Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Published – January 23, 2023
A parent is suing Willoughby-Eastlake Schools Board of Education and three Eastlake Middle School employees after her daughter was allegedly strip-searched for a vape pen. According to Cleveland 19, the parent’s lawsuit claims the school “violated the teen’s constitutional rights, didn’t train their employees properly, and intentionally inflicted emotional stress on the teen girl.”
Daily Mail reports, on September 27, 2022, the student was in the girls’ locker room when she was approached by a friend “to see and smoke her new vape pen.” The student declined, but the friend asked if she could leave the vape pen in her locker. According to the lawsuit, the student “feeling uncomfortable but afraid to upset her friend, begrudgingly agreed.”
Principal Colleen Blaurock pulled the parent’s daughter out of class later that day to question her about the vape pen. According to the lawsuit, the girl told the truth about “what occurred in the girls’ locker room that morning,” but insisted “the vape pen was not hers, that she did not have the vape pen and that she did not know where the vape pen was.”
Blaurock searched the student’s gym locker and hallway locker but found nothing. She then took the teen to the nurse’s office. The middle school’s nurse, Megan Kuhlman, was not present on this day and nurse’s aide Rosalyn Rubertino was there instead.
According to ABC News, Rubertino contacted Kuhlman, who confirmed that she could do a “body search.” Rubertino had never conducted a body search prior to this and had not received training on how to do so. She required the student to strip down to her underwear and did not end up finding a vape.
According to court documents, “Kuhlman failed to instruct Rubertino of how she had handled searches in the past and instead told her to just conduct a ‘body search.’” She further acknowledged that a strip search of the student was inappropriate in this situation.
Plaintiff’s lawyer Jared Klebanow told Daily Mail:
“Students do not check their constitutional rights at the door when they walk into school. Subjecting a teenage girl to a strip search over an object which posed no threat of violence to students or staff was unreasonable and in violation of her civil rights.”
Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools has 7,344 students enrolled across 13 schools.
