Judge orders student back to school

PORTLAND – A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a 13-year-old girl who was suspended for allegedly writing a bomb threat on a wall at Massabesic Junior High School must be allowed to return to class, at least for the time being.

U.S. District Judge George Singal issued a 10-day restraining order against School Administrative District 57 in a civil rights lawsuit brought by the girl’s mother.

The judge concluded that the girl has suffered continuing irreparable injury from the district’s refusal to either grant her a due process hearing or allow her to return to school after a 10-day suspension.

“Each day that [the girl] has been prevented from attending school has caused her to fall farther behind academically and socially, each day lost is invaluable and can never be retrieved,” Singal wrote.

The girl’s mother contends that York County sheriff’s deputies coerced her daughter into making a false confession that led to charges of terrorizing and making a false report. But the judge denied a request for a temporary restraining order against the sheriff’s office seeking evidence investigators gathered in the case.

Singal found that the hardship the girl suffers from being excluded from school without due process outweighs any hardships on SAD 57 from requiring her return to class.

When the girl returns to school, she cannot be isolated from her classmates or placed in an alternative program and cannot be expelled or suspended without a due process hearing, the judge wrote.

Any hearing, he said, must be conducted before an impartial board and the girl must be allowed to have a lawyer and be able to confront and cross-examine witnesses against her.