School Rules

The Supreme Court goes back to school almost every term. Year after year the court is asked to rule on aspects of public education, from major issues like segre gation to less explosive problems like the limits of student "free speech" and the status of nontenured teachers. Last week the court put two more entries in its school rule book:

> Cleveland Junior High School Teacher Jo Carol LaFleur was pregnant and due to give birth in late July. She wanted to finish out the school year, but school board officials forced her to begin an unpaid maternity leave in March because of a standing rule that pregnant women must leave work five months before the baby is due. Such rules are vestiges of a time when skittish school boards were determined to keep visibly pregnant teachers out of the sight of schoolchildren. Now the boards contend that the rules are necessary to protect the health of mother and child and to enable administrators to plan for continuous instruction. Faced with similar suits by LaFleur, another Cleveland teacher and a teacher from Chesterfield County, Va., the court concluded that, while health and instructional continuity are valid goals, long leave requirements are unnecessarily rigid. They violate the due-process clause, said Justice Potter Stewart, because there is a constitutionally protected "freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life." Therefore long mandatory leaves "unduly penalize a female teacher for deciding to bear a child." Justice William Rehnquist, joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger, dissented. They felt that the new precedent could be used to attack other regulations, such as those governing retirement. In any case, the new precedent, coupled with recent Government regulations on equal opportunity, will reach beyond schools to affect the maternity-leave rules of almost every major employer.

> Some 3,400 Chinese public school students in San Francisco cannot speak English, but only half of them receive any supplemental language training. The rest are forced to blunder through. The court ruled unanimously that San Francisco must find a remedy. Said William Douglas: "There is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, text books, teachers and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education." The ruling, based on federal regulations rather than the Constitution, will also cover the more widespread problem of students who speak only Spanish. They constitute a sizable part of school systems in the Southwest, California, Miami and New York City. Thus any school receiving federal funds will now have to provide groups of non-English-speaking pupils with everything it gives others--but in a way that enables them to understand what they are being taught.

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