Northwest Education Law Blog : Northwest Education Lawyer & Attorney : Williams Kastner Law Firm : Tacoma, Seattle, Portland

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Idaho State University has fired Habib Sadid, a tenured engineering professor who had been suspended, the Associated Press reported. A faculty panel recently released an opinion that there was not enough evidence to justify Sadid's dismissal, but the university president said that his ouster was in the best interests of the institution. Sadid has been a long-time critic of the university's leaders and he says he is being fired for his dissent, while the university says that he crossed lines from dissent into abusive and unfair behavior. [Inside Higher Ed]

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A new project is measuring the educational needs of states and regions by combining and comparing existing census data, such as degree completions, poverty rates, and population growth.

Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, and Georgia are the states where the education system faces the greatest challenges in meeting the economic needs of a fast-growing population, according to data from the Educational Needs Index.

The states with the least challenges in that area are North Dakota, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Minnesota, the project found.

See how your state measures up. [The Chronicle of Higher Education]
 

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Justin Bathon at the Edjurist blog posted a good piece this morning that provides resources for laws relating to open meetings. Anyone in the public sector is encouraged to bookmark these resources and utilize them often. The Washington Supreme Court recently issued an opinion, Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound v. City of Des Moines that clarifies the exemptions available under Washington's Public Records Act. A summary of that case is posted here.

School boards really struggle with the Open Meeting Laws (sometimes called Sunshine Laws).  Here is a compendium of every state's Open Meetings laws.  Like any secondary source, this compendium is not a substitute for primary sources.  I have noticed errors in the compendium.

Also, most states have a handbook on Open Meetings/Records laws for new board members and most are online. NSBA has some of them here.  Follow these links to guides for Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.  I was not able to find a guide for Alaska, but the statues are here.

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On February 27, Idaho Governor Otter received legislation that, if signed into law, “will revise the current criteria and process for school surety bonding and student tuition recovery funding. These changes are necessary to ensure against loss of tuition previously collected, so that appropriate student reimbursement can be made in the event of a school closure or default. The new language will be easier for students and school administrators to understand and for the state staff to manage and implement. No change to the current staffing level or appropriated funding will be required.”

Specifically, the legislation would amend existing law to increase the State Board of Education's discretion in determining annual registration fees and grounds for submitting demand upon Proprietary Schools' sureties. "Postsecondary Educational Institutions" (schools offering course of studies leading to degrees (including degree-granting private career colleges)) and "Proprietary Schools" (schools providing courses of study, but not degrees) annual registration fees will be determined entirely by Board rule, rather than previous criteria which provided that such fees would not exceed $5,000.

The proposed law also adjusts the existing law’s surety bond requirement to provide that the Board may submit a demand upon Proprietary Schools' bonds for any "failure by such proprietary school to satisfy its obligations pursuant to the terms and conditions of any contract for tuition or other instructional fees," eliminating the former limitation that such bonds would only be collected upon for "fraud or misrepresentation."

The legislation brings further changes to the manner in which Proprietary Schools may solicit students. Agents of Proprietary Schools will be required to obtain "certificates of identification" issued by the school the agent works for, rather than the former "permits" issued by Board. Proprietary Schools must annually review agent applications and reissue certificates of identification only where appropriate. If an agent will have unsupervised contact with potential students who are minors, before issuing a certificate of identification the Proprietary School must perform a complete criminal history check on that agent, which will be valid for five years. Proprietary Schools will be required to maintain records of application, issuance, denial , termination, suspension and revocation of agents' certificates of identification for five years. In addition, as a new component of the annual registration process, Proprietary Schools must release to the Board the names and results of criminal history checks for each agent to whom the school has issued a certificate of identification.

For further review of these and other changes introduced by the new legislation, click here.

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Posey v. Lake Pend Oreille Sch. Dist., 546 F.3d 1121 (9th Cir. 2008)

Plaintiff, a former security specialist for an Idaho high school, met several times with the principal to express his concerns about student discipline and safety issues, including ongoing drug and weapons violations. Plaintiff then composed and delivered a letter to the school district’s chief administrator and other school administrators. Plaintiff wrote the letter at home, with his own resources, on his own time, and of his own initiative. Thereafter, plaintiff’s job was eliminated and he was not rehired into a newly consolidated position. He brought a lawsuit against the school district claiming retaliation in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho granted summary judgment on the grounds that, as a matter of law, the speech in question had been spoken/written pursuant to the plaintiff’s job responsibilities and as a public employee, it was not constitutionally protected.

The Ninth Circuit reversed the decision, finding that the inquiry into whether a public employee’s speech is protected by the First Amendment is not purely a legal question but presents a mixed question of fact and law. The Ninth Circuit made clear that the inquiry that the court must undertake in a First Amendment retaliation claim is to first determine whether the expressions in question were made by the speaker upon matters of public concern; and second, whether the State actor lacked adequate justification for treating the employee differently from any other member of the general public. Both questions may be determined as a matter of law by the trial court, and if the answer to both questions is affirmative, the court should then consider whether the plaintiff spoke as a private citizen or a public employee. The question of the scope and content of a plaintiff’s job responsibilities is a question of fact. Therefore, if there are genuine and material disputes as to the scope and content of the plaintiff’s job responsibilities, the court must reserve judgment on the third prong of the protected status inquiry until after the fact finding process. Accordingly, the Ninth Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment and remanded the case to the District of Idaho for further proceedings.