Supreme Court orders another look at bus trip dicipline

The Iowa Supreme Court has ordered a new trial in a case involving a 15-year-old Linn-Mar student’s cross-country trip on a Greyhound. A ninth grader on a school band trip to San Antonio, Texas was caught with cigarettes, which violated the school’s “zero tolerance” policy. The kid was sent home, alone, on a Greyhound bus. He got home safely, but the kid’s dad sued the school district for “engligent endangerment” but a district court ruled in favor of the school. The father appealed, charging it was lunacy to put a 15-year-old kid on a bus at midnight and send him out, alone, on an 11-hundred-mile journey. The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled state law does not shield the school from an “alleged breach of its duty of care and supervision toward students in its charge,” and has ordered a new trial.