash out all the nuances on how the 5th amendment does or doesn't apply. He believed it did. To me it's pretty clear that it should apply here.

If we're all going to restrain ourselves from asserting what we think our rights are we might as well all give up.

speeder2• 13 years ago

Those are extreme examples of normal stuff, and that have been normal since schools (not educational institutions) were invented.

The idea for schools (with that name) came from Prussia (ie: Germany when they had a king), they noticed that their soldiers were not keen in defending their government, not patriotic, and fled from the battlefield upon hearing gunfire.

Someone then invented the "Prussian Model" of education, that was named "Volksschol" (pronounced volks school), that had as objective to make children believe more into the government and turn into adults more willing to go to war for it and even impose its beliefs on other countries.

The EUA (and several other countries) quickly copied the system, all of them (including Prussia original) making it mandatory, and to the people made the justification that it was for the good of the children (and who would refuse? school in greek means "leisure", and how would you dare refuse your children to have fun with other children, learn and get some social skills?), but internal government communication always made clear the intention was prepare kids to war, the report made to the US used some phrases (I do not remember the exact quote) like: "It might be harmful to children, but we can teach them to defend republic always."

And of course, none of this is lost to the UN (that state that is a human right to mandatory schools exist, and that those schools should teach about UN as institution to foster peace and about UN interests).

EDIT: fixed word that commenter pointed (I knew the greek meaning in portuguese and translated that to english... pardon me for the lost in translation meaning)

mwcampbell• 13 years ago

Citation needed.

venomsnake3• 13 years ago

I have alternative theory - it is a bit wacky but bear with me - by giving basic literacy, proper grammar, math, history and reasoning skills we create a class of people that can enter the economy easily, can create a lot of value added and develop their full potential. By giving roughly the same start we could also do a lot to diminish the class separation.

Calling Prussia - Germany while they had a king is just wrong.

And the think with UN- it is helpless organization, kept that way, and forever will be. It is even more pathetic than League of Nations.

nemo• 13 years ago

It's true that the U.S. did model some of its public education on the Prussian model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

But there's a lot of conspiratorial libertarian agenda in your comment.

American schools existed before that (and were called "schools", it's a very old word), they were just influenced by the Prussian model. The part that Americans liked was the view that all were entitled to an education in a public school system with a universal educational curriculum, thus democratizing education. As it was adopted they modified it to suit American ideals and needs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_Uni...

Also, school (technically σχολή/"scholé") in Ancient Greek means "leisure." Since learning and study were leisure activities, the term evolved in Greek and Latin into the word for learning in the ancient world, while the English term "school" has meant a place of learning and study since the Middle Ages. Arguments from etymologies are virtually always the flashing red light of terrible history.

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

> Am I just seeing outliers here?

The news is by definition a daily compendium of outliers. If it happened all the time, it would not be news.

marmot1101• 13 years ago

This teacher is as middle America as it comes. I actually went to that school although I had a different teacher for history unfortunately. Some of this is a personality conflict as Mr. Dreyden was always a boat rocking kind of guy. Some of this is ineptitude by the school district. They weren't always the most organized bunch, and certainly not accustomed to the level of scrutiny they have now.

I don't think that the district was looking to harm to any student, but there is definitely a culture of paranoia in that particular town and within the schools. The town is located next to a small city that has had drug and gang problems in the past. As such, they've taken (often misguided) measures for years to try to prevent problems from creeping over the town line. This would be one such attempt.

The real root of many of Batavia and really all of America's internal issues are uneducated attitudes towards drugs and the drug trade. There is a huge black market going on all over the nation because of the drug laws and it fuels petty crime on up to organized crime. It brings about new 'Education' initiatives as well as a focus on school security that makes for untrusted environments. It also makes it quite easy to put children in jail for profit. All the while more and more parents call for more and more laws because they hear horror stories of loosing Junior to a drug habit. These problems will continue to pop up until we change the underlying problem.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

> Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera)

Zero tolerance means that often police are involved much earlier than they need to be, and for minor things. This is a political area, and so care needs to be taken when reading the following stories.

Here's a young child who took Lego toys to school, and who was threatened with suspension. Luckily the principal called the education board who recommended confiscation of the toy and no further action (http://gothamist.com/2010/02/03/student_nearly_suspended_ove...)

Here's another story about a 5 year old child who made a gun out of Lego. This child got a written warning. (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/5-year-old-boy...)

We don't always know the full story. For example, there might be more to the story of a child suspended for 10 days (reduced to 2) and given psychological assessment after she wanted to play with bubbles. (http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/kindergartner-suspended...)

Here's a 7 year old suspended for pretending his pencil was a gun (https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/va-7-year-old-susp...)

A boy wore a t-shirt with NRA slogans. He was suspended and arrested. (http://www.rightwingnews.com/education/after-student-is-susp...)

Here's a deaf child who must change his name, because the sign language for his name "looks like a gun" (or maybe a gang sign?) (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nebraska-school-3-y...)

Here's a teacher given a 4 day suspension without pay for endangering students by "displaying weapons". The weapons were garden tools. (http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/teacher-sues-school-...)

Here's an example of children being arrested for minor scuffles. (http://www.change.org/petitions/children-should-not-be-arres...)

LA is reviewing zero tolerance policies (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/03/local/la-me-citation...)

(http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead26.1.html)

AnIrishDuck• 13 years ago

Don't forget the seven-year-old kid that was handed a two-day suspension for "fashioning a pastry in the shape of a gun"

http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/03/update-ii-school-offer...

itafroma• 13 years ago

Previous, very lively discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578

stfu• 13 years ago

What I was wondering is this: Are there any good tutorials teaching kids their basic rights of freedom/privacy?

With the right framing this could become really popular ("How to avoid your parents snooping on you"). I guess most kids have some phase of freedom-seeking and I would be happy to donate to a campaign encouraging this mindset even more.

njharman• 13 years ago

> good tutorials teaching kids their basic rights of freedom/privacy?

Social Studies class, depending on teacher. ACLU, EFF, and the internet in general.

akama• 13 years ago

I find this whole deal very amusing because I suspect that most answers on this survey is wrong. I think we are not giving the students enough credit. I know that I was given surveys like this when in high school and I never answered them correctly, nor did any of my friends. Although the issues with punishing the teacher who is looking out for students is a problem, we should also be looking at why this survey was given in the first place. It seems like a complete waste of money and time by the school district.

squozzer• 13 years ago

Teachers should probably not dispense legal advice, but school admins should not take on the role of pop psychologists.

Were I a parent, I would expect the school system to secure my permission to ask my child questions of a personal nature. Which I probably would grant after a discussion with my child.

mwexler• 13 years ago

Source article actually points out that the teacher didn't do anything wrong in the warning, but that the warning was unnecessary and that the survey instrument was designed to protect students and give them a less risky way to get help than by talking to the police.

If the survey designers had communicated with the "administrators" of the survey (the teachers and aides), this whole flap could have been avoided.

jentulman• 13 years ago

"And students cannot incriminate themselves because, even if the district shared the information with police, police can't prosecute based on that, he said. They are only allowed to arrest students if they are harming other students, such as in a fight, or if the student is in possession of drugs or alcohol, Barshinger said."

I'm not saying that the school had anything but the best intentions, but It does give them a bit of a head start in targeting certain pupils should the school wish find a reason to remove a few bad apples.

nsxwolf3• 13 years ago

And we're all just taking his word for it, and it's not the only potential for abuse of this information. Why should we trust the school or the private company is handling these non-anonymized surveys properly? What's the chain of custody?

Could these surveys ever come up in any kind of background check?

Their answer is don't worry about it, trust us.

vaadu• 13 years ago

The administrator that said this is naive. Admitting to a crime is self-incrimination regardless if it can be held against you or not. Maybe the county or school system won't hold it against you but what stops the state or feds from prosecuting you?

You should always talk to a lawyer before admitting anything incriminating.

bcariveau2• 13 years ago

Regarding privacy concerns:

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/hottopics/ht10-28-02...

In specific:

Sec. 1061 Student Privacy, Parental Access to Information, and Administration of Certain Physical Examinations to Minors.

The No Child Left Behind Act contains a major amendment to PPRA that gives parents more rights with regard to the surveying of minor students, the collection of information from students for marketing purposes, and certain non-emergency medical examinations. PPRA has been referred to as the "Hatch Amendment" and the "Grassley Amendment" after authors of amendments to the law. Now, school officials may hear the law referred to as the "Tiahrt Amendment" after Congressman Todd Tiahrt, who introduced the changes regarding surveys to the PPRA. The statute is found in 20 U.S.C. § 1232h and the regulations (not yet updated) are found in 34 CFR Part 98.

U.S. Department of Education Surveys

Subsection (a) of the legislation was not changed. Subsection (b) added an additional category (see bold below) and made minor changes to the existing seven categories. This provision applies to surveys funded in whole or part by any program administered by the U. S. Department of Education (ED). PPRA provides:

-that schools and contractors make instructional materials available for inspection by parents if those materials will be used in connection with an ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation in which their children participate; and

-that schools and contractors obtain prior written parental consent before minor students are required to participate in any ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals information concerning:

1.political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student's parent;

2.mental and psychological problems of the student or the student's family;

3.sex behavior or attitudes;

4.illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior;

5.critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships;

6.legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers;

7.religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student's parent; or

8.income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program).

Subsections a and b of PPRA generally apply when a survey is funded, at least in part, by any program administered by the Secretary of Education.

belorn• 13 years ago

Can written parental consent be twisted to mean silent consent from not replying to an email? I remember a cookie law in EU that had some harsh consent requirement being turned to mean "silent consent by continue staying on the website". Maybe the act of letting the kid continue go to school was interpreted as consent.

venomsnake3• 13 years ago

I was speaking about consent forms with a physician friend of mine. We came to conclusion they are complete bullshit - you could always get them for whatever you want by just abusing the information asymmetry and framing the questions.

I doubt that there forms are much more than legal covering ass.

Depending on the place in the US by asking - don't you want to know if your kid is surrounded by gays/muslims/junkies/conservatives/random boogiemans/ in school - just sign here you probably could get them easily. So it is a weak protection at best.

btilly• 13 years ago

Is there any chance that this survey was ED funded? If so then I'd like to see the school hit with the fact that the materials have not been made available for inspection by parents, and the fact that there are many parents who never gave written consent.

tokenadult3• 13 years ago

I am on record in the earlier thread about this incident

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777578

saying that the first news report sounded like John Dryden is an unusually thoughtful social studies teacher, and that he was just relating the general concepts that he is hired to teach his students to a real-world situation facing the students. Even after reading the follow-up report submitted to open this thread, I'm not at all sure that Dryden was trying to undermine the survey process. Here's a key passage from the middle of the story submitted here:

"Dryden, a social studies teacher, told three of his classes that they had a Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate themselves when they took a social-emotional learning survey April 18. Some of the 34 questions asked students about their drug and alcohol use, as well as about their emotions. Their names were on the surveys, as it was intended to identify students who could use help, according to school district officials. Those whose answers raised red flags were called in to the school's student services workers, including social workers and counselors.

"Barshinger said there was no Fifth Amendment issue, for several reasons. Once students' names were on them, he said, they would have become student records and subject to student privacy laws. And students cannot incriminate themselves because, even if the district shared the information with police, police can't prosecute based on that, he said. They are only allowed to arrest students if they are harming other students, such as in a fight, or if the student is in possession of drugs or alcohol, Barshinger said.

"Board president Cathy Dremel, speaking on behalf of the board, said Dryden 'mischaracterized' the efforts of fellow teachers and administrators, some of who had worked on a committee for a year to find a survey instrument that would assess students' risky behavior.

"'The board will not support any employees giving students false impressions about those who come here every day' to work for their best interests, she said."

I am a lawyer by training. I don't actively practice law currently, but I stay alert to the law related to K-12 education, which was my motivation for studying law. In my experience, school district officials are often VERY BADLY advised on what the law is, and their default assumption is that they can do what they want, and hide what they are trying to do from parents who have the actual legal authority to guide their children's educations. I wouldn't take these kinds of statement from the district superintendent or from the school board president as the last word on what the legal consequences of the student survey might be.

I think another Hacker News participant said in the earlier thread that he lives in the district and would report on what he observed at the school board meeting about the survey. I'm not completely sure that this latest news story, which fills in more details that weren't reported in the first story, settles the issue of whether or not teacher Dryden's behavior was appropriate under the circumstances.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

it was intended to identify students who could use help

"We're from the government and we're here to help you" coupled with "you have nothing to hide, right?" seems an unwise combination.

rayiner9• 13 years ago

The skepticism is mostly inappropriate in the context of public education. It is the purpose of public school educators to help their kids, and that often requires disclosure of information that would not be required of an adult in the same situation.

japhyr• 13 years ago

I am a high school teacher, and I've been working with at-risk students my entire career. I have always paid attention to the surveys I am asked to administer to students.

If I were asked to administer this survey, I would have the same red flags. A survey asking these kinds of questions, with names on them, is pretty serious and students deserve to know what is going to be done with the results of such a survey. They also need to know they have the right to make their own decisions about how much personal information to share.

As a teacher, I would expect this kind of survey to be pretty heavily front-loaded. So either the administration did not prepare staff well enough about administering this survey, or this teacher was not paying attention when it was discussed ahead of time.

Many people in education are afraid of being perfectly honest with students. We need more openness in education, not less.

warfangle2• 13 years ago

What I think is rather ridiculous is the reliance on survey methodology to assess drug/alcohol abuse among the student body.

Questions about drugs/alcohol/sex on student surveys are typically rather inaccurate.

greenyoda2• 13 years ago

Yeah, the smarter kids know that their best option is to not volunteer that kind of information, which ensures that the survey only represents the fraction of the students who are naively trusting of the school administrators.

nsxwolf3• 13 years ago

I posted my observations from last night in the other thread. Overall what impressed me was two things:

- Dryden's supporters came from everywhere on the political spectrum

- Kids were really smart and really amped up about their rights

Sadly, I was pretty sure Dryden's censure was a forgone conclusion while watching the administrators stare blankly across the room while people poured their hearts out.

Nimi• 13 years ago

Link for nsxwolf's observations (thanks for posting!):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5786439

jstalin2• 13 years ago

Fellow lawyer here. I'm not a criminal attorney, but I agree that the superintendent's word shouldn't be taken as the last word.

Although he might be strictly correct as it pertains to police not being able to prosecute based on the surveys alone, they certainly could subpoena the survey results if a student were to get in trouble in the future. A student's statement could be used against him for another related or even unrelated crime.

Imagine being on the stand and the prosecutor pulls out this sheet and says, "you just said you've never used any drugs before, but this survey you filled out says that you did. Are you lying now or were you lying then?"

It seems it would be admissible as non-hearsay because it's a statement of a party opponent under FRE 801.

bcariveau2• 13 years ago

Video of school board vote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Is_Awj4Pvg

andyl• 13 years ago

Many/most of the comments here reflect a general mistrust towards the administration, questioning motives or competence.

I've been the parent of a troubled kid. In that time, I worked closely with our school administration, who could not have been more helpful and smart.

If I lived in that school district, I would welcome efforts to address drug/alcohol/emotional issues. Maybe the survey wasn't perfectly done. But I don't see evidence that anyone was actually harmed by it.

In my experience working with sensitive information, educators have generally done the right thing, for the right reasons.

steamer25• 13 years ago

To me the act of disciplining the teacher makes the very case they're alleging that he portrayed. I.e., "the administration around here is kinda jumpy and will crack down on the slightest appearance of infraction--even if the right course of action is unclear or controversial."

Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

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