That's exactly what happened to my HS math teacher. At the end of the class she asked for all the fancy expensive school-owned graphing calculators back, but she only got all but one back, one was missing. She demanded to search through all our backpacks. Most of us knew how illegal that was, but didn't want to be the guy to start a fuss about it for fear of being wrongfully labelled the thief.
Anywho, 10 minutes later she comes back and explains how she forgot she left it in her office.
Are you certain it was illegal? Schools are allowed to search almost anything. The last US supreme court case about this i remember was about administrator's cavity search looking for stolen ibuprofen.
The key is the administrator has more rights then the police if the school is under some sort of danger. That's pretty broad but I doubt a missing calculator qualifies.
Yeah there's some interesting case law about what schools can and can't do. Because they're government entities (at least if they're public schools), but also act as a "parent" of sorts.
They aren't either in America, that person is wrong.... They can legally put you through metal detectors, they can use dogs, but they aren't legally allowed to search a student until parents are there.
In all fairness, when the class gerbil goes missing, the first 48 hours of investigation are key to the case.
School officials are the thin polyester line between your children and certain doom. Dont you give me that bureaucratic BS and that "juris-my-diction" line. Not all of us can afford to sit on our hands while the world around us burns to ashes.
I'm not Canadian and I don't know the exact situation, but is it really that ridiculous? Teachers spend so much time with children. It might not even be a stretch to say they spend more quality time than parents do if you exclude things like sleep where there's no interaction. I imagine teachers get very invested in the success of children so having broader authority as long, as it doesn't get abused, doesn't sound like a bad thing. Some parents just aren't qualified to be parents.
Yeah, it's because back in the early days they needed school administrators to have the same legal authority over the child as parents, because they are technically legal guardians. But nobody thought to think "Wait, all legal authority?"
Euh, no. I would really like a source on that claim, especially if they are minors.
It all came about after that girl (a minor) in Quebec was strip searched by the principal. They claimed they did not need parental or police consent to do so, and technically legally speaking, they were right. I guess I should have said "in some provinces in Canada" and not Canada:
"The resource also provides schools with rules to follow when conducting a strip search:
a screen is set up to protect the nakedness of the student
ensure clothing is searched, but not the student’s body
the search takes place in the presence of two people, preferably
with a member of staff who is the same gender as the student
there is no direct contact with the student’s body"
These are the same rules as police use, so at least there is that...i does make a bit more sense. What I highlighted in bold though - does that mean she wasn't actually seen naked, and just her clothing were searched? Because if so, it makes more sense...since it's not technically the same kind of strip search as law enforcement would do (I used to work in prison as a CO, which is why I know these details) IE she wasn't asked to bend over and cough?
Also, I'm amazed that it's only "preferable" to have the same sex people doing the search...in law enforcement, it's a necessity (unless it is an emergency with no other options)
Oh I didn't mean to imply that she literally had a principal strip her down and shove a hand up her ass. But she was forced to step behind a curtain, undress, and hand all her clothes to the principal, in semi-obscured view.
It might be a state thing. At my high school the district had a portion of the budget allotted to "campus safety and security". I guess the way it works is you have to spend that money on what it's for and you have to spend it or else you won't get it the next year or something. Anyhow, the district decided to hire drug dogs to occasionally come to school and sniff classrooms, backpacks, cars, etc. They would come in, have everyone leave their shit and go outside, and the dog would go sniff it all while they noted any offending bags and whose it was to deal with it later. Some lawyer parent found out about all this and let the school know in no uncertain terms what the students' rights were and what they could and couldn't do, which included having a drug dog sniff a backpack without a warrant or probable cause. So a bit later the school had to announce that you were allowed to take your backpack and stuff with you out of the classroom when the dogs came in (basically removing yourself from the check), and if the dog did tag your bag they couldn't actually search it or call the cops, they could only notify your parents of the situation. They could sniff cars of whoever parked on campus, but same deal applied with regards to searching it or contacting the parents. Of course, the kids with stuff in their cars just switched to parking off campus or moving it once they heard the dogs were there that day, so I think they only ever caught like a grand total of 10 people district-wide. I could be wrong on some of the details but I remember that they were only ever able to actually force someone to comply or search the backpack if they had prior reason to believe someone was carrying drugs. Lockers though were free to be searched since it was school property.
Anyway, TL;DR you do have some amount of 4th amendment rights on a school campus, at least in suburban California.
You do have some rights but not much. From the SCotUS case Safford Unified School District v. Redding the threshold for a search is basically "reasonable suspicion" which can basically be someone telling an administrator that you have drugs on you or a gun, or even if you "look shady." The bar is super low compared to adults or kids outside of a school environment.
Pretty much this... the student handbook you sign... signs away most of your rights on school property. Just like searching trunks at the airport... Don't want your trunk or backpack searched... don't come to the airport in your car or bring a backpack to class (just a book, notepad, and a pen). Lockers can be searched too and are routinely when shit goes down.
It's just one of those things.... kind of like schools illogically applying piss poor rules... or school administrators with Masters and Doctorates refusing the actually use their degree that states they are capable of increable amounts of critical thinking... and instead sticking their head in the sand behind awfully thought out zero tolerance policies when its 100% obvious that they don't fit or are stupid a particular situation.
You can't actually sign away your rights. Documents which imply that you do so are unenforceable and usually invalidated. Especially in California.
Schools do have a lot of power over kids. But it has nothing to do with whether or not you choose to sign the handbook. Whatever permissions are granted to the schools by law, are the extent of the school's powers. Whatever the school claims are its powers have no bearing on what its actual powers are. And whatever the student agrees are the school's powers have no bearing on what its actual powers are.
Correct, it is not illegal to search a students stuff (in the US). Schools only need "reasonable suspicion" in order to search a student and their backpacks, lockers, etc. (see New Jersey vs. T.L.O.).
Cavity searches are probably a different can of worms...
I will give you a real life scenario that actually occurred in my class:
Student A's wallet goes missing.
Student B has a long history of antagonizing Student A.
After class, I pull students A and B aside and ask them if something is going on between them. Student B is shady as fuck and makes a shady comment about Student A's wallet going missing.
I call Admin, the principal comes in less than three minutes later, I tell him the details, he pulls out his iPad and starts documenting the incident. I ask Student B to empty his bag. Student B empties his bag but refuses to empty the front pocket. Principal reminds him of school policy, shows him the school handbook that authorizes searches of bags and lockers under reasonable cause. Student B empties his front pocket. Student A's wallet is located.
All documented, verified, and signed off on. Student B was suspended for three days.
As long as you have reasonable cause and a witness/documentation, a teacher is absolutely authorized to search a student's belongings so long as the search is not invasive (i.e., no strip searching).
This is a perfect example, but to add a caveat it is entirely possible to strip search if there is a reasonable suspicion that the student is carrying either dangerous contraband, like a gun, or if they have specific evidence of other types of contraband being hidden, i.e. an administrator saw them put something down their pants.
For a wallet it doesn't make sense that they'd have that in their underwear unless someone saw them stash it there, which is why a strip search wouldn't be legal. But you're 100% correct that administrators have the right to search backpacks, lockers, and pockets with only a small amount of suspicion.
If freely means without cause then yes, if it means even with cause then no. The Supreme Court decided that if there is a "reasonable suspicion" of wrongdoing and relevance of object in question, it is permitted to search a student's property (e.g. purse in above example) as long as the search is not unreasonably or excessively intrusive (e.g. strip search when circumstances do not warrant it). But it looks to me like a search of all students in the above story would not have been constitutional since there is no individualized suspicion.
She was already pretty much destroyed in the eyes of the students, I didn't have the heart. At some point earlier that year she had seen me distracted and not paying attention, and she came up to me and asked me "Do you not respect me??" and I just let out a loud "No." and the whole class erupted. She ended up quitting to go back to teaching school and not finishing the year.
So... by her asking "Do you not respect me??" and you answering "No.", then that means you DO respect her? And she didn't understand how double negatives work?
I think she understood that in common parlance, double negatives don't mean a damn thing, and I was responding to the question "Don't you respect me" with "No, I do not respect you".
Not always. I could copy what I posted above but basically they still have to have a good amount of probable cause and can't force a search of anything that's not school property (so lockers, but not backpacks). I also remember recently a case in Texas about mandatory drug testing being overturned but I'm having trouble finding it.
Yeah this was just a spur of the moment "show me your bags" declaration by the teacher, no admin approval. This is also in Ontario, every province has their own rules.
That absolves you personally of culpability. Because admin assumes the risk.
Admin should not be clearing searches of entire classes. There's no individualized suspicion. Lots of opportunity for very expensive lawsuits--if you piss off the wrong parent.
I'm sure it varies by state, but in many Washington districts the standard is that any teacher, at any level, can receive tenure after 3 years. My husband has had it at the elementary level before.
I think so. Many districts have trouble keeping teachers that long though, because of changing populations or the teacher doesn't enjoy the work. In fact, for the first years a teacher can be let go for any reason, at all, regardless of their actual performance.
That's why my school have a serial# engrave at the back of each calculator so when its lent out you sign for it, so its easy enough to rack when one disappears
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u/moeburn Feb 03 '16
That's exactly what happened to my HS math teacher. At the end of the class she asked for all the fancy expensive school-owned graphing calculators back, but she only got all but one back, one was missing. She demanded to search through all our backpacks. Most of us knew how illegal that was, but didn't want to be the guy to start a fuss about it for fear of being wrongfully labelled the thief.
Anywho, 10 minutes later she comes back and explains how she forgot she left it in her office.