The VLW Blog

Virginia public school officials score a win at the Supreme Court of Virginia today with a decision that the state’s insurance plan for school systems must cover school districts for lawsuits under the federal special education law.
The ruling means the state owes the Newport News school district nearly $200,000, and probably more, since there is [...]

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A Buchanan County news reporter is trying to convince a jury that county school leaders improperly banned him from school property because they didn’t like his stories.
Earl Cole, publisher of The Voice, claims that the school board defamed him and violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, reports the Bristol Herald-Courier.
The Buchanan [...]

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The Virginia Constitution gives school boards the final say on the circumstances under which a sexually violent predator can be admitted to school property, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled today.
The offender had served a prison sentence and completed supervised probation and sought permission to attend school functions for his child under Virginia Code Sec. [...]

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Special education directors in Hampton and Newport News have little concern over a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing reimbursement for private special ed placements.
According to the Daily Press, the high court recently ruled that parents of special education students can be reimbursed for private school tuition and costs, even if their children never received [...]

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An 8-to-1 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court today held it was an unconstitutional intrusion for school officials to search a 13-year-old girl’s bra and underpants for a suspected prescription drug.  “[T]he content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion,” wrote retiring Justice David Souter for the majority.
By a 7-to-2 vote, however, [...]

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The Loudoun County school board will cover the legal bills for a high school administrator who was acquitted of possession of child pornography.
Ting-Yi Oei of Reston, an assistant principal at Freedom High School, racked up legal bills of $167,621 over the course almost a year, reports The Washington Post.
Oei was arrested last August after he [...]

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Two lawsuits against the Roanoke County School Board alleging student mistreatment have been dismissed based on sovereign immunity.
Roanoke attorney Harvey Lutins, who filed both suits in Roanoke County Circuit Court, said on Friday that he intends to explore whether the cases can be pursued through other legal avenues, reports The Roanoke Times.
One suit [...]

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The school board in King George County has been defending itself in court against a claim that it improperly handled a student’s discipline appeal. The case has been followed closely by the local paper, The Journal Press. In this latest article about the controversy, the newspaper reviews the detailed entries on the bills [...]

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A King George County circuit judge may entertain a rare court challenge to the way the local school district handles discipline appeals. The law allowing Virginia circuit courts to hear appeals of school discipline cases is restrictive by design. A disgruntled student or parent has only 30 days to file after an adverse [...]

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Grundy native Lee Smith, the award-winning author who has chronicled life in Southwest Virginia in a number of novels, was back in her home region this week. She had a speaking engagement at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.
She was asked about an effort to ban her novel, “Fair and Tender Ladies,” by [...]

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