Sports in school not only require diligent supervision, but they also require the proper maintenance of equipment. Principals must address maintenance of the school building, playground, school grounds, and equipment used by students and staff. The key is for administrators to remain proactive rather than reactive. One particular proactive measure is for the administration to place an individual in charge of checking the physical equipment on a daily basis before students are present (Gaustad, 1994). Herbert Drumond, from the Ohio Department of Education, takes this idea a step further by insisting that anything found needing improvement must be put into writing for the administrator on a daily basis (2001). Principals must also stress this issue with the adults working with students through sports or extracurricular activities. Unless someone is in charge of making sure the equipment is safe on a daily basis, the adults working with students must not assume that the equipment is in usable condition.

The schools job is to protect students. This protection should be physical and intellectual-all students should be safe once they enter the school grounds, and all schools should be able to guaranteed knowledge which is current and meeting the standards of the state. No principal should be comfortable offering less than those minimal expectations. While principals have no control over what is happening in a classroom when the door closes, principals must feel safe in the fact that they have educated their staff about negligence and the expectations of the school; to do less than this is, perhaps, negligent on the part of the principal.

The purpose of this project is to encourage administrators to take a more active role in training their staff regarding issues of negligence. The three areas that administrators need to address are instruction, supervision, and maintenance of equipment. While many administrators would like to believe that teachers are aware of how to avoid being negligent, administrators are asking for trouble if they do not address the needed changes in procedures, classes, activities, etc. with the entire staff. Principals must also be acquainted with the most common areas of negligence in order to avoid potential lawsuits. Administrators, as well as teachers, are responsible for protecting students while they are on school property.

Many teachers are not aware that negligence during instructional time is also a common area of negligence accusations cropping up in America’s schools. The primary goal of teachers during the school day is to get across the content of the curriculum. While instruction is the chief responsibility of teachers, students and parents are finding reasons for accusing teachers of being negligent during this important process. “Virtually all teachers, administrators and higher educators who work in the formation of teachers have heard of legal actions brought relative to the failure of schools to teach students needed skills in reading and mathematics” (Sewall, 1995). Anytime that a child is denied the opportunity to receive an education, a lawsuit could be pending. Children who are misclassified as learning disabled and unable to receive an education due to their placements have great cases. This happened when a child was misclassified as “retarded” in New York in the late 70’s (Hoffman v. Board of Education, 1978). This, unfortunately, is not a lone case in the legal archives. Stud

Some topics in this essay:
Research Sadly, Risk Management, Alexander Alexander, Physical Education, School District, District Philadelphia, Board Education, Department Education, Stevens Cheeston, Conclusion Administrators, protect students, daily basis, students parents, accusations negligence, policies procedures, school day, sewall 1995, extracurricular activities, school system, school district, alexander 1984 torts, supervision instruction equipment, result student injury, instruction equipment maintenance, alexander alexander 1984,