Lacey Township High School unconstitutionally punished students for posts made off-campus and outside of school hours, says ACLU-NJ suit

April 10, 2019

The ACLU-NJ and the law firm Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, P.C., filed a lawsuit today on behalf of two students whose First Amendment rights were violated after they were suspended for posting photos of firearms to social media made entirely outside of a school context.

“When I was pulled into the principal’s office for something I shared with my friends privately, outside of school, over a weekend, it felt like I had no place where I could truly speak freely,” said H.S., one of the students whose Snapchat post precipitated the school’s actions, whose name is being withheld because he was a minor at the time of the suspension.

“I’m filing this suit so that no one at my high school in the future has to feel like the First Amendment wasn’t meant to include them,” said Cody Conroy, the other student who was suspended for the Snapchat messages.

The Lacey Township School District overstepped its constitutional boundaries by suspending Cody Conroy and H.S., both seniors at the time, for their photos of legally owned guns resting on a table. One of the posts had no caption and the other had tongue-in-cheek text: “hot stuff” and “If there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, you know where to go.”...

Lacey schools may lay off special education staff to close budget hole

LACEY - School employees who work with special needs children are facing layoffs and elimination of their benefits as the Lacey Board of Education plans to fill a budget hole created by declining state aid.

School officials issued the district's paraprofessional staff, who assist students with various special needs, "reduction in force" notices earlier this month.

School board President Shawn J. Giordano estimated that about 70 to 80 paraprofessionals currently work in the district, and most of them receive full-time hours and benefits. However, a new plan would fire and rehire only about 35 to 45 percent of them as full-time staff, he said...