The Villadom Times Weekly Newspaper Online-Aug 11, 2010 Issue

Page 4 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • August 11, 2010 FLOW Area Decision delayed on district’s extra curricular policy by Frank J. McMahon Department of Education Commissioner Bret Schudler will now have until Sept. 13 to decide whether to accept Judge Richard McGill’s recommendation to nullify the Ramapo Indian Hills School Board’s regulation, which could prohibit students from participating in extracurricular activities. Laura Sanders, acting director and chief administrative law judge in the Ofﬁce of Administrative Law granted the deadline extension. The controversial part of the board’s regulation concerned student conduct away from school grounds. That regulation would exclude a student from extracurricular activities if that student were formally charged and/or arrested by law enforcement for an alleged violation of the state’s code of criminal justice or applicable municipal ordinances on or away from school grounds. Judge McGill’s recommendation was received by the department of education on June 14. The 45-day statutory period for issuing a ﬁnal decision by the commissioner of education was due to expire on July 29, but the commissioner requested the extension due to “continued stafﬁng limitations and the press of other matters.” The recommendation to nullify the regulation was issued by McGill in response to a petition from Gregory and Theresa Meese, the parents of an Indian Hills High School senior. That petition was ﬁled last September to the state’s commissioner of education asking the commissioner to enjoin the regional high school district from enforcing the regulation that was approved by the board in June 2009. But the Ramapo Indian Hills Regional High School District Board of Education ﬁled an appeal, technically called an exception, to McGill’s recommendation, and the Haddonﬁeld school district attempted to join the lawsuit in support of the regulation because several lawsuits are proceeding in the federal courts dealing with the validity of a policy governing student behavior outside the school or school sponsored events. The Meeses objected to that intervention, and M. Kathleen Duncan, director of the Bureau of Controversies and Disputes, denied Haddonﬁeld’s motion to intervene because Haddonﬁeld attempted to intervene after Judge McGill made his recommendation to the commissioner of education. In his analysis of the law, Judge McGill cited the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and found that it provided “heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests” and the liberty interest in this case is the interest of the parents in the care, custody, and control of their children. He cited numerous court cases to support his ﬁndings, but he ultimately found that the authority of a district board of education over students is subject to limitations and Helpful Hints Helpful Hints from ome “Keep tires properly inflated and aligned to improve gasoline mileage by about 3% and reduce tire wear.” 27 Franklin Tpk, Waldwick Open Sundays 9-3 201-652-5666 Hank Says... its right to impose a consequence for conduct away from school grounds is speciﬁcally limited to situations where the exercise of that authority is reasonably necessary for the student’s physical or emotional safety, security and well-being, or for reasons relating to the safety, security and well-being of other students, staff, or school grounds. He also found that the school district has no authority to enforce the regulation and ruled, therefore, that the adoption of the regulation was outside, and in excess, of the powers that are authorized by law for an entity and was therefore unlawful and unconstitutional and it violated the Meeses’ parental rights. The school board appealed McGill’s recommendation to nullify the regulation, naming four speciﬁc exceptions to his ﬁndings. One was that the judge erred in not dismissing the Meeses’ petition because he lacked the jurisdiction to decide a challenge to the constitutionality of the board’s regulation, and the Meeses lacked the standing to pursue the matter because the regulation has never been applied to their daughter on whose behalf they challenged the regulation. Another exception claimed the judge accorded undue weight to newspaper articles in the Meeses certiﬁcation and a third claimed the judge erred in failing to grant the board’s cross motion for summary decision because there is no parental right to be free from reasonable behavioral expectations as a condition for participation of a child in school sponsored extracurricular activities, which the school board claims is a privilege and not a right. The fourth exception was that the judge erred in failing to grant the board’s cross motion for summary decision because the board’s regulation does not violate any applicable statute or regulation. 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