Litigation Field Day

Angie Morgan, a third-grade teacher in Hamilton Southeastern Schools in Indiana, was once put in a choke hold by one of her students.

“I knew I could get out of it, but the fear of legal ramifications if something happened to the child was there in my head the whole time,” she told the Senate Education and Career Services in a recent testimony.

Morgan is one of many Indiana teachers and school officials supporting Senate Bill 335, designed to cut down on frivolous litigation by providing qualified immunity for teachers’ disciplinary actions “if the action was taken in good faith and is a reasonable action” under the school’s disciplinary policy. Many feel that the threat of lawsuits in schools has gotten so bad that it has left teachers walking on eggshells – eggshells making them at times unable to enact a working level of discipline such that all are able to maintain a reasonable level of focus in the classroom.

Clearly the aim of public schools is to provide the best education possible for children. But when students and teachers alike are increasingly coming to a tacit understanding that the enforcement of rules is getting trickier, there is effectively only so much that can be done to maintain control of the students. In turn, the resulting increase of “distractions” associated with schools detracts from a conducive learning environment and leaves teachers feeling paralyzed in attempts to regain control.

And in many cases, a teacher’s “paralysis” has led to serious physical harm. If a fight breaks out in a high school hallway, any nearby authority figure’s mind freezes: On one hand, the instinct is to break up the fight in hopes of preventing any students from coming to harm, but on the other hand, she doesn’t want to get sued. These two opposing extremes can lead to serious trouble in cases where, jumping in on instinct, an official finds herself in the thick of a physical conflict when litigation worries kick in, obfuscating what should be a split-second decision as to what to do to keep the students – and herself – safe.

Certainly being in the midst of a fight with an “I can’t hit back” clause is not a good place to be, especially for aging teachers. In fact, just last week, a counselor at Jeffersonville High School in southern Indiana attempting to stop a fight was injured badly enough to require treatment at a nearby hospital.

  And given current legal trends, that situation could feasibly pose a risk of either the school system or the counselor himself getting sued, if the students’ parents were astute enough in finding a prosecutor willing to take the case.

Are these really the dynamics we want at work in our schools? The Indiana State Legislature resoundingly says no. The proposed bill has received almost unanimous support from both sides of the floor, with additional enthusiasm from Gov. Mitch Daniels, Attorney General Greg Zoeller and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett.

Frankly, it’s hard to imagine how this could be a bad thing. When a teacher is too worried about getting sued to get herself out of a choke hold in her own classroom, surely we can safely accept this as an indicator of teachers need for more legal protection.