This document examines the legal requirements for the reduction in force (RIF) of North Carolina Department of Public Instruction employees, with a focus on certified (instructional) staff. A question-and-answer section discusses areas of concern to administrators about the reduction-in-force process. North Carolina State law relating to the RIF…

This document addresses legal requirements for and issues in the nonrenewal of probationary teachers in North Carolina. The interpretive analysis section points out that in order to protect itself against a charge of nonrenewal based on prohibited reasons, the school board must develop a written record that documents factors for its decision. A…

This publication is a guide for California colleges and universities wishing to prepare for earthquakes. An introduction aimed at institutional leaders emphasizes that earthquake preparedness is required by law and argues that there is much that can be done to prepare for earthquakes. The second section, addressed to the disaster planner, offers…

In 1990, Project CHERISH (Children in Home Environments: Regulation to Increase Safety and Health) enabled the Texas Department of Human Services to implement and evaluate several innovative strategies to strengthen regulation of family day care homes. This report contains descriptions of those strategies, an evaluation of their efficacy, and…

This document provides background information on educational finance in North Dakota. It examines the use of nonproperty factors in financing education, the quality of education, legal action in the state regarding education finance issues, and the effects of any 1993 North Dakota legislation on education finance. The paper first describes changes…

As businesses are remodeling their workplaces into "high-performance work organizations," states must reorganize their education systems to accommodate the changing world of work and to produce citizens able to compete in the global economy. This paper is the first in a series of reports by the Investing in People (IIP) Project, which is…

The impetus for North Carolina's Senate Bill 2, the 1989 Flexibility and Accountability Statute, came partly out of the philosophy that restructuring should reach up from the school and not down from the state. The statute offers local school systems the flexibility to develop local plans to improve student achievement through waivers of certain…

This paper analyzes Texas Senate Bill 351 that reforms public school funding. The bill provides for additional state funding and significant increases in local property taxes. The bill creates county education taxing units to neutralize the enormous property wealth differences found among the state's 1,056 school districts. It also provides a…

Questions and answers on North Carolina's Senate Bill 2, the School Improvement and Accountability Act, are presented in this booklet. General information about governance, assessment, and funding is provided in the first section. The next section explains setting specific student performance targets in the form of performance indicators. The…

This report demonstrates the extent to which Quebec's laws, especially the Charter of the French Language, meant to protect and promote the French language, are actually hurting the present and future use of the English language in that province. It is shown that, through court decisions, individual users of English, a minority, are being denied…

School choice legislation initiatives and their impact on school choice at the local level are compared in this survey of over 1,000 superintendents in Minnesota, Iowa, and Arkansas. Provisions of state statutes for school choice implementation in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska are briefly described. Survey findings indicate that school…

This monograph examines ways in which state level policies have facilitated the orderly planning and delivery of transition services for youth with serious emotional disorders. It describes the categories of policies (legislative acts and interagency agreements) and analyzes six categories of policy content. Nine components necessary in a…

The Kearney State College (Nebraska) drug-free campus program description details standards of conduct for employees and students regarding alcohol and drugs as well as applicable legal sanctions under federal, state and local law with regard to possession and distribution. These statutes are described and identified by number and further…

This publication presents topic headings that may be used as a checklist of state law grounds for challenging a disciplinary action. Topics include: (1) illegality in rule adoption; (2) inadequate notice that conduct is subject to discipline; (3) existence of a protected interest; (4) inadequate notice of hearing; (5) inadequate hearing…

Although Mississippi has no statutes for granting tenure to public school employees, state laws passed in 1953, 1974, and 1977 do provide for due process in case of teacher suspension or dismissal. To determine to what extent the state's 153 public school districts were implementing employee due process under the 1977 "School Employment…