-: Tegan Delaine
and I am counsel for
Achievement First public charter schools,
so really my responsibility is compliance,
making sure that we're following,
the laws around special education,
around labor and employment,
around contract negotiations
and safety.
all of those things sort of fall into my wheelhouse.
my primary focus
and the one that takes up most of my time honestly,
is special education
because there are a lot of protections,
rightfully so for students with disabilities,
you've got sort of layers of laws,
you've got federal,
you've got state,
and then you have local regulations.
In New York they're all three.
In Connecticut it's local regulations,
excuse me, state laws and federal law
and then in Rhode Island
it's all three again
and so our responsibilities vary,
just based on our relationships with our districts,
and in Rhode Island we're our own school districts,
so everything falls on us
and so it's sort of
an extra layer of responsibility
but that's really my job
when we get sued, (laughs)
I represent, put that work in lawsuits.
most of the time the lawsuits
are wrongful termination lawsuits
so that's where the labor employment piece comes in
and yeah, I'm responsible
for negotiating our contracts with outside vendors.
It's really important for me
to go through the suits
and what the claims are
and sort of outline,
what we may,
what right off the bat
we can either admit or deny.
So because you have to file an answer
and sometimes the answer has counterclaims,
sometimes it makes admissions
and sometimes it has denial
so it's really important
to go through each paragraph
and determine how we're going to answer
or I don't know how we're going to answer,
what information I need
in order to file an answer
because the timeline is relatively short ,
most usually about two weeks
unless we ask for more time,
which courts always give
because when you get a 50-page lawsuit,
it's hard to respond to that in two weeks,
but that's usually the next step
and it's basically each paragraph
where I'm not sure of the answer
is a mini-investigation.
It's going to talk to,
the teachers that might've been involved
in the incident
or the school leaders
that might have information,
so it's really sort of breaking down
what the student is saying
and determining what,
if anything, I need to do
to gather more information
to file the answer.