Court Opinion

ID: 9860229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:15:03.67488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:19:30.989584
License: Public Domain

Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: I cannot accept the majority opinion because it permits the Board of E ducation to close its eyes to and turn its head from the problem of students preying on fellow students within school buildings after teachers have been made aware of extortion demands. An acceptable school system requires that a board of education assume responsibility for protecting students who receive such threats and report them to the school authorities. A 10-year-old student who has no choice but to be in school and can look to no one other than the Chicago Board of Education to safeguard her is entitled to no less, particularly when the student has the courage to speak up instead of succumbing to the extortion and even perhaps in self-defense joining the extortionists. Unless the Board protects its students against known extortionists, our public schools are in danger of deteriorating into a jungle. This explains why I respectfully dissent from the portion of the majority opinion holding that the allegations attributing wilful and wanton conduct to the teacher do not state a cause of action. The allegations here are stronger than in Clay v. Chicago Board of Education (1974), 22 Ill. App. 3d 437, 318 N.E.2d 153. There, the victim of a fellow student with a general propensity for aggression claimed that the teacher’s mere absence from the room was wanton conduct. The court, observing that “the need for closer supervision could not reasonably have been apprehended,” and that a teacher cannot be expected to keep her eye on the students every second, was obviously disturbed by the “tremendous burdens” a ruling that she must do precisely that could impose. But, the burden of protecting students while within the school building from retaliation for resisting extortion demands reported to the school authorities would not be as great. A teacher may never achieve much control over bullies who may be in her charge, but she can refrain from delivering their victims to them gift-wrapped, as appears to have happened in this case. The teacher here consigned the plaintiff to the care of a leader of a gang of extortionists known to the teacher, through a report by the plaintiff’s mother, to have threatened the plaintiff personally with physical harm unless the extortion demands of the gang were met. The Board of Education relies for exculpation on the doctrine of in loco parentis. However, I do not believe a responsible parent would delegate the safeguarding of his child to an extortionist whose demands had been rebuffed. The teacher clearly did not conform to the standard of care set by the plaintiff’s own mother when she notified the school authorities of the threats her daughter was receiving, apparently in the belief that they would then act to protect her child. A jury could reasonably find that the teacher’s conduct was wanton, that she recklessly abandoned her duty to safeguard the plaintiff and exhibited a wilful disregard for the plaintiff’s safety by failing to recognize and prevent the f orseeable and imminent danger that the extortionist would carry out her threats if presented with an opportunity to do so. An incident such as this, under the facts alleged in the complaint, occurring within the school building itself was avoidable. F or these reasons, I believe that the “wilful and wanton” counts of the complaint should stand.