Supervision+of+Students+Case+1


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 * Does the teacher have a duty to remain in her classroom at all times while her pupils are present in class? **

**The Policy** A school policy, established earlier by the principal, calls for students to file to lunch in groups of six. The teacher is expected to remain in the classroom until the last group leaves and then remain in the cafeteria until the last students return to class after lunch.

A teacher does not come back with the last group but remains in the cafeteria to finish her lunch. While the teacher is finishing her lunch in the cafeteria, a sixth-grade student in the classroom lost the sight in one eye during some "horseplay" involving two other students.
 * The Situation**

One is bound to anticipate and provide against what usually happens and what is likely to happen; but it would impose too heavy a responsibility to hold [the defendants] bound in a like manner to guard against what is unusual and unlikely to happen or what, as it is sometimes said, is only remotely and slightly probable.
 * The Decision**

Comparing the facts of this case with the facts of three North Carolina Supreme Court cases in which the likelihood of an injury was far greater, the Court of Appeals concluded that

. . . foreseeability of harm to pupils in the class or at the school is the test of the extent of the teacher's duty to safeguard. . . pupils from dangerous acts of fellow pupils, and absent circumstances under which harm to. . . pupils might have been reasonably foreseen during her absence. . . [the teacher] was not under a duty either to remain with her class at all times or to provide adult supervision at all times while she was absent.

//James v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

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