The state's education commissioner recently offered a strongly-worded response to the Barrington School Committee's request for an advisory opinion regarding a student suspension case.

Barrington school officials had been appealing two rulings by the Rhode Island Department of Education and the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, which had stated that in 2018 Barrington school officials had unfairly disciplined an eighth grade student after he participated in a lunchroom conversation with friends about school shootings.

Shortly after dropping their lawsuit, school committee members — working through their legal counsel — sent a seven-page letter to RIDE Commissioner Angelica Infanté-Green asking for an advisory opinion on matters that they believed were related to the case.

Ms. Infanté-Green, responded, defending prior Commissioner Ken Wagner's decision and dismissing numerous aspects of the Barrington School Committee's request.

"…attempting to answer your theoretical questions and commenting upon the abstract distinctions you have conjured … would serve no useful purpose," Ms. Infanté-Green wrote to the Barrington School Committee.

"The request for an advisory opinion in your letter of January 30 is premised upon a fundamental misreading of the referenced decision.

"The simple, and what should have been uncontroversial, holding of Commissioner Wagner in the Decision simply did not raise or even implicate the hypothetical distinctions you have raised in support of your request for an advisory opinion…"

READ THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION'S RESPONSE TO BARRINGTON HERE.

Questions

The Barrington School Committee posed a number of questions in its letter to Ms. Infanté-Green, including one asking if it was lawful for a school district to "remove a student from school when that student did not engage in misconduct under the 'school regulations,' … but who nonetheless is believed may represent a 'threat, actual or implied, or physical harm' to the school community?"

READ THE BARRINGTON SCHOOL DEPARTMENT'S LETTER TO RIDE HERE.

Ms. Infanté-Green wrote that the former commissioner's ruling was clear and correct when he wrote: "[t]he facts make clear that E. Doe (the eighth grade student) was neither a 'disruptive student' ... nor posed a 'demonstrable threat to students, teachers, or administrators' … and as a result, the imposition of an out-of-school suspension was in violation of an express statutory prohibition."

The school committee also asked if school districts were afforded "the discretion to set the standard for determining whether an individual's 'behavior may pose a threat to the safety of school staff or students'"?

Ms. Infanté-Green wrote: "The answer to that question, of course, is yes, with the corollary that the exercise of such discretion is not immune from review, and will be reversed when abused, as was obviously the case with respect to E. Doe."

Ms. Infanté-Green also agreed strongly with the prior commissioner's ruling when he wrote "the fact that an unidentified parent of an unidentified BMS student decided, on the basis of unidentified hearsay report from his or her child, to make an anonymous report to the Barrington Police Department, is not evidence that E. Doe actually engaged, or threatened to engage, in disruptive behavior or something that could be considered a safety violation."

School committee's response

Barrington School Committee Chairwoman Gina Bae said she and her colleagues had only recently received the education commissioner's response to their advisory request.

"We have not met to discuss the letter and/or our next steps, but I anticipate that we will be meeting to discuss it at one of our upcoming meetings," she wrote.