legal protections for private school teachers

[Anonymous]

Say a private school teacher has a student who they believe is a danger to themselves or others. And say their admin disagrees and is keeping the student at the school anyway. What happens if that student hurts another kid and the hurt kid's parents sue the school or the teacher? Does the teacher have any protection in this situation?

In public school, the teacher would have access to the wide and deep resources of the union legal team. But I'm new to private school and I'm worried about being sued if this child eventually hurts another kid. Realistically, he's most likely to hurt me or other staff as that is where he directs his anger. (and realistically, if he does hurt me, I will sue the crap out of the school because imo, they are being totally negligent) But I also want to figure out if I could be sued by anyone else he hurts.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure why you think you, personally, would be sued in that case. For one, you would not be liable. But just from a practical standpoint, if there's a lawsuit they are going after people who have money to pay out. That's the school, not you.

Regardless, the issue here is not a potential lawsuit. If you truly think a child is dangerous and your admin is not acting on it, your only real recourse is to make a report with CPS. Whether or not that goes anywhere depends on what concrete evidence you have that this child is a danger to himself or others. Your report will be anonymous but your admin will likely connect the dots once they are contacted by CPS, so be prepared to lose your job. As you know, you don't have the protections that a union would provide.

[Anonymous]

There is a difference between danger to yourself and others and their parents are probably wealthy enough to pay the school off. This is not a CPS issue as CPS handles abuse and neglect, not child mental health. All you can do is talk to admin and they ask the parents to get the child mental health treatment.

Look for a new job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Say a private school teacher has a student who they believe is a danger to themselves or others. And say their admin disagrees and is keeping the student at the school anyway. What happens if that student hurts another kid and the hurt kid's parents sue the school or the teacher? Does the teacher have any protection in this situation?

In public school, the teacher would have access to the wide and deep resources of the union legal team. But I'm new to private school and I'm worried about being sued if this child eventually hurts another kid. Realistically, he's most likely to hurt me or other staff as that is where he directs his anger. (and realistically, if he does hurt me, I will sue the crap out of the school because imo, they are being totally negligent) But I also want to figure out if I could be sued by anyone else he hurts.

If it's really that bad and admin won't do anything about it, it might be time to make like a tree... usually when this happens it's a big tell that the place has other issues

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Say a private school teacher has a student who they believe is a danger to themselves or others. And say their admin disagrees and is keeping the student at the school anyway. What happens if that student hurts another kid and the hurt kid's parents sue the school or the teacher? Does the teacher have any protection in this situation?

In public school, the teacher would have access to the wide and deep resources of the union legal team. But I'm new to private school and I'm worried about being sued if this child eventually hurts another kid. Realistically, he's most likely to hurt me or other staff as that is where he directs his anger. (and realistically, if he does hurt me, I will sue the crap out of the school because imo, they are being totally negligent) But I also want to figure out if I could be sued by anyone else he hurts.

Most private schools don’t tolerate violent children - where do you work?

[Anonymous]

Document any exchanges in case you are named a witness.

[Anonymous]

Document, document, document. And even better if you can create a shared doc incident log with other teachers/team members/counselor and someone from admin included. The troubling behavior is probably happening in other classrooms as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Document, document, document. And even better if you can create a shared doc incident log with other teachers/team members/counselor and someone from admin included. The troubling behavior is probably happening in other classrooms as well.

Yeah, that part is already happening and has been since the first week of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure why you think you, personally, would be sued in that case. For one, you would not be liable. But just from a practical standpoint, if there's a lawsuit they are going after people who have money to pay out. That's the school, not you.

Regardless, the issue here is not a potential lawsuit. If you truly think a child is dangerous and your admin is not acting on it, your only real recourse is to make a report with CPS. Whether or not that goes anywhere depends on what concrete evidence you have that this child is a danger to himself or others. Your report will be anonymous but your admin will likely connect the dots once they are contacted by CPS, so be prepared to lose your job. As you know, you don't have the protections that a union would provide.

And ... the armchair lawyering by someone who clearly never set foot in a law school is back. OP, don't take legal advice from the internet. No actual attorney is going to read a few sentences on the internet and say "For one, you would not be liable." Nor would they say "the issue here is not a potential lawsuit".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference between danger to yourself and others and their parents are probably wealthy enough to pay the school off. This is not a CPS issue as CPS handles abuse and neglect, not child mental health. All you can do is talk to admin and they ask the parents to get the child mental health treatment.

Look for a new job.

Yep, I'm gone at the end of the year.

[Anonymous]

can parents sue you for defamation or anything else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Say a private school teacher has a student who they believe is a danger to themselves or others. And say their admin disagrees and is keeping the student at the school anyway. What happens if that student hurts another kid and the hurt kid's parents sue the school or the teacher? Does the teacher have any protection in this situation?

In public school, the teacher would have access to the wide and deep resources of the union legal team. But I'm new to private school and I'm worried about being sued if this child eventually hurts another kid. Realistically, he's most likely to hurt me or other staff as that is where he directs his anger. (and realistically, if he does hurt me, I will sue the crap out of the school because imo, they are being totally negligent) But I also want to figure out if I could be sued by anyone else he hurts.

Most private schools don’t tolerate violent children - where do you work?

Completely not true. 1000% not true.

Privates take the money period.

We can start with the obvious Landon. When a school protects DV which is what they did with Hugley case there is no way that kid wasn't "violent" at Landon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference between danger to yourself and others and their parents are probably wealthy enough to pay the school off. This is not a CPS issue as CPS handles abuse and neglect, not child mental health. All you can do is talk to admin and they ask the parents to get the child mental health treatment.

Look for a new job.

It's not that simple. It can be reportable depending on the circumstances and the laws of the state. OP hasn't given enough info to say either way.

[Anonymous]

Whatever you do, develop a paper trail of emails reporting this to administration to cover you @$$ in case anything serious goes down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure why you think you, personally, would be sued in that case. For one, you would not be liable. But just from a practical standpoint, if there's a lawsuit they are going after people who have money to pay out. That's the school, not you.

Regardless, the issue here is not a potential lawsuit. If you truly think a child is dangerous and your admin is not acting on it, your only real recourse is to make a report with CPS. Whether or not that goes anywhere depends on what concrete evidence you have that this child is a danger to himself or others. Your report will be anonymous but your admin will likely connect the dots once they are contacted by CPS, so be prepared to lose your job. As you know, you don't have the protections that a union would provide.

Individual administrators are named in the lawsuit from the teacher shot by her 6 yr old student.

If OP’s student injured another person and they could spin it that OP knew something but didn’t act (regardless whether OP has tried to get some action taken), OP could potentially end up in a lawsuit. You might not in the end “be liable” if you could prove you tried to do something (document everything!), but you don’t want to be in the mess in the first place.