By Attorney Thomas B. Mooney, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut

The "Legal Question of the Week" is a regular feature of the CAS Weekly NewsBlast. We invite readers to submit short, law-related questions of practical concern to school administrators. Each week, we will select a question and publish an answer. While these answers cannot be considered formal legal advice, they may be of help to you and your colleagues. We may edit your questions, and we will not identify the authors. Please submit your questions to: legalmailbag@casciac.org.

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Dear Legal Mailbag:

Student cellphone use is out of control, and desperate times require desperate measures. The principal at my school and I were kicking around some ideas, and I had a bright idea that hitting these kids in the wallet would be most effective. As you might imagine, we regularly confiscate cellphones when students use them in violation of school rules. Students may be more compliant if they know that we will keep their cellphones until they pay a fine. Specifically, we thought that each time we confiscate a cellphone, we would charge a fine of $10.00, payment of which would be required to get the cellphone back. Of course we wouldn’t pocket the money, and we would put it in the student activity account. I haven’t heard of this before, and my principal congratulated me on my creativity. But he got my attention when he also mentioned that I am non-tenured and that I better be sure we can do this. What say you?

Signed,
Cellphone Czar


Dear Czar:

I am sorry to pop your creative bubble, but as proposed your plan could put you and the district at risk. School districts are creatures of statute, and they (and their administrators) have only those powers that the General Assembly has granted them. Connecticut General Statutes Section 10-221(c), for example, authorizes school officials to impose sanctions on students who damage or fail to return textbooks, library materials or other educational materials, and it further permits you to withhold grades and transcripts until the student (or his or her parent) either returns or pays for such textbook, library book or other educational material. By contrast, to date the General Assembly has not seen fit to authorize fines for the violation of school rules.

That said, hope is not lost. School officials have the right to confiscate property when possession or use of such property violates school rules. In so doing, you must always be careful, because school officials thereby create a bailment, a temporary possession of another’s property, which imposes upon the “bailee” (that would be you) the duty of care. If you damage or lose the cellphone, you will be responsible for any related repair or replacement costs.

If that risk doesn’t discourage you, it is at least possible that you can creative a financial incentive for students to comply with rules on cellphone use. The approach would be to hold the cellphone until the parent comes to school to retrieve it. You could further provide that students can get the cellphone back earlier (say at the end of the day) with the payment of a fine. This approach would exercise your authority to hold the cellphone until a parent retrieves it, and then relinquish that authority on the condition that the student pays a fine. This approach may be fine and may not even be challenged. But it is not bulletproof, and you may wish to wait until you get tenure before you try it.