7/14/2014 10:00am

Call to district Attorney Jill Coyle

Re: Parent wanting information on student
Several conversations were had via email with Mr. Jameson Eagan High School Assistant Principal and a
father of a student that is having attendance, discipline and class failure issues.
On July 14, 2014, I was allowed to participate in a call to the district lawyer in regards to a parent
request of all attendance and disciplinary actions that were taken on a student throughout the year.
The requesting parent has joint legal custody of the student with little physical custody. The requesting
parent stated the other parent was withholding this information, and was concerned about the
discipline and attendance issues that the student had throughout the year. The situation was
complicated by the requesting parent stating that he wanted to use the information to gain legal and
physical custody of the student.
After I gathered the requested documentation that was available, it was clear that much of the
information that the parent was looking for was not available. The attendance documentation was
available, and a few of the discipline write-ups were available. There were many informal
undocumented meetings with the student and teachers, the student and administrators, and meetings
with the custodial parent and administrators. The decision was made to call the district lawyer to find
out the responsibility of the admin team to provide the requested information in light of the potential
court proceedings.
The lawyer advised us that there was no need to search for or create documentation for the
informal meetings that had occurred throughout the year. The lawyer advised that we did not need to
try to contact the teachers and find out if there was any supporting documentation for the meetings
that had occurred throughout the year. We were advised to provide the documentation that we did
have and explain to the parent that all of the requested information was not available. In the case of a
subpoena, the lack of documentation for the informal meetings would not be an issue since teachers
and administrators have many informal conversations with students every day, and it is not reasonable
to expect that all of the meetings and conversations will be recorded.
This first project allowed me to have my first contact with the district lawyer in a situation
where there was no immediate need for response and no pressure of immediate communication. I was
curious as to the teachers responsibility to document student discipline conversations. I was pleased to
learn that there does not need to be any fear of not having documentation for every meeting. I learned
that in this case, a lack of documentation is nothing to worry over. The discipline issues were not of a
nature where expulsion was a possibility, so there is no requirement to have complete documentation.