US judge: No Expulsion for 6-year-old Touching in Philadelphia
A judge has overturned a 6-year-old’s expulsion from a Philadelphia charter school for touching his teacher’s thighs after she complained that her legs hurt.
The 6-year-old, who had three earlier suspensions, was merely trying to comfort his teacher, the judge concluded.
“I want to make them feel better,” the boy told his teacher, according to a May 23 ruling by Common Pleas Judge Paul P. Panepinto, first reported on by The Legal Intelligencer.
The case, involving the First Philadelphia Charter School for Literacy, hints at a larger question that looms as the number of charter schools explodes across the country.
The Philadelphia-based Education Law Center argued that charter schools–federally-funded but privately run schools–sometimes seek more leeway in disciplining students using the argument they can always return to a traditional public school.
“This ‘double-standard’ view is legally flawed,” staff attorney Paul Lapp wrote in a brief filed on behalf of the boy’s family. “Charter schools are public schools and are on exactly the same legal footing with respect to the disciplinary sanctions of suspension and expulsion as are ‘regular’ public schools.”
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