PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Gavels & Gowns - What’s Next in VA K-12 Education? An Interview with Scott Brabrand, Executive Director of VASS
Podcast: A Conversation with Andy Rotherham on Hot Topics in Education for 2023
The Transformation of Education in Florida
School District Update Podcast: Hiring H-1B Teachers in 2021-2022
COVID-19: New York Travel Guidance, Related Disability FAQs, Reopening/Operating Procedures, School District Update
They Said What? First Amendment Issues in 2020
COVID School Landscape
Education Data Privacy and Security Laws: Best Practices for School Districts
Leadership in the Time of COVID
Nota Bene Episode 90: U.S. Q3 Check In: Stimulus, Relief, Election, and Direction with Elizabeth Frazee and Jonathan Meyer
Top 10 Actions (or Inactions), that Spur Special Education Impartial Hearing Requests for School Districts
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which governs federal districts in the West/Northwest, recently held that a California school board member violated the First Amendment when blocking users’ ability to access...more
Recently, the Ninth Circuit had the opportunity to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s test laid out in Lindke v. Freed (March 2024) to determine whether a public official’s use of social media is state action subject to First...more
Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal (“Fifth DCA”) recently determined the Duval County School Board erred when it disciplined a teacher for politically-charged social media posts made in the run-up to the 2020...more
Social media has made it much easier to disseminate hurtful criticisms about teachers, principals, superintendents and even board of education members, and the good people of Nutmeg are no exception....more
Ohio Senate Bill 206, (SB 206) introduced in 2024, calls for students who post threatening content on social media to be punished with expulsion from school for up to 180 days. The bill defines the proposed prohibited conduct...more
Tech Vendors and Cybersecurity – Are They Responsible? It has long been recommended that when you contract with a technology vendor that you include an indemnity clause in the contract wherein the vendor will indemnify you...more
Cent. Valley Sch. Dist. v. Cent. Valley Educ. Ass’n, 2022 Pa. Commw. Unpub. LEXIS 482 (Pa. Commw. Ct., Nov. 7, 2022). In an unpublished opinion the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania upheld the decisions of an arbitrator and...more
A recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision held that school officials did not violate students’ First Amendment rights when disciplining them for off-campus social media posts that amounted to severe harassment...more
In J.S. by M.S. v. Manheim Township School District, 263 A.3d 295 (Pa. 2021), Pennsylvania’s highest court took a step toward clarifying the sticky issue of school districts’ ability to discipline students for off-campus...more
Social media has transformed how we interact online and engage with our communities with the average person spending over six hours a day online. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an even greater increase...more
A presidential election like no other in history, a global pandemic causing an unprecedented economic and emotional toll on our communities, and a remote learning environment where virtual communication reigns, whether in the...more
We have previously discussed the tension between a school district’s discipline for social media posts and the protections of the First Amendment. Indeed, as the United States Supreme Court said in Tinker v. Des Moines...more
After the February 14 tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students began to organize like rarely before to protest gun violence in schools. Protests such as school walk-outs and “die-ins”...more
Recent amendments to Illinois law draw back on rights of post-secondary, secondary, and elementary schools to request or require access to student social networking accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. School districts and...more
In a recent case, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit joined four other circuits in recognizing the right of school districts to discipline students for at least some off-campus, online speech if the speech reasonably...more
In a recent decision, Elonis v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court held that in order to convict a man for alleged threats made against his wife on Facebook, the prosecutor must show some level of intent. It was not enough...more