5344 School Law Reflection

For the past nine years, I thought searching students was against policy and an invasion of their Fourth Amendment rights. I have students that continue to go against school policy, knowing we will not search them or their property; we are powerless. This past year, we had a big problem with students bringing their cell phones to school. Our district has a very detailed policy against students having their cell phones on or visible during the instructional day. In other words, students can carry their cell phones in their purses, backpacks, or in their desks but they are not allowed to turn them on or have them out. If a student did not follow the policy, their cell phone would be confiscated, taken the board building to be picked up by a

parent, and charged a fifty dollar fine. Our students made it a common practice to bring their cell phones in their backpacks and leave them on; so they ring in their backpacks all the while knowing teachers are told (by our administrator) we couldn’t search them or their property. I now know “school officials generally need reasonable suspicion, rather than the higher standard of probable cause, to start the search Zirkel (2005). I have shared this information with the other staff members and we have started enforcing it at our school. Once our students were made aware of what we were allowed to do, they began turning off their phones, which lessened classroom interruption. With this newly found information, we regained our classroom, limited outside distractions, and held students accountable for their actions.

References:

Zirkel, P (2005). Searching Students. Principal Leadership, 6(1), 64-68.