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1,000 school days saved!
Katie Hartman 3L
A dozen public school students were in school for 1,000 days when they otherwise would have been excluded as a result of the work of the Children’s Education Law Clinic. That’s the number of days of proposed suspension from school that were saved when the law students at the Clinic took up their cases and represented them in school suspension hearings this year.
“Even if students have broken a school rule, long suspensions are usually counterproductive,” commented Jane Wettach, Director of the Children’s Education Law Clinic. “Lots of research shows that students who are suspended from school for long periods of time are more likely to lose their connection with the learning process and drop out, and there’s no research that links long suspensions with improved behavior,” she said. “Our goal at the Clinic is to help as many students as we can get back to class so they can reconnect with their education.”
When facing a long-term suspension, which is defined as anything longer than 10 school days, a student has the right to a hearing. Students can be represented by an attorney — or in the case of clients of CELC, a law student certified to practice under state bar rules — to assist in the presentation of the case. Following the hearing, the proposed suspension is reviewed by the Superintendent of the school district and can be appealed to the Board of Education.
In most of the Clinic’s cases, the student did not deny having violated school policy, but found the length of the suspension to be excessive. Thus, in most cases, the task for the law student representative was to present both the facts of the incident, and the student, in the best light possible. In nearly every case the Clinic took on, the law student was successful in that effort.
One ninth grade student, Iran, was represented by 3L Katie Hartman during the fall semester. Her client had gotten into a fist fight with another student on the sidewalk outside of the school during the second week of class. His brother intervened to try to break up the fight. No one was hurt and it lasted only a few minutes, but the principal decided the student should be excluded for the rest of the school year because the fight was characterized as a “multiple on one” incident. After the hearing, the Superintendent approved the year-long suspension. Katie brought the case before the Board of Education, arguing that excluding a student for an entire year of school for participation in a single fist fight, in which no injuries occurred, no classes were disrupted, and no unwilling participants were involved, was grossly disproportionate to the offense. The Board agreed, reducing the suspension to the “time served.” Iran was permitted back in school for the remaining 100 days of the school year.
Another case involved A.P., a 12-year-old boy who faced expulsion from school for 365 days, charged with having a firearm at school. The facts, as discovered by 2L Heather Dambly, were that A.P. found a gun in some bushes near his house. Some older boys talked him into showing them the gun, and the boys got together on a Saturday night in the neighborhood. Looking for an open place to experiment with shooting it into the air where no one would get hurt, the boys ended up on an elementary school playground. A.P. helped hold the gun straight up while another boy pulled the trigger.
Amy Roy 2L
After winning a similar case for her 7th grade client, 2L Amy Roy commented, “I was just so thrilled that I had a big part in making this happen. Had it not be for our Clinic, Andre would likely have remained out of school for the rest of the school year. And while it may not seem like the biggest deal in the world, I’m pretty sure it was to my client that day.”
Howrey Law Firm Supports Summer Fellowship for Children’s Education Law Clinic
Sonja Ralson Elder JD/MPP '09
First year student, Sonja Ralston Elder (JD/MPP, ‘09) was selected as the recipient of the 2006 Howrey HELPS (Howrey Externs for Legal Pro bono Service) Summer Fellowship. She will work at the Children’s Education Law Clinic, located in the new wing of the Law School. Before coming to Duke in the fall of 2005, Ralston Elder spent two years as a corps member in Teach For America teaching bilingual first grade in Richmond, CA, an economically depressed urban center near San Francisco. “Being a teacher really opened my eyes to how the inequities of our nation affect children,” she says; “they are often the hardest hit.” Determined to use her legal training to improve the education situation for children in low-wealth areas, she notes that this summer experience offers her a unique opportunity for hands-on training: “This is one very few education law opportunities for first year students in the whole country, and I feel very fortunate to be working here, especially because of the support from Howrey.”
During her ten week stint at the Clinic, Ralston Elder will manage cases, interview clients, maintain the files, and complete a number of special projects including an annual survey of client satisfaction and research on solutions to rising suspension rates in North Carolina public schools. Clinic Director Jane Wettach is very pleased to have this support from the Howrey firm. “It means a great deal to the clients we serve to have staff throughout the summer,” she said. In addition to the interesting work, Ralston Elder notes that the Clinic is a great place to work because the professors are accustomed to working with students and provide excellent feedback and advice.
Howrey LLP of Houston, Texas, created the annual $5,000 fellowship for a summer internship at The Children’s Education Law Clinic in 2005. The law firm has a significant commitment to pro bono, providing a number of HELPS fellowships to first year students who are committed to careers in public interest law. The firm hopes that the summer internships will help interested students pursue public interest jobs after they graduate.
Caption for picture: 1L Sonja Ralston Elder is the recipient of the 2006 HELPS award.
Clinic Defends Student Protestors
Amy Edwards '07
The Children’s Education Law Clinic, together with the North Carolina Justice Center in Raleigh, successfully represented two high school students suspended from school for their participation in a student protest of immigration law changes being debated in Congress. As a result of the representation of the two students, all thirty students who participated in the protest were permitted to return to school before the expiration of their original ten-day suspensions. Although the Clinic and the Justice Center prepared a civil rights lawsuit, the case was settled hours before the suit was to be filed.
“What was so remarkable to me was how principled the protest was: this was not a bunch of kids playing hooky or causing mayhem; these students walked out of the school calmly and quietly, they marched for ten miles (all the way to the courthouse and back), and even after they were suspended, the very next day, they were out there marching again,” said Children’s Education Law Clinic student Amy Edwards ‘07, who worked on the case. “I felt very fortunate to be involved in this case: it was a great reminder of why I came to law school.”
On March 29, 2006 a group of Hispanic students at Smithfield-Selma High School organized a school walk-out to join the nationwide movement to protest the proposed changes to federal immigration laws, including a change that would have made it a criminal offense to assist an illegal immigrant. Approximately 30 students walked out of school in the middle of the day, and marched to the courthouse displaying signs expressing their views. The students left the campus between classes and did not disrupt any activities at school. The students missed two class periods.
The principal of the school stated that he told the students not to leave, but they did so anyway. As a result, he issued ten-day suspensions for all of them. The usual suspension for skipping school is a maximum of three days for a first offense. According to the students, a police officer who escorted the protestors informed them that the principal suspended them all while they were out walking, and that they would be considered trespassers if they returned to the school grounds. This left many of them without transportation home, as they were expecting to ride the school bus.
One student initially came forward wanting to challenge the legality of the suspensions. The Clinic wrote a demand letter to the principal, alleging that the suspension had violated the student’s constitutional rights. In response, the principal allowed the student to return to school. Hearing of that student’s success, a second student came forward asking for legal representation. At that point, the Clinic and the Justice Center began preparing the lawsuit, alleging both due process and First Amendment violations. Upon being threatened with the lawsuit, the school officials agreed to end the suspensions of all thirty students who had been affected.
“I was elated when the first student’s suspension was rescinded, but in a way, it was bitter sweet: I couldn’t help but think, ‘What about the other twenty-nine?’ It seems I may have underestimated the power of precedent,” Edwards added.
“I found the decision to suspend the students for that length of time truly ironic,” commented Jane Wettach, director of the Children’s Education Law Clinic. “In 10th grade Civics, the students are supposed to learn about the roles that citizens can take in promoting or inhibiting change through political action and participate in civic life, politics, and government, For the students to be severely punished for doing exactly that is not only short-sighted but counterproductive. In my view, the school missed a golden teaching moment. It could have used the student walk-out as a catalyst for teaching about protest movements from history, the legislative process, as well as immigration policy. Instead, it just deprived the kids of their education.”
A number of the Clinic students had the opportunity to contribute to the case, most doing research for the lawsuit. The claims that would have been included in the case, had it been filed, involved deprivation of due process and violations of the right of free expression.
