Every morning parents send off their child or children to an elementary, middle or high school. Most parents have an innate trust that the school, teachers and paraprofessionals will make sure that their child returns safely home at the end of the school day. This is not always the case. A variety of potential dangers face schoolchildren each day. These threats can come from fellow students (bullying), teachers (sexual or physical abuse), falls and trips on dangerous school property or potential accidents on the school bus on the way to and from school. School districts and private schools are responsible to the parents for the proper supervision and care of their children. The teacher/pupil relationship is a special relationship and obligates that the school and its employees exercise the highest degree of care in protecting and supervising school children.
School districts generally enjoy sovereign immunity, which means that they are exempt and protected from legal lawsuits. There are two exceptions to that rule. The first is the presence of a dangerous or defective condition on the school property; and the second is the negligence of one of its employees. The most common example of defective conditions on school properties comes with the ordinary playground. State and federal laws require schools to have adequate cushioning material beneath playground and athletic equipment. This is usually provided in the form of wood bark chips, pea gravel or shredded tires. Most school districts employ wood bark chips because it is the cheapest material to coat the playground surface. Unfortunately, it is not very permanent and children kick and run through the wood chips, displacing the wood chips and defeating the purpose for which they were installed. Hundreds of children each year suffer needless broken bones because the school district did not properly maintain the cushioning materials on their playgrounds. These claims involve the negligence of school districts, and the parents then recover for the children’s injuries.
Danger to children can come directly from the school staff. The most common and most dangerous area is the area of cyberthreats. It is well known that school districts attract pedophiles and other child sex predators because of the abundance of potential targets. School districts do screen applicants, but they cannot guarantee that the staff will not prey on the students. School districts are responsible for the actions of their employees, and an especially disturbing trend has been the victimization of middle-schoolers, between 12 and 14 years of age, especially young girls. Moreover, inappropriate behavior on Facebook, Twitter and cellphones is becoming an ever-growing problem for school districts to control. Most school districts do not have a plan to control these dangerous areas of teacher/pupil interaction.
School buses are another very dangerous area for parents and children. School buses do not have seat belts and are often operated by individuals who have minimal training in commercial driving. There is also the potential for bullying on buses as well as in the schools.
If your child has been the victim of any of these types of activities while attending school, call the Meehan Law Firm. We specialize in handling school negligence cases. We have obtained dozens of verdicts for parents whose children have been injured in public or in private schools.