ACLU Warns D.C. Public Schools of Improper Discipline Proposed at Wilson High School

The ACLU has alerted officials in D.C. Public Schools that Wilson High School Principal Pete Cahall recently proposed improper discipline, that should not be carried out by his superiors.  Cahall, in a letter home to parents after students damaged a bathroom in the newly-remodeled building, called for expulsion and criminal charges against those involved and also bystanders. The ACLU, in its letter to Dan Shea and Adele Fabrikant, called this "dramatically incorrect."  ACLU wrote the two as Shea supervises the high school and Fabrikant supervises all expulsion hearings.

Wrote Cahall, speaking of the rule he applied to the bathroom incident (where he proposed expulsion of several students who were apparently uninvolved) and would apply in future, "Even if you are not directly involved in a situation and can be put at the place and time of an incident and you do nothing to be a part of the solution, you will be held accountable for whatever occurred. In orther words," he finished, "you are either part of the problem or solution." 

ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Fritz Mulhauser said "this proposal from Mr. Cahall is wrong several times over.  It's bad law and bad education."

The ACLU letter reminds school officials that an individual school principal is not free to invent offenses; that is, all schools must work under a common and consistent rule of law. That means students may be disciplined only for an offense found in the formally adopted DCPS rules made known to all students and parents.

And, points out the ACLU letter, there is nothing to be found in the current DCPS rules about being punished for not stopping an incident. 

Said attorney Mulhauser, "If Mr. Cahall follows through with his threat and recommends any student be expelled who was simply present at the incident, the accused student will have a strong defense that the proposal lacks elementary due process of law.  It's a completely unfair suprise to be penalized for something that's been turned into an offense after it happened.  And for an educator to do this is certainly another surprise: is this a lesson to teach our youth, that duly enacted rules of the school system can be changed by one principal on his own?"

The letter also points out that the principal's new rule (making it an offense to fail to act to intervene) is a general principle with few other examples anywhere: "In the community," the ACLU wrote, "the law does not require a witness to a crime to report it, much less to try to stop it. And in general it is rare for there to be penalties linked to affirmative obligations."

Attorney Mulhauser concluded, "If Mr. Cahall wants to revolutionize the rules and disciplinary process to establish this new penalty for not intervening, we ask that the D.C. Public Schools do it through proper rulemaking so the community can discuss and weigh the pros and cons."     

The principal's letter home was described in the press October 17 and the ACLU wrote its letter October 27.  "We certainly hope there will be no expulsion of bystanders since that idea gets an F for Fairness; we've had no response from DCPS, so maybe that means the idea has been quietly buried. But we're still looking forward to a reply," said Mulhauser.