[crystallynda]

A student gets caught drinking. A teacher turns her into the school office and student gets suspended for a few days. The teacher tries to help the student with the drinking problem. The teacher was not in the students life until this happened. The teacher is successful with the student not drinking, sobriety is at 64 days.
The teacher takes the student to the beach, BBQ's, and there is always other people there. The students brother goes along most of the time also. The parents gave their permission for the student to go and they also talked to the teacher. The teacher and them become friends and they feel comfortable with the situation. The teacher means well and is only trying to help and keep the student from drinking or falling off the wagon.
Nothing bad has happened, but someone called the police and reported it. Now they all are being questioned, and are being made to feel like criminals and they have done something wrong.

Is this illegal? Against school policy I am thinking.

Thank You very much

[N0help4u]

It is not ethical and may go against school rules and there are too many stories about teachers ending up getting the kid(s) drunk and or having sex with them. While it may not be illegal it is best to avoid because of the rumors and implications. Then if a student decides to lie on the teacher they really do not have a leg to stand on because the student is often believed and that DOES happen.

EDIT: ***** Also I have heard stories of teachers getting in trouble for sexual harassment for giving a crying kindergartner a hug,

[Schoolmarm97]

Not illegal, but definitely sad all around. In this day and age when adults are being accused of illicit behavior on a daily basis, unless the parents are actually participating in the activities, this teacher is taking a risk. Obviously the risk proved problematic as someone who wasn't in the loop called the police. It may or may not be against school policy. The schools where I taught had no policy against this sort of thing (though a teacher I knew was fired for being a member--are you ready?--of a legitimate rock band with some of her students), and teachers often took students (rarely only one at a time, though that did happen) places with parental approval. But it's always dicey.

Let me say here that it's very sad that this is the way our society is handling mentoring these days. It wasn't always like this, and I've attended the weddings and college graduations of students who survived early silliness because they were under my wing until they regained their sanity. I stopped doing that several years before I retired because the risk was too great. I hated having to do that. But time can always be made in the school day for those who need to be talked down off the ceiling, and that's the safest way to handle these things. Not guaranteed, but safer than the alternatives. A pass out of class to walk with a mentoring teacher on hall duty is a lot less questionable than an outing outside of school hours.

I'm sure this particular situation will work out fine in the end as long as there really was nothing questionable going on. A teacher pegged legally as a sexual predator is at the end of his or her career. Period. But parents (who are not already in the system for negligence in letting the child drink in the first place) testifying that all was well and done with their explicit approval should defuse the case quickly enough.