Schools, consent forms and volunteering

[mrkilla]

the short , answer

In todays "were going to sue you for a paper cut" age , uh good luck.

Its really an insurance thing, like your school had to cover in case you sliced your arm off. Aftet that I don't think schools would care. THey just don't want to be sued.

As for the parents, there all nuts now anyway, while you are cool and migh tlet your son/daughter do it most parents now are outa there mind and start crying along with there kids when they get road rash.

[TimM]

[ QUOTE ]
I know in my college geology class the TA commented that we didn't take any "field trips" to any geological locations "because the waiver forms and paper work is a total nightmare."

[/ QUOTE ]

WTF? This is college. It's not like the students will need a note from their parents.

[PokerBob]

we live in the age of litigation, so everyone is out ot make sure that their ass if fully covered. i'm sure most schools would be more thant happy to have a volunteer come in and work with kids. the school will never allow them to juggle anything dangerous though. too much liability for the district, or at least there is the APPEARANCE of liability. if a kid gets hurt, is it the district's fault? I don't know and most people (unless they are lawyers) don't know, but it sure looks bad so the gut reaction-response of anyone affiliated with the school is going to be "no" to anything dangerous/cool. however, once you get enough kids interested, you may be able to get something going independent of the school. you would definitely need to get parental consent though before any axes, torches, hand-grenades, etc. got juggled.

I'm not sure the exact laws in MN, but when I was a teacher in MA:
1) Anyone spending time with the students (like a chaperone for a field trip) had to have CORY report, which was basically the police checking up on your background to ensure that the bodies buried in your backyard are over the age of consent

2) Forming a club required permission of the principal and a teacher as a sponsor. Going on a field trip required parental consent forms and filing paperwork at city hall.

3) What you're proposing has a chance of working if you start it as a juggling club, and then do a demonstration with lit torches or whatever for the kids. When specific kids are ready, you *might* be able to get them to do it after getting permission just from the specific children that have hte ability- the kids will be asking their parents for permission every 30 seconds.

4) basically, schools = paperwork nightmares

I don't think these days you'll even be allowed to bring a machete onto school grounds, as it could be construed as a weapon.

[DMBFan23]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think these days you'll even be allowed to bring a machete onto school grounds, as it could be construed as a weapon.

[/ QUOTE ]

construed???

[skiier04]

I would guess you have a 0% chance of the children being allowed to juggle neither torches nor machettes. You'll probably be able to get some sort of juggling club set up, but there's no way in this day and age that anyhting even remotely dangerous to the kids will be allowed

[icepick]

You juggled torches, in school, in Minnesota?

Bravo! I'm speachless. Somehow you must of avoided the State Where Nothing is Allowed Police.

[rusty JEDI]

They can be a major hassle.

In Vancouver (note:not as close as sue happy as the U.S.) a highschool football player got his mom to sign the form saying he could play. He broke one of his vertebrae and was partially paralyzed. So, the father sued the school because he never signed it.

In a sports and rec. legalities class we also learned that it doesnt really matter if you get parental consent or not because a parent can not sign over the childs rights, and the child is not of age to make such a decision anyways.

The other interesting thing was that most consent forms are too long so they get thrown out based on nobody would ever read the whole thing before signing anyways.

rJ