Educators address child-abuse law
Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2008
Several state education organizations pledged Wednesday to publicize a 2007 law that aims to streamline reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect.
Sen. Percy Malone, chairman of the Arkansas Legislative Task Force on Abused and Neglected Children, said last month that some school districts weren’t following the law that prohibits schools from preventing an employee from making a report directly to the state child abuse hot line.
On Wednesday, representatives of the Arkansas School Boards Association, the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, the Arkansas Education Association and the Arkansas School Counselor Association told the task force that they were working to alert their members to the law, Arkansas Code Annotated 12-12-507 (c ).
The law states that no school, Head Start program or day care may prohibit an employee from directly reporting suspected child abuse and neglect to the state child abuse hot line. Under the law, supervisors can’t require employees to ask permission or notify anyone before calling the hot line.
Teachers make up one of 29 professions and other groups who are legally required to report child abuse and neglect.
The task force invited the organizations to Wednesday’s meeting to ask their help in making school administrators aware of the law.
Malone, D-Arkadelphia, said one intent of the law was to prevent children from having to recount their experiences of abuse or neglect more than once. It’s also designed to prevent information about child maltreatment from being filtered, funneled or delayed before it reaches the state hot line, task force member Lisa McGee has said.
Tom Kimbrell, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said he was “shocked” to learn that some schools required teachers to report child abuse or neglect to other school officials rather than call the hot line directly.
Kimbrell said in an interview after the meeting that he found only a handful of schools that weren’t following the law. Most districts were aware of the law requiring teachers to call the hot line directly, he said.
After seeing news coverage of the February meeting, Kimbrell said he contacted all 245 school districts to remind them of the law. The organization will also address the issue in its next newsletter and is examining training options, he told the task force.
Kristen Craig Gould, staff attorney for the Arkansas School Boards Association, said the organization provides training for school boards. Districts may also subscribe to the organization’s “model policy service,” which suggests polices based on statutes, rules and regulations that school boards may choose to adopt.
The association has not yet developed a model policy regarding child abuse and neglect because state law charges specific groups, including teachers, with that duty, she said.
Malone said the policy service is viewed by many school districts as “the bible.”
“It’s not in there and they think because it’s either absent or it hasn’t changed that they’re OK for what they’re doing, and they’re not,” Malone said.
After Sen. Sue Madison, DFayetteville, asked Gould to add a new policy based on the 2007 law, Gould said her association would do so.
Gould said after the meeting that the association planned to send an update on its model policies to school boards in the next few weeks and would include a policy on reporting child abuse and neglect.
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