The newly proposed administrative regulations from the State Department of Education on the subject of seclusion and restraint of special education students were published in the Connecticut Law Journal on July 15, 2008, so they are now officially open for public comment for a 30-day period until August 15, 2008. A public hearing has also been […]
Have you ever received a complaint that you were unfairly charging a member of the public for copying documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because you charged separately for copying each side of a double-sided piece of paper? The Court of Appeals now says this practice is perfectly legitimate, since the dictionary definition of […]
The passage of PA 08-160 which repeals C.G.S. 10-222d, the state’s existing bullying statute effective July 1, 2008, and adds new requirements and changes the definition of bullying seemingly has gone unnoticed. The lack of attention may be because this Act also addresses controversial changes to in school suspension laws which have garnered much attention. Notwithstanding […]
With the close of the 2008 legislative session, HB 5826 An Act Concerning School Learning Environment has passed. The bill postpones from July 1, 2008 to July 1, 2009 the effective implementation date for PA 07-66 which generally prohibits out of school suspensions and extends from five to ten days, the maximum length of in-school […]
If you have the patience to click on each individual numerical link on the State Department of Education website under Special Education Due Process Hearing Decisions, you too may be able to discern the following statistics from the 2007 hearing decisions. These numbers are based on only those cases filed in 2007 that were also […]
Proposed legislation introduced in today’s session of the General Assembly includes Raised Bill 5868, An Act Concerning Recruiting at High Schools, and Raised Bill 649, An Act Concerning School Learning Environment. RB 5868 would require all boards of education to adopt a written policy on or before January 1, 2009 regulating recruitment by the armed forces, prospective […]
Today’s bills filed in the General Assembly include Raised Bill 5833, a proposed amendment to Connecticut General Statutes Section 53a-119, which would add as a felony criminal charge “obtaining school accommodations by misrepresenting a child’s residence”. This would be defined as a parent, guardian or person acting on behalf of such person (or student if […]
Raised Bill 5702, referred to the Committee on Public Health in this session of the General Assembly, would allow a “respiratory care practitioner” to issue a written certification to a local or regional board of education providing that a child diagnosed with asthma be permitted to possess an asthmatic inhaler at all times while attending […]
If the last few days are any indication, it promises to be a busy season for the General Assembly, particularly at the Committee on Education. Multiple bills have been raised in both the Senate and the House pertaining to education of school-age children, and most of these have been referred to the Education committee. While […]
The Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations recently issued a decision, Region 16 Board of Education, Decision No. 4270 (2007), in which it held that a unilateral change in the workload of Special Education Teachers constituted a prohibited practice. In doing so, the Board created an exception to the general rule that a unit wide fixed practice […]
