Session A

The Emerging Duty to Maintain Safe Schools

This session will provide a legal update on education law reform. Topics covered include the authority of educators, the role of school-based law enforcement, and emerging trends in student rights litigation.  It will feature a discussion on trending 2017-2019 legislation and court cases on school safety reform. Attendees are invited to contribute their stories on local policies that successfully maintain a safe learning environment.

Session B

Effective Collaboration, FERPA, and Model Policies

The single most important trend in school safety reform is interagency collaboration. Research shows information sharing leads to more accurate assessments of the risk and protective factors of juveniles. This leads to more effective policies and better outcomes when incidents occur. This session will examine school discipline reform with a focus on the juvenile records privacy laws. It will discuss what federal, state, and local laws permit and require on information sharing.  Essential court decisions, model statutes, and hypothetical cases will provide tools for addressing the solutions to common misconceptions about interagency collaboration.

Biography

Bernard James has been a law professor at Pepperdine University School of Law since 1984, specializing in Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, and Education Law. Earlier, he served in Michigan as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Judge Myron Wahls on the Court of Appeals. Dr. James co-authored a textbook on education policy and law, and published numerous articles on law, education, and religion. He is a contributing editor to the NASRO Journal of School Safety, and  has consulted for to the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice.  His school law blog is a popular and informative source of school safety law reform.