For what it’s worth, I took a moment to object to the school board decision to renew their non-contract contract with the law firm of Kehl, Katize & Simon. I could have cited many reasons but I focused on the failure of Kehl, Katzie to properly advise the school board on their legal obligations to develop and promulgate the Code of Conduct for the school district.
As we have reported previously, the school district has been distributing a heavily redacted version of the Code of Conduct for years. The version given to parents leaves out information about the due process rights of students. As a result, students are routinely disciplined without giving parents the right to challenge the decision, to request a hearing, to call and question witnesses. As page 11 of the FULL Code of Conduct makes clear, parents and students have all sorts of rights, all of which are routinely denied because (a) most administrators in the district do not even know that parents and students have these rights; (b) few parents are knowledgeable about due process rights. At some point you can expect to see a very large class-action lawsuit against the district for violating the civil rights of students suspended or expelled by the school district. What will make it worse is that minority students are disproportionately subject to disciplinary action so there will be an added lawyer of civil rights violations for many of the families that join the class action lawsuit.
Multi-million dollar custodian settlement
And maybe they could have done a better job on the multi-million dollar settlement for the custodian. Why not open the contract for other bidders?