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2-27-12 Education Issues in the News
Star Ledger - From Cranford to Ohio, school districts weigh disciplining teens for off-campus misbehavior

NJ Spotlight - Cerf Will Pay to See Progress on School Reform Agenda…New Innovation Fund will reward schools for making goals and hitting targets

Star Ledger - From Cranford to Ohio, school districts weigh disciplining teens for off-campus misbehavior

Published: Sunday, February 26, 2012, 6:45 AM Updated: Sunday, February 26, 2012, 3:00 PM By Julia Terruso/The Star-LedgerThe Star-Ledger

CRANFORD — The two-story home on a quiet, residential street in Cranford looked more like a fraternity house when police arrived on New Year’s Eve. Close to 50 teenagers hovered over beer kegs and a few rowdy guests got into a fight, prompting the 911 call.

When officers busted the party two hours before midnight, they arrested 47 kids — mostly Cranford High School students.

The students were charged with underage drinking or possession of alcohol and issued citations to appear in municipal court.

Now Cranford, like several other school districts around the state, is considering disciplining students for their off-campus transgressions, even though such a policy may spark lawsuits from parents and free-speech advocates. A similar off-campus policy at a Bergen County school is being debated in the New Jersey courts.

High schools around the country have had to deal with these incidents for decades, but social network sites are making it easier for school officials to nab teenage culprits.

Last month, three dozen students at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md., were suspended from extracurricular activities after Facebook posts confirmed school gossip about a house party where there was alcohol.

A photograph taken at a wedding was the undoing of 16-year-old Breanne Vargo of Middlefield, Ohio. The high-school cheerleader was suspended after the picture, in which she is holding what appears to be an alcoholic beverage, appeared on Facebook. Breanne’s mother, who was at the wedding, claimed the photo was a stunt in which Breanne switched drinks with her 22-year-old sister only to make a toast for the camera.

"Drugs and alcohol are impacting students even more than in previous generations, and a lot of parents want the schools to step up to the plate and take a role in helping fight against it," said Mike Yaple of the New Jersey Education Law Center.

"You throw in issues like cyberbullying and the schools are being expected to address student activity even if it doesn’t occur on school grounds," Yaple said.

Wayne Hills officials addressed the issue last fall when nine football players were suspended from extracurricular activities at the Passaic County high school after they allegedly assaulted students from a rival school off-campus. The board of education upheld the suspension and the state’s education commissioner denied a request for emergent relief, excluding the players from the school’s championship game.

A NATIONWIDE ISSUE

The issue is national in scope, with districts in Ohio, Indiana and Oregon facing similar circumstances that have led to lawsuits in recent years. In Bergen County, five students were bumped from clubs and sports last year after police said they were drinking and gave their names to principals.

"In every small-town USA, these things happen," said Cranford police spokesman Lt. James Wozniak. "For the kids, it’s almost a rite of passage. But it has become such a problem that the statutes of New Jersey aren’t strong enough to provide us an avenue of thwarting these kids’ drinking."

Some administrators and parents say school district intervention off school grounds is a good thing and a way to reach kids. But critics say the policies infringe on parental rights and go too far. They point to a state administrative code that only allows schools to discipline students for off-campus infractions that directly affect the school.

When a new schools superintendent arrived in Haddonfield in 2006 and found that weekend underage drinking parties were widely accepted by the community, he instituted a 24/7 drug and alcohol policy. Any student who got in trouble, even off campus, would be subject not only to arrest but suspension from after-school activities. As if to underscore the problem, a short time later two students died from alcohol poisoning and teens at an out-of-control house party sprayed urine on furniture and defecated in a piano.

Between 2006 and 2010, more than 70 Haddonfield students were disciplined, including two 15-year-old girls who were arrested for underage drinking at separate parties and subsequently suspended from extracurricular activities. A lawyer representing the parents of the girls sued the school board arguing that the duplication of punishment was unconstitutional. The case is still making its way through the courts.

Some legal experts say it is harder to suspend a student from school for, say, stabbing another person, than it is to suspend a student from extracurricular activities for underage drinking. The reason: Education is a constitutional right; sports and after-school activities are privileges, and therefore not protected by the Constitution.

The Sixth Circuit Court, which is just one step below the U.S. Supreme Court, said as much in 1980 when it upheld an Ohio school district’s right to kick a student off the cheerleading squad without a hearing or the right of appeal.

Under Cranford’s original drug- and alcohol-prevention program, students who faced police charges or were found to be intoxicated or in possession of alcohol or drugs were suspended from playing sports or participating in after-school clubs — regardless of where the activity took place.

The town softened, though. After a 2010 ruling by a judge who found a similar 24/7 program in the Ramapo Indian Hills school district was overly harsh and removed the district’s right to apply sanctions to off-campus activities, Cranford decided to rethink its policy.

Now they’re thinking again.

"I want every available influence — parental, school and societal laws — brought to bear for the safety of my child and her schoolmates," said Cranford school board member Michael Caulfield. "So, if the threat of losing the ability to play on a school team or participate in a club or activity will keep a Cranford High School student from drinking alcohol or providing alcohol to another student, I say that’s good."

A LEGAL QUANDRY

The Ramapo Indian Hills case, currently before an appeals court, is the most recent legal action in the state dealing with the issue. The district was sued in 2010 over its policy, which barred students caught using illegal drugs or alcohol, on or off school property, from extracurricular activities.

A state administrative law judge ruled the policy must include language requiring a nexus between the off-campus behavior and the school. The district revised its policy and appealed, said its attorney, Stephen Fogarty.

Legally, there has to be a connection to the school to expel or suspend a student, said Elizabeth Athos, an attorney with the New Jersey Law Center. But extracurricular activities are often considered privileges and the laws surrounding them can be a bit more murky.

Ed Barocas, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, said extracurriculars are no exception to the law.

"If I get into a fight with a student on school grounds that’s one thing," Barocas said, "but if I’m away at summer camp and I get into a fight, that school should have no hand in whether I can play basketball in the fall."

Cranford has formed a committee to look into reinstating its program holding kids responsible for their behavior regardless of where they are. The change is expected to be voted on this month.

STUDENTS AND PARENTS DISAGREE

Parents and students interviewed on their way to a recent prom-safety presentation at Cranford High School had mixed feelings on the issue.

Marisol Rosario, whose son is a senior, said parents should be disciplining their children, "but if a coach sees a player getting out of line more and more often, he’s probably the best person to step in."

Another parent, Amy Dwischusen, was all for school district intervention.

"When we were kids, other parents had no problem yelling at you," said Dwischusen, who has a senior and a sophomore at the school. "Today, you watch your own kids and keep out of other people’s business. Plus, parents tend to see their students as incapable of doing any harm. The school has the benefit of a wider lens."

Student Heather Hirtzel comes down on the side of a stricter policy.

"You hear about freshman drinking," said Hirtzel, a senior on the girls soccer team. "And I think without discipline it stays a problem."

 

NJ Spotlight - Cerf Will Pay to See Progress on School Reform Agenda…New Innovation Fund will reward schools for making goals and hitting targets

By John Mooney, February 27, 2012 in Education|1 Comment

Can financial rewards help bring about change in New Jersey's public schools? Apparently, the Christie administration thinks so.

In the latest move to use money as an incentive, Gov. Chris Christie's administration has added to its new school funding plan a multimillion dollar program to reward schools and districts that meet specific goals and implement targeted reforms.

Acting education commissioner Chris Cerf outlined the new "Innovation Fund" in last week's 83-page report on school funding, which serves as the basis of Christie's proposed system for distributing state aid to schools next year and beyond.

Under Cerf's plan, the Innovation Fund would serve two functions.

First, it would provide dollar rewards to schools that make specific achievement gains, such as the largest improvement in fourth-grade reading scores for low-income students or the biggest jump in graduation rates.

Second, it would serve as the central pool of funds for a competitive grant process. Schools would apply for specific projects and programs that meet the Christie administration's reform agenda for raising achievement, including greater teacher accountability or strategies for helping the very lowest-performing schools.

"For the first time in New Jersey's history, state education aid would be merit-based," Cerf wrote in the report.

That is an overstatement, since the vast bulk of more than $7 billion in state aid will remain enrollment- and needs-based. But Cerf said $50 million would be allotted to the Innovation Fund, starting in 2013. The fund is not included in Christie's budget presented last week, but instead would presumably be part of his fiscal 2014 budget.

The program is a continuation of the administration's new push to provide dollar incentives to schools to make gains and adopt preferred policies. It is an approach that has gained favor in the federal education policy under the Race to the Top competitions, which gave money to states to implement specific reform policies favored by President Obama and his administration.

New Jersey itself has been part of that process, last week announcing separately it would provide $19 million of its recent Race to the Top grant to districts that meet specific program goals, including teacher evaluation and curriculum training. More than 370 districts could to tap into the funds, from a few thousand dollars in smaller districts to more than a million in large ones like Newark, Paterson, and Jersey City.

But even before New Jersey won the federal grant, Cerf had been talking about a state-level competition for New Jersey that is akin to Race to the Top. Earlier this month, he announced a $1 million reward program for special education programs that showed the greatest achievement gains last year. Twelve districts received awards of up to $100,000.

In addition, the state's new accountability system will include a category of Reward Schools, in which the very best performing high-poverty schools could receive up to $100,000.

The Innovation Fund takes it one step further. "The idea of the Innovation Fund is to turbo-charge certain reforms," Cerf said this weekend. "Historically we have put money out without any expectations of success, and some ways have even rewarded failure by providing more money."

Cerf said that he hopes that the new Innovation Fund helps motivate not just local gains and reforms, but ones that can be spread statewide.

"New Jersey would quickly become a laboratory for reform, where the Department of Education, as well as all 600 school districts, had a common purpose: identifying reforms that work," he wrote in his report.

Starting in the next school year, districts could apply to the state for funds to implement specific reforms based on Christie's priorities, including better use of data, improved educator quality, strategies for turning around low-performing schools, and closing the achievement gap. The awards would come at the end of the school year, in the summer and fall of 2013.

The grants could be for new ideas or established ones that could potentially be scaled up. Depending on their potential impact, the sums would be capped at different levels.

Others said they will be watching closely, as the federal Race to the Top competition has introduced both positive lessons and cautious notes.

Race to the Top has been "very effective at driving change -- pushing states to do things they otherwise were reluctant to do," said Patrick McGuinn, an associate professor of politics at Drew University who has studied federal education policy. "Teacher evaluation and tenure reform being the best example of this."

"But we are already seeing how hard it is to sustain the political will to see these reforms through," he said. "That effective implementation is both critical and very, very difficult."