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: legalmailbagcasciacorg. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Legal Mailbag:

I was surprised this morning by an urgent call from the library media specialist at my school.  “Come here quick,” she said and hung up.  I ran to the media center expecting a big problem.  But all I saw was a stranger, a heavy middle-aged guy leafing through a newspaper at one of the library tables.  The library media specialist came over to me and whispered, “He won’t leave . . . .”

I approached the man and asked him if I could help him.  He looked up briefly from the newspaper and said, “No, I’m good,” and returned to his reading.  He was starting to bug me now, and I told him forcefully that he would have to leave the library immediately.  To my surprise, he just kept reading.  I repeated myself, and he looked up at me and told he that he wasn’t going anywhere.  He is a taxpayer, he said harshly, and this is a public building.  As a member of the public, he claimed, he has the right to be in a building paid for with taxpayers’ money. With that, he returned to his reading.

He is actually quite large, and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I went back to my office.  Can he really just sit in the media center?  I don’t want to overreact, but should I call the cops?

Signed,
Peeved Principal

Dear Peeved:

Your unwelcome guest is correct in describing your school as a public building.  But he is wrong in claiming that members of the public have the right to enter your school based on the fact that the building is publicly owned.  Your school is a place of business, and the board of education and the administration have the right to decide who can come into your building and under what circumstances.  Moreover, when people do not have your permission to be in the building – either implicitly as when there is a play or Open House, or explicitly by following the sign-in procedures – they are in fact trespassers.  If you cannot persuade this man to leave the media center, you have the right to have him removed.  However, I applaud your discretion in deciding not to attempt to physically remove him yourself.  Rather, you should call the police and ask for their assistance.

This example is extreme, of course.  However, sometimes people are inappropriate at public events in the schools, and the same analysis applies.  For example, a parent may be belligerent at a sporting event, and you may think it necessary to remove him.  He may claim that he has the right to stay because (unlike the surprise visitor to the media center) the sporting event is open to the public.  Such a parent would be wrong.  To be sure, you must treat people fairly.  However, if you have a reasonable basis for removing this parent from the sporting event, you may withdraw the invitation as to him and inform him that he is no longer permitted on school property.  The first fellow was an uninvited guest, and this parent would be a disinvited guest.  Both can be removed from school property.