grab store

https://www.gaonconnection.com/samvad/price-crash-is-the-biggest-tragedy-for-farmers-bigger-then-drought-or-flood-42146?fbclid=IwAR2oBJnMV8rZ-OuRib1BllPHE1ZF7YxZXZS8YhHdiCzWLgtr0PsZTMXP-RY

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Please see my disclaimer on the bottom of my blog page. This is legal information, not legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is formed by this posting, etc. etc.! This blog may not be reproduced without permission from the author and proper attribution of authorship.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

What should farmers do when market prices are less than even the cost of production?

Waiting for a good price

What do you expect farmers to do when open market prices fall to less than half the announced Minimum Support Price (MSP)? What should the farmers do when market prices are less than even the cost of production?

This is a question that has repeatedly hit farmers for over four decades now. This is a question that remains unanswered, agricultural economists, policy makers have failed to provide an answer. Except for half baked schemes and promises, it has been very cleverly bypassed not realising that the failure of markets to provide farmers the rightful price for the produce he brings to the market is a question of life and death for farmer and his family.

In Kota mandiin Rajasthan, against the MSP of Rs 5,600 per quintal, farmers are getting a maximum of Rs 2,000 per quintal for urad. This does not cover even the cost of production. The cost of producing one quintal of urad comes to Rs 3,428 per quintal. An estimate worked out by a local newspaper works out the total loss incurred by farmers at Rs 7-crore a day. In Punjab, farmers are not getting more than Rs 1100 per quintal for maize. The price farmers are getting is about 35 per cent less compared to an improved MSP of Rs 1,700 per quintal announced this year, which includes 50 per cent profit over the A2+FL cost (out of pocket expenses incurred by farmers plus family labour).

While reports of tomato being dumped on roadside have started appearing, the prices of almost all the early arrivals in the mandis have hit rock bottom. When prices crash at the time of harvest, farmers are left with little choice but to commit suicide or abandon farming looking for menial jobs in the cities. No wonder, 208 farmers have committed suicide in Marathwada region of Maharashtra alone in the month of June. Elsewhere too, the serial death dance on the farm continues unabated.

At the beginning of the Kharif harvesting season, prices had begun to decline. Accordingly, the prices farmers are getting are as follows:

Urad -- Rs 2000/Quintal against an MSP of Rs 5,600 per quintal at Kota;

Maize -- Rs 1300/Quintal against an MSP of Rs 1700/Quintal at Mandsaur; and Rs 1,075/Quintal in Punjab;

Moong -- Rs 5000/Qunital against an MSP of Rs 6975/Quintal at Ganganagar ;

Soyabean -- Rs 2800/Quintal against an MSP of Rs 3399/Quintal at Harda; and

Cotton – Rs 4,600/Quintal against an MSP of Rs 5,450/Quintal at Dhamnod.

This is perhaps the third year in succession when the farm prices at the time of harvest have crashed. Imagine the plight and resulting suffering it brings for the farming community. Year after year, farmers toil hard, putting his entire family to work, only to find the prices crashing when he reaches the mandi. The miserable blow that strikes the farmers, and that too despite the hard labour that he and his family had put in, results in losses and that pushes him to end his life. Imagine, for three seasons in a row farmers are incurring losses. As I said earlier, the serial death dance on the farm has gone on and on.

It is wrong to treat only a dry spell or a continuing drought or heavy rainfall as a calamity. Everything being normal, the fall in prices at the time of harvest is perhaps the biggest calamity that hits farmers. Some years back, in an interview with the World Disaster Report, I had said that a cyclone or a flood is not the only disaster that farmers face. In fact, they are quite prepared when a dry spell strikes or when a heavy downpour results in crop losses, but what catches them with a regretful shock is when the crop weather is normal and the harvest is bountiful, the open market prices crash. That’s a much bigger disaster

Some years back I had said that the travesty of farming is that a farmer does not realise that every time he undertakes crop cultivation, he actually cultivates losses.

Even under the newly rolled out PM-AASHA scheme, the government has made it clear that only 25 per cent of the marketable surplus will be procured. This will be enough for the government to build an adequate buffer to take care of the food inflation, in case it happens. But what about the remaining 75 per cent of the crop harvest? Who will bear the loss a farmer incurs in selling his produce at a lower price in the market? This is primarily because the government does not even consider agriculture to be an economic activity. The entire design of market reforms is built on exploiting agriculture, treating it as nothing more than a sector that needs to feed the population and provide cheaper raw material for the industry. The cheaper the raw material, the more such inefficient markets are applauded. The more the markets exploit farmers, the more they are considered to be efficient.

The better option is to redesign the existing Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which presently works out the MSP for different crops. It should be renamed as Commission for Farmers Income and Welfare with the mandate to work out the minimum living income for a farming family, and to spell out mechanisms to achieve it. Even if we take the minimum income that a farmer should receive to be equivalent to minimum wage for the lowest employee, at Rs 18,000 per month, the Commission must work out the average that a farmer earns in a region, and then ensure that the deficit with the benchmark laid out be paid by way of income transfer. The Telengana model, where a fixed amount of Rs 8,000 per acre is paid to every land-owning farmer, is a form of income transfer, and this should be clubbed by the Commission to provide direct income support to farmers. #

सूखा या बाढ़ नहीं, किसान के लिए सबसे बड़ी त्रासदी है माटी मोल कीमतें. Gaon Connection Oct 3, 2018

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

The basic problem is that agriculture is not considered as an economic activity

In a tweet to mark Gandhi Jayanti, Prof M S Swaminathan wrote: “Once Mahatma Gandhi was asked by the National Dairy Research Institute, Bangalore, to fill up its visitor’s book. Under the column occupation, he wrote ‘Farmer’. And ironically it was on Mahatma’s birthday that the police lobbed tear gas shells and fired water cannons to keep thousands of peacefully protesting farmers on a ten-day march, which started from Haridwar, from entering New Delhi.

The same day, a 65-year old farmer Ranbir Singh from Haryana died in police custody in the Bhiwani jail. He was convicted in a cheque bounced case 10 days ago for his inability to honour the repayment commitments. He had an outstanding loan of Rs 9.83-lakh and was sentenced to jail for two years. As per news reports, he died of shock when visiting relatives informed him two days ago that his standing crop had suffered losses due to recent rains. The deceased Ranbir Singh was not the only farmer to have been sent to jail following bank defaults. Hundreds of farmers who have defaulted bank loans are in jail in Punjab and Haryana. This news comes at a time when the government superseded the governing board of debt-ridden IL&FS, which has 169 group companies, and had accumulated bad loans exceeding Rs 90,000-crores. None of the top executives have been arrested so far.

Both the developments on Mahatma’s birthday in a way signify what is wrong with agriculture. Farmers have since gone back, promising to return if their demands are not met, but have loudly conveyed the brewing discontent prevailing in the rural hinterland. In the past six months, the nation has seen a peaceful long march, from Nasik to Mumbai, followed by a ten day protest in June to stop food supplies to the cities, and then again another march to New Delhi by the All India Kisan Sabha. In addition, numerous protests across the country have gone unnoticed.

While some more long marches are underway, including a big march of adivasis and landless that started from Gwalior a few days ago, the angry farm protests are only multiplying. According to the National Crime Record Bureau, from 687 protests in 2014, these demonstrations increased to 2,683 in 2015, and then doubled to 4,837 a year later, in 2016. In other words, protests have multiplied 7 times in a period of three years, a clear reflection of the growing farmers’ anger. While the reasons could be many, the fact that farming is passing through a terrible distress is now widely acknowledged.

That is exactly what the long march by Bhartiya Kisan Unionthat started from Haridwar was trying to reaffirm. Among the 15 demands that were listed in the demand charter, at least half a dozen pertained to the deteriorating farm economics. While the simple and local issues like lifting the entry ban for tractors that have completed ten years in operation, removing GST (five per cent) on farm implements etc have received a positive assurance, it is the economic issues that remain largely unaddressed. In fact, all previous protests have also returned empty handed with the government citing inadequate resources for its inability to measure up to farmers’ expectations.

Two demands which have now become central to every protest that happens across the country pertains to writing-off farm loans and the implementation of the government’s own promise of providing Minimum Support Price (MSP) plus 50 per cent profit as per the recommendation of the Swaminathan Commission. The government has instead manipulated the formula that measures the production cost, and presenting it as action taken. Against the comprehensive (C2) cost estimate, which includes interest over capital investment and the rental value of own land, the government has lowered the estimate by only taking into account farmers paid out cost (A2) and added to it family labour cost (A2+FL). For illustration, the procurement price announced for paddy is Rs 1,750 per quintal. But if calculated as per Swaminathan’s formula, paddy price works out to 2,340 per quintal, which means a loss of Rs 590 on every quintal of paddy sold. Similarly, for maize the loss is Rs 540 per quintal.

To say that the government doesn’t have the resources to procure each of the 23 crops for which the MSP is announced is certainly not correct. Estimates show that the total amount required will be a little over Rs 1-lakh crore every year. The question therefore that arises is where the money will come from. Well, the immediate need is to discontinue the economic stimulus package of Rs 1.86-lakh crore that was doled out to the industry for one year after the economic meltdown of 2008-09. The package has continued for ten years with no questions being asked.

Since farmer’s incomes have remained frozen when adjusted for inflation for almost four decades now, it is quite obvious that farmers have been denied their rightful income all these years. Studies for instance have shown that even in the frontline agricultural state of Punjab, 98 per cent of the rural families are in debt, and 94 per cent of these have more expenditure than income. For the country, the total farm loan has been computed at Rs 12.60-lakh crore as per a statement presented in Parliament. Compare this with the Rs 10.3-lakh crore of bank defaults that the country is faced with. Already Rs 3.16-lakh crore of corporate NPAs have been written off between April 2014 and April 2018. However, the moment the demand for farm loan waivers is raised; policy makers, economists and business writers are quick to scream it will lead to an increase in fiscal deficit. Strangely, no question of widening fiscal deficit is ever asked when corporate NPAs are written-off. That’s how the economic design has been so cleverly laid out.

The basic problem is that neo-liberal economics does not consider agriculture to be an economic activity. That’s the primary reason why farmers are despised at, are considered to be a national burden. But what is not being understood is that agriculture, the largest employer in the country, only has the potential to reboot the economy. That’s what Mahatma had strongly advocated, and that’s what we ignored. #

Farm economics deteriorating. The Tribune. Oct 4, 2018

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/farm-economics-deteriorating/662673.html

Monday, October 1, 2018

Why shouldn’t the owner of the companies who default on paying back the bank loans not treated the same way as the farmers?

In April this year, Karamjeet Singh, a farmer from village Nandgarh Kotra in Bathinda district in Punjab, was arrested after his cheque of Rs 4.34-lakh bounced, reports Indian Express. Still in jail, he is amongst hundreds of farmers who have been sent to jail for bounced cheques deposited for repayment.

Credit policy has two faces. One for the rich, and another for the poor. Let’s first take a look at the credit policy for farmers. The Punjab Agricultural Development Bank has served legal notice to 12,625 farmers threatening to sell their farm land to recover an outstanding due of Rs 229.80-crore, at a time when the Kolkata bench of the National Company Law Tribunal has allowed just one defaulting company – Adhunik Metaliks Ltd (AML) – to walk away with 92 per cent ‘haircut’. While the undated and signed bounced cheques is a common way to haul up defaulting farmers for non-payment of farm credit, I wonder why a similar strategy is not followed in case of corporate loans.

Take another example. Two months back, Monnet Ispat & Energy got a ‘haircut’ of 78 per cent; the company had an outstanding debt of Rs 11,014-crore. Under the insolvency proceedings, the lenders will get only Rs 2,457-crore. The remaining amount of Rs 8,557-crore of bad debt will be written-off. The haircut, which in reality is nothing short of a waiver, comes at a time when a 34-year-old farmer, Sukhpal Singh of Mansa region in Punjab, committed suicide for an outstanding loan of Rs lakh drawn from a cooperative bank. In contrast, while the marginal farmer was unable to face the humiliation that comes with indebtedness and ended his life, we don’t see any change in the lifestyle of the owners of these defaulting companies. In fact, they feel recharged after being divested of the financial burden they were reeling under. It’s a new life offered to them on a platter.

This is how the banking system works. When it comes to industries, it looks at every opportunity to strike-off as much of the defaulting amount as possible. AML defaulted to the tune of Rs 5,370-crore, and under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) it has been allowed to walk away after a settlement was reached with the UK-based Liberty House Group for Rs 410-crore. In other words, the company gets a write-off or call it a ‘haircut’ for Rs 4,960-crore. I don’t think it is even fair to call it a ‘haircut’ as it is nothing short a complete head shave!

Compare this with the Rs 229.80-crore outstanding loan pending against 12, 625 Punjab farmers that the Punjab Agricultural Development Bank is trying to recover. It is not even a sizeable fraction of the huge amount written-off for just one industrial house. Call it a settlement to affect a resolution plan for the companies declared bankrupt; the economic jargon actually is an attempt to hide what in reality is more than a write-off. By selling off a loss making unit the promoter walks out free from what would otherwise be a life-long indebtedness. Almost the entire debt is eventually borne by the tax payers. This is what Noam Chomsky calls it as ‘tough love – tough for the poor and love for the rich’.

The former Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian had in fact said that writing-off of corporate loans leads to economic growth. If this is true, I don’t understand why waiving farm loan does not lead to economic growth. After all, both the farmer as well as the industry takes loans from the same banks. How then can the write-off of corporate bad loans lead to economic growth whereas farm loan waivers lead to moral hazard? Why should farmers be therefore despised for seeking loan waiver? In fact, Arundhati Bhattacharya, the former chairperson of the State Bank of India had blamed farm loan waivers for leading to credit indiscipline. The Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel had found farm loan waivers as a moral hazard upsetting the national balance sheet.

Although the Punjab Agricultural Development Bank has denied of any real intention of putting the land of 12,625 farmers for public auction saying that the legal notice is just a threat, the fact remains that as many as 71,432 farmers are under scanner for having defaulted the bank to the tune of Rs 1,363.87-crore. Sooner or later, all these farmers will receive legal notices if they fail to pay up. In fact, many of them have already landed in jail. Similarly in Haryana, just to illustrate, a farmer who had failed to pay back a loan of Rs 6-lakh taken for laying a pipeline for irrigation was ordered by the district court to pay a fine of Rs 9.83-lakh and undergo a 2 year jail term.

On the other hand, the ‘haircut’ allowed to AML means the banks will not be able to recover this huge amount. According to media reports, some of the other not so-high profile companies allowed ‘haircut’ includes: Jyoti Structures 85 per cent; Alok Industries 83 per cent; Amtek Auto 72 per cent; Electrosteel Steels 60 per cent and Bhushan Steels 37 per cent. Among other outstanding cases listed by the Insolvency and Banking Board of India, Synergies Dooray Automotive Ltd got a ‘haircut’ of 94. 27 per cent as a result of which financial companies are able to recover only Rs 54-crore from an outstanding amount of Rs 972.15-crore.

According to the latest data, over Rs 3-lakh crore worth of loans belonging to 70-80 companies has now been referred for ‘hair-cut. These are loans which have not been paid for 180 days. This includes Rs 1.74-lakh crore of 34 power companies. According to a High Power Committee set up by the Gujarat government, three power projects of Tata, Adani and Essar carrying a cumulative debt of Rs 22,000 crore will get a haircut of more than Rs 10,000-crore. What is interesting here is that in case of big defaulters, the entire government and banking machinery become hyper active to bail out the companies. But in case of agriculture, the same banking system seeks exemplary punishment, including jail term. I have never seen a jail term being prescribed for a corporate defaulter.

In an article entitled Reform that Isn’t in Indian Express former Cabinet Minister Kapil Sibal rightly sums it up saying: “Recovery through the IBC process in the steel sector will be about 35 per cent of the loans advanced and in the power sector, only 15 per cent of the loans advanced. This is a scandal in itself. Even the beneficiaries will raise loans from banks to pay for acquisitions.”

The question that needs to be asked is why aren’t the defaulting companies being allowed to go bust? Why is the entire effort to bail out the companies that have failed to perform? At the same time, why shouldn’t the owner of these companies who default on paying back the bank loans not treated the same way as the farmers? First, why should the RBI not disclose the names of defaulting companies to begin with? Secondly, why shouldn’t the corporate bigwigs be made to cool their heels in jail? #

Haircuts are good, Farm loan defaults are bad -- the two-faced treatment of waivers. The Wire. Oct 1, 2018. https://thewire.in/political-economy/farm-loan-defaults-waivers-india

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Farmers are a victim of inefficient markets

For over 40 years now tomato prices have remained frozen -- Pic from web

Consider this. For nearly 40 years now, the average price Indian farmers are getting for tomato in 2018 is not much different from what they were getting in 1978. Adjusted for inflation, the price of tomato remains almost the same, perhaps a little less. Reports of angry farmers dumping tomato onto the streets for failure to get a price that covers even the cost of cultivation have donned the media space for the past two consecutive years. As far as I can recall, reports of farmers feeding tomato to cattle or throwing it on the streets used to appear frequently in the newspaper even way back in the early 1980s.

In the absence of a truly national market, with restrictions on movement and open participation of traders, one can certainly say that an efficient market for agricultural commodities is still not a reality in India. Even if only 6 per cent farmers get the benefit of Minimum Support Price (MSP), which means the remaining 94 per cent are dependent on markets, the low prices of farm commodities are not a reflection of market efficiency. In that case let’s look at farm prices in the US, which is still the world’s most advanced (and one of the largest in terms of market prices) economy in the world. US markets are competitive, bigger players operate with relative ease, and where futures trading dominate thereby allowing for what is called as price discovery.

Writing on his blog, an American farmer, Mike Callicrate, says that the price at which his father sold corn some 44 years back, on Dec 2, 1974, was $3.58 per bushel (equal to 25.40kg). In January 2018, he sold corn at $ 3.56, down two cents from what he earned 44 years ago. In a tweet, another Canadian farmer, Philip Shaw, who farms in Ontario province, quotes the corn price on September 12, 2018 at $3.52 per bushel, which means another fall of 4 cents from what was traded in January this year. In the words of Mike: “The farmer who planted his first field of corn in 1974 can expect the same prices for his corn as he retires.”

If markets were so efficient, I don’t see any reason for the completely distorting price signals. If for 44 years, the markets fail to discover the real corn price that a farmer needs to get, it is quite obvious that the markets are far from efficient. After all, as the American farmer said, all the while the prices of seed, land, equipment, fertilizer, and fuel have grown exponentially but the output price remains the same. Nothing can be more painful.

Dr Robert Johannson, Chief Economist of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), while addressing the 2018 Agricultural Economic and Outlook Foreign Trade Forum in Mar 2018 stated explicitly: “Real farm prices, when indexed for inflation, have fallen sharply since 1960.”Yes, you heard it right. This is happening in America. No wonder, to meet the market’s inability to pay the farmer the rightful price, the US provides an average of $ 50,000 per year as subsidy support to every farmer.

In India, a recent OECD study has conclusively stated that farm prices remained frozen for the past two decades. Farmers have been deliberately paid 15 per cent less all these years to keep food inflation under control. In the absence of any corresponding subsidy or direct farm income support, Indian farmers have been very conveniently left in the lurch. Hit by rising input prices, declining public investments in agriculture, and the increasing price volatility, farmers are the victims of an inefficient market. Yet, the dominant economic thinking is that the best way to address agrarian distress is to further liberate the markets, which will provide the right price signals. What is however not being acknowledged is that even in the US markets have failed to prop up agriculture.

As the kharif harvest season begins, prices of moong, urad, groundnut, bajra and jowar are already ruling much below the MSP. Take the case of moong. Against the procurement price of Rs 6,975 per quintal, the prevailing prices in the past week in Madhya Pradesh mandis hover between Rs 3,900 to Rs 4,400 per quintal. In Maharashtra, the best price offered is Rs 4,900 per quintal. In case of urad, against the MSP of Rs 5,600 per quintal, what the farmers have been able realise in Maharashtra mandis is anything between Rs 3,900 to Rs 4,200 per quintal. This is the beginning of the season and I wonder what will be the prices when the arrivals peak. But going by the past two years experience, when prices of pulses fell by 20 to 40 per cent in mandis across the country, there is hardly any expectation of prices going up this year.

At a time when markets have failed miserably to pull out farmers from perpetual indebtedness, the launch of Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA) has to be seen as an acknowledgement of the fact that farmers need a guaranteed income. The thinking behind assuring farm incomes alone is a significant step forward in bridging the great income divide that prevails in agriculture vis a vis other sectors of the economy. As part of the PM-AASHA initiative, the government will in reality push three schemes, including the continuation of the existing price support scheme, and expanding the price deficiency payments scheme as tried out in Madhya Pradesh. The third scheme, and which needs critical evaluation, is to allow on a pilot basis private players in procurement operations, to begin with in oilseeds.

After announcing a higher MSP, even if it is much below what farmer unions have been demanding, the promise to buy 25 per cent of the entire marketable surplus can only be implemented successfully if an adequate market infrastructure is laid out. Against the requirement of 42,000 APMC mandisat 5 km radius, India only has about 7,600 mandis. While the mandi network has to be expanded, what is also needed is an appropriate financial back up to meet the price support. The budgetary provision of Rs 15,053-crore that has been set aside for the next two years is far too low. If India Inc can be provided with an economic stimulus package of Rs 1,86,000-crore in 2008, and which has still not been withdrawn, I see no reason why a similar package by way of procurement prices cannot be announced for agriculture to begin with. #

Lack of mandis, funds may blunt PM-ASHAA. The Tribune. Sept 18, 2018.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/lack-of-mandis-funds-may-blunt-pm-aasha/654517.html

Thursday, August 30, 2018

2018 CIF Sports Transfer Rule- First Sit Out Period Now Fifty Percent Of Season

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995

The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), which governs all high school sports, has yet again changed the time a student must sit out of a sport [Sit Out Period (SOP)] when transferring for the first time without a family move. This rule should apply until August 2019 when they may or may not change it again.

CIF is a problem child for many California high schoolers, as they can be very strict and can stop a student's ability to participate in varsity level sports, often without all the facts. One common issue is when a student transfers schools their first time, but their family does not move. If this student does not transfer based on a discipline matter and have not transferred in high school before (ensuring they generally won't play for a year), they will face a limited varsity SOP at the new school for any sport where they participated at their former school.

Previously, CIF had specific sit out dates for various sports. However, as of today, CIF has implemented a 50% (plus one day if the season days is an odd number of days) sit out rule. The amended rule, in bylaw 207 B(5)b(ix) states in part:

The Sit-Out Period will be 50% of the total number days in that particular season of sport. The number of days in a season is determined by each Section in accordance with their first allowable competition date through the final regular season competition date. If total number of days in a season is an odd number, then the Sit Out Period would be 50% plus one additional day.

This means if a season went 120 days, the student could not participate for 60 of the 120 days. If it was 121 days, the student would sit out 61 days.

Additionally, if a student played in the same sport at the prior school during the same school year they transferred, they would not be able to play at all that year. Other various rules apply as well.

CIF is the bane of many parents lives, and will usually strictly apply rules with few options for appealing SOPs imposed except under certain limited bases. Parents beware when moving your sports-playing students.

Best,

Michelle Ball

Education Law Attorney

LAW OFFICE OF MICHELLE BALL

717 K Street, Suite 228

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: 916-444-9064

Email:help@edlaw4students.com

Fax: 916-444-1209

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/EdLaw4Students

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Law-Office-of-Michelle-Ball/191273330901857

[please like my office on Facebook, subscribe via twitter and email, and check out my videos on Youtube!]

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

The Importance Of The Chronic Illness Form When Your Child Is Sick

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995

Life may seem rosy for most California public school kids as they can attend school and are there for most of the material, homework, tests and other school activities. However, if you find your child is missing a lot of school due to a long term illness and attendance is becoming an issue, completion of a "Chronic Illness Verification Form" may help protect your child, as well as you, from truancy and other issues.

Truancy laws in California can be very heavy handed and allow punishment for a student with 3 unexcused absences and/or who misses more than 30 minutes in a day without valid excuse (Ed §48260). Although most schools allow students to miss 3 days without a doctor's note, and only parent verification of illness, the fourth day means a mandated visit to a doctor just to get a note. If the parent does not get this note for that day and days following, the student may be stuck with an unexcused absence. Three of these unexcused sick days (days beyond what the school allows a parent to excuse) without a doctor's note may may mean the student is labelled a "truant."

What happens if the child has an illness which keeps them out for a week at a time, and a doctor visit won't alter this (as it is a chronic condition such as cancer, heart condition, debilitating stomach or pain issues, etc.)? The parent is still forced to drag their child to a waiting room to see a medical person, and must incur a bill for the office visit just to confirm the child is ill and receives an excused absence. This is even the case if the parent already knows their child is sick from illness, but must just stay out a fourth, fifth, etc. day of school in a row prior to being able to return to school.

Schools may not tell parents, but when a student has issues where they physically cannot attend school frequently, which are medically documented, the parent has options other than dragging their child to the doctor on the fourth day of any absence. These options are not always communicated to families by schools.

One great option for parents is to have their doctor complete a "Chronic Illness Verification Form," (link to form which opens a Word document). This form gives the parent the ability to excuse their child beyond the 3 days the schools normally allow. The preface in the form states:

"The Chronic Illness Form allows parents to excuse absences due to a specific medical condition with the same authority as a medical professional."

It may be best to ask for the school's form as a first step, but a parent does not have to wait to get this form from their school. Rather, parents can take this form directly to their child's doctor.

Once this form is completed by the medical professional, it is returned to the school, which may verify the form came from the physician. Thereafter, the parent may excuse their child for medical reasons for an extended time period without having to go to the doctor. Work missed should be able to be made up and truancy issues will hopefully not be pursued (fingers crossed as some districts try to pursue truancy for "excessive excused" absences).

Other options for help with this type of situation are Home Hospital Instruction (HHI), as well as setting up a Section 504 Plan, or even an IEP (Individualized Education Program). However, while those may be pending or even not pursued by the parent, this form can help a parent deal with a student who just cannot go to school due to their illness. It allows an already stressed parent to breathe a large sigh of relief that even though their child is very ill, at least a doctor's visit is not needed every fourth day to avoid truancy at school.

Best,

Michelle Ball

Education Law Attorney

LAW OFFICE OF MICHELLE BALL

717 K Street, Suite 228

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: 916-444-9064

Email:help@edlaw4students.com

Fax: 916-444-1209

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/EdLaw4Students

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Law-Office-of-Michelle-Ball/191273330901857

[please like my office on Facebook, subscribe via twitter and email, and check out my videos on Youtube!]

Friday, April 6, 2018

Searches Of Underclothing At School Are Illegal

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995

Most parents will never have much involvement with the drama of school expulsions, heavy allegations against their kids, nor the shock of hearing their child had something improper at school hidden in their pocket. Occasionally, however, there are horror stories involving searches by school officials looking for alleged contraband which go way too far.

In the infamous case Safford v. Redding, the United States Supreme Court found a school strip search of an Arizona eighth grader in violation of the student's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The Court in Safford, however, left some questions open for Arizona, such as whether a strip search could proceed with a specific allegation of a dangerous object being in e.g. underwear. However, California had already answered this question prior to Safford, strictly prohibiting searches of private places and underwear.

California Education Code section 49050 states:

No school employee shall conduct a search that involves:

(a) Conducting a body cavity search of a pupil manually or with an instrument.

(b) Removing or arranging any or all of the clothing of a pupil to permit a visual inspection of the underclothing, breast, buttocks, or genitalia of the pupil.

This means that school employees can't lift a girls shirt to see if she has a joint in her bra. They can't pull down a boys pants to see if he has a pipe, nor lift a girl's skirt to see if she has a weapon hidden. Such searches are illegal and flat prohibited in California.

Only a handful of times since 1994 have I personally met parents with stories of searches gone wild, where a student was made to take off articles of clothing or things were moved to reveal underwear. Often these situations are hard to prove, hard on the kids testifying, and school predators may get away with their wrongful conduct. This is because there is a bias in our society against youths and their believability. Schools and adults, when faced with an adult versus child situation, usually believe the adult. Predators know this which is why kids are the easiest targets. Who will believe Tim, who said I pulled his pants down to check his underwear? Not many will, and maybe not even his parents. And how do you prove it? It is a tough situation in every regard.

Regardless, I wanted to put out there and remind students and parents that schools MAY NOT search them internally, nor extend any search for contraband to underwear, bras, or private places.

Stories that I hear once in a while of the overstepping which can occur would shock most parents. They are occasional at best, but still something to know about and discuss with your kids. If something untoward occurs, it should be jumped on immediately with appropriate reports and complaints filed.

Best,

Michelle Ball

Education Law Attorney

LAW OFFICE OF MICHELLE BALL

717 K Street, Suite 228

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: 916-444-9064

Email:help@edlaw4students.com

Fax: 916-444-1209

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/EdLaw4Students

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Law-Office-of-Michelle-Ball/191273330901857

[please like my office on Facebook, subscribe via twitter and email, and check out my videos on Youtube!]

For more information, see also: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1753&context=lawfaculty

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Student Electronic Posts Online (In Public Or Private Groups, Chats, And Texts) Are Not Really Private And May Bring Punishment

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995

Students frequently post things online, make snarky comments to friends, and feel protected posting in "private" online forums, such as Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or otherwise. However, these posts can come back to haunt them when they are called in and suspended or placed up for expulsion. Even great kids can post something wrong sometime--and "get away with it," but how long can their luck last? For some- the answer is not long enough.

In recent months, I have seen more and more kids up for expulsion or suspension for posts or comments in electronic media. This is really disturbing as some of the things I see students being punished for really do not support school discipline. Schools also seem to now be lumping student groups together for punishment, rather than looking at individual culpability. Staff are choosing to punish all student members of a private group where posts were made regardless of whether they actually committed a suspendable or expellable act themselves. This is disturbing to say the least, for students and families across California.

So, I thought a review would be helpful so parents can review this with their kids prior to it being "too late."

The California Education Code now extends jurisdiction for student acts far beyond the school doors and the school day. This really began in full force when the bullying discipline rules were developed, as outlined in section 48900(r). These rules allow punishment for bullying activities, including "electronic acts." This punishment may be okay if the traditional rules of jurisdiction applied limiting schools in the scope of their punishment to student acts going from/to school, at school or school events, etc. which has previously been a limiting factor.

However, the legislature now allows electronic acts to support school punishment for bullying, intimidation, harassment, etc and define "electronic act" (Ed 48900(r)(2)(a)) as:

"“Electronic act” means the creation or transmission originated on or off the schoolsite, by means of an electronic device, including, but not limited to, a telephone, wireless telephone, or other wireless communication device, computer, or pager, of a communication..." [underline added]

Well, this has opened the floodgates to jurisdiction, as now schools can reach internet or phone posts at home, on weekends, or any other time posted. This coupled with schools labeling all negative comments on line as "bullying," "intimidation" or "harassment," when they are negative about a group, person, or school staff member, even if private or only told to a small group of students, has resulted in a boom of student punishments. Parents, who have never before encountered the school discipline machine are being called and told that what their child did online was bullying and they are out. With the limited investigations being performed, this can be fast and terrifying for student and parent alike.

Some examples of what schools are punishing students for nowadays (some valid, some invalid) include:

1) Posts involving criticism of students or staff.
2) Posts discussing acts that are hypothetical (e.g. harming a student with no real intent).
3) Jokes or funny pictures.
4) Posts with weapons and/or threatening someone.
5) Comments about racial groups, disabled students, or just students in general whether actually bullying them or not
6)  Comments about the opposite sex and sexual matters
7)  Anything the school sees as "negative" and can squeeze into the bullying, harassment, intimidation, etc. category
8) So many other things----

Schools will also use any data gleaned to develop "reasonable suspicion" to then investigate a student for e.g. drug sales, or other inappropriate activities.

Parents of kids who made an offhand comment on a private chat,or otherwise, are now faced with their children being suspended or even expelled for their comments or jokes. The executioner- the school- doesn't really care about First Amendment rights, but rather care about getting any perceived threat out so they can cover themselves.

These rules and their application to everything people say on line if comments somehow relate to the school setting or someone who is involved with the schools, chills free speech. I imagine someday, some large civil rights group may try to challenge the application of these policies to try to limit them, but for now, we are faced with having to stop our kids from posting anything that anyone under the sun could misinterpret as offensive, harassing, bullying, intimidating, inappropriate, discussing race, sexual relations, or otherwise being interpreted as wrong. How are kids to do this? It can be tough to not make a 5 second offhand comment online which later someone says was inappropriate.

And, one large rule to remember here: NO ELECTRONIC POST, PICTURE, OR PRIVATE GROUP IS REALLY PRIVATE. If a student posts something privately and one other student or parent reports it- it is no longer private. Even in Snapchat where supposedly pictures are gone forever- people take screenshots of negative posts and turn them in to the schools frequently.

Parents, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and I don't agree with the long arm of the schools now in place. However, for now, parents, please discuss this speech-chilling situation with your kids and advise them to be cautious in what they post, and perhaps, to ask themselves prior to posting or joining a group where inappropriate comments are made: "If my school principal saw this post/group what would he/she say?"

Best,

Michelle Ball

Education Law Attorney

LAW OFFICE OF MICHELLE BALL

717 K Street, Suite 228

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: 916-444-9064

Email:help@edlaw4students.com

Fax: 916-444-1209

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/EdLaw4Students

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Law-Office-of-Michelle-Ball/191273330901857

[please like my office on Facebook, subscribe via twitter and email, and check out my videos on Youtube!]

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

When is School Expulsion Mandatory in California Public Schools?

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995

School expulsion is NOT something any parent wants their child to endure. To be removed entirely from a school district to have to attend a "bad" school is not a fun process. A permanent mark is placed on the student's record which may come up later in life, including when completing college applications. As such, it is good to know WHEN an expulsion is MANDATORY for a school district. In other words, when does a school district have no choice but to recommend expulsion and thereafter expel a student?

In California there are only five categories where a public school student MUST be expelled. Please see Education Code §48915(c) for more specifics:

1) Possessing, selling or furnishing a firearm.
2) Brandishing a knife at another person.
3) Unlawfully selling a controlled substance.
4) Committing or attempting to commit a sexual assault or committing a sexual battery.
5) Possession of an explosive.

These are the Big 5 offenses. IF a district can prove at the expulsion hearing (to a panel of school district employees) that one of these occurred, they are legally obligated to expel the student.

If a student is expelled under §48915(c), the only attendance option (unless negotiated otherwise) is to attend a county community school, juvenile court school or community day school (see §48915.2), which are environments most parents would prefer to avoid.

How long an expulsion under §48915(c) will continue will depend on the hearing outcome, and/or the negotiations prior to hearing. The legal maximum an expulsion under §48915(c) may continue is a full calendar year (unless there is a breach of the rehabilitation plan during expulsion which will extend the expulsion). The minimum is not delineated in code, but would likely be 1 semester and/or what a parent negotiates.

It IS possible to shorten the one year expulsion mandate and negotiate and/or receive a lesser time period, or even a different type of expulsion (e.g. suspended expulsion rather than full expulsion), but whether this is possible will depend on the student, the district and the school board. Parents will best be served by thoroughly understanding the ramifications of any expulsion and all potential outcomes, and perhaps seeing if they can negotiate a more positive outcome, prior to moving to hearing.
Best,

Michelle Ball

Education Law Attorney

LAW OFFICE OF MICHELLE BALL

717 K Street, Suite 228

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: 916-444-9064

Email:help@edlaw4students.com

Fax: 916-444-1209