Legal Aspects II: Field Experience Assignment in School District Administration, Assignments of History of Education

EDFA 591A

LEGAL ASPECTS II

FIELD EXPERIENCE ASSIGNMENT

FALL, 2008

For each course in the administration sequence, the student will do a field experience,

that is, some activity that requires contact with public schools and public school

administrators. The field experience for 591 will be an examination of the legal

foundation for a school district. It is divided into the following three parts:

A. A Study of a School District Policy Handbook

d. How much do district employees know about the handbook?

B. Review a Year’s Worth of School Board Minutes

1. Every school board must keep minutes of meetings and must make the

minutes available to the public. The assignment is to review a year’s

worth and answer questions such as the following:

a. Categorize the issues discussed. What are the hot buttons?

b. What are the legal issues impacted by the hot buttons?

c. What do the hot buttons tell you about the relationship of the

board to the public? To district employees?

C. Interview a Superintendent and a President of the School Board

b. What is the legal relationship between school board and the state

of Indiana?

c. What are the legal parameters within which school boards may

conduct business?

This assignment is of necessity broad. This is a rather delicate issue for some

administrators and, frankly, some districts are a bit lax on doing and keeping policy.

Therefore, it is possible that you may not be able to do all three of the above. We do

the best we can. If you cannot do any of the above for whatever reason, I would expect