Florida Child Injury Law Blog

Posts Tagged ‘school’

At the law office of Clearwater Child Injury Attorney James W. Dodson, we all too often encounter cases where children have been injured traveling to and from school.  We envision a world in which all children are free from harm, and child safety is the rule. Florida is part of the nationwide Safe Routes to School initiative.

What Safe Routes to School Hopes to Achieve

Among the goals of the program are to increase bicycle, pedestrian, and traffic safety, and decrease traffic congestion, to have more children walking and bicycling to schools. Other benefits will be improved community safety, accessibility and increased community interest in bicycle and pedestrian accommodations. 

How to Achieve Safe Routes to School

These goals can be accomplished by encouraging community involvement and improving partnerships among parents, schools, municipalities, and community organizations, and by improving the physical environment to increase the ability to walk and bicycle to school.

What are the 5 E’s of Safe Routes to School Recommended by the Federal Highway Administration?

• Engineering to create infrastructure surrounding schools to reduce speeds and conflicts with motor vehicles and safer crossings, walkways, trails, and bikeways
• Education to teach bicycling and walking safety skills and driver safety around schools
• Encouragement through activities to promote walking and bicycling 
• Enforcement by police of speed limits, yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, and proper walking and bicycling behaviors; community enforcement, e.g. crossing guard programs
• Evaluation by monitoring and documenting outcomes

Clearwater Child injury attorney Jim Dodson endorses this program and encourages readers to support its goals to make his vision of child safety a reality.

Schools and day care centers are a very important element in the care of children.  The well-being of  young children is often assumed.  The trust parents and guardians place in the day care facilities and schools is often rewarded with outstanding care.  However there are occasions where these environments don’t provide the proper supervision and safety that children require…and need.  Injuries can come as a result.  When a child is hurt, there are a number of potential legal suits that can be taken.  A  potential law suit would depend on the severity of the injury, as well as the incident that occurred.        

 Children need to be protected; their safety needs to be ensured.  When their well-being is not handled properly and they are injured, some of the possible legal claims include the following:  failure to provide a safe environment, failure to keep the child away from hazardous items, failure to prevent the child from being injured or bullied by other children, and failure to provide adequate supervision and monitoring.  

 Florida law offers grants of immunity to public schools from being sued.  An experienced Florida child injury attorney can determine if these legal obstacles can be overcome by studying the specifics of your case and advising you on the merits of your claim.

The Pinellas School Board is being sued by an Azalea Middle School student. 

 The student, Jarrard Jackson, claims that he’s been harassed and bullied on three separate occasions by the same group of boys.  The incidents have happened on a school bus, as well as on school grounds.

 A spokeswoman for Pinellas Schools declined to address the specific allegations, according to a news report.

Recent statistics show that half of all bullying goes unreported.  The Dodson Law Firm urges students who have been bullied to report the incident(s) to an adult. Most children do not report that they have been bullied to a parent or an authority figure because they fear they will become even more of a target.

 Anonymous reports can also be made by calling the Campus Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-873-8477. (Contact Information provided by the Pinellas County School Board)