Minnewaska School District has agreed to pay Riley Stratton $70,000 to settle the 2012 case involving the former Minnewaska Area Middle School sixth-grader. Stratton is now 15 years old. According to the lawsuit Stratton was given detention after she posted comments about a teacher’s aide on her Facebook page. The ACLU claimed that the reason for originally viewing her page was due to claims that she was using school computers to talk to a boy about sex. However, Stratton used her own personal computer at home to make the post -not a school computer.
The nature of the comments which lead to detention about a teacher’s aide were supposedly disapproving. A disputed fact in the case was whether there was permission for the school to go through her cellphone and request passwords for her Facebook account. According to Minnewaska Superintendent Greg Schmidt “It was believed the parent had given permission to look at her cellphone,” but there was no signed waiver from the parent, and there was no policy requiring one.
The fact that the posting was made from her home was a deciding factor in settling the case, according to Schmidt. The reason for the lawsuit was because Stratton became too distraught and embarrassed to attend class or go to school. Since this settlement, the school has changed its policy. The school now requires parents to submit a signed permission waiver in order to look through a students cellphone. This case may be an example of schools overreaching their authority in punishing kids for activities outside of school, and especially for things that happen on social media.
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