BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

OCEANPORT –– The borough Board of Education will be conducting a constitutional rights seminar as the result of a recently settled lawsuit that found the Oceanport school district in violation of a student’s First Amendment rights.

The Board of Education will conduct a seminar for students, teachers and administrators on the relationship between rights granted to students by the United States Constitution and the rights of the Oceanport public schools to assure that the conduct of its students is consistent with board rules and regulations with the law, according to a prepared statement by the school district’s attorney Armen McOmber of McOmber & McOmber, Red Bank.

According to the settlement, the school district will provide a speaker knowledgeable on First Amendment free speech issues and students’ rights on Law Day or Career Day to lecture and lead a question-and-answer session at Maple Place School.

At that time, students, members of the Board of Education, administrators and teachers will be given a copy of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) student rights handbook.

The United States District Court in Trenton found the borough of Oceanport School District in violation of Ryan Dwyer’s First Amendment rights in a lawsuit that was settled on July 11.

Dwyer’s parents filed the suit on his behalf after he was disciplined by school officials for creating a Web site that was critical of the school. The suit was filed in December 2003 while Dwyer was an eighth-grade student at Maple Place School. He is now 17 years old and a sophomore in high school.

“He was treated like a criminal,” Dwyer’s attorney Grayson Barber, a cooperating attorney with the ACLU of New Jersey, said last week.

Listed as defendants in the suit were: the Oceanport School District; John Amato, principal of Maple Place School; Superintendent of Schools James DiGiovanna; and the 11 members of the Oceanport Board of Education.

According to the suit, Dwyer was seeking a judgment that the defendants violated his right to free expression.

He was also seeking compensatory damages for attorney’s fees and appropriate relief.

Judge Tonianne J. Bongiovanni, U.S. Magistrate Judge in Trenton, found that the school district had violated Dwyer’s First Amendment rights and ordered the district to pay $117,500 in damages to Dwyer.

“The Board of Education and the Dwyers agreed to resolve the matter after an initial finding by the U.S. District Court that, while certain administrators employed by the Board of Education had violated the Dwyer child’s constitutional rights, the court was nonetheless satisfied that in light of the spectrum of case law governing this particular area, there was no clearly established law at that time defining the parameters as to when a child may not be properly disciplined for speech,” McOmber said in a prepared statement.

On April 1, 2003, Dwyer published an internet Web site from his home computer. The homepage of the site read, “Welcome to the Anti-Maple Place - Your Friendly Environment,” according to the lawsuit.

The home page stated, “This page is dedicated to showing students why their school isn’t what it is cracked up to be. You may be shocked at what you find on this site,” according to the suit.

It also stated, “This page protected by the U.S. Constitution.”

The site also contained the five pages: “About,” “Favorite Links,” “What’s New,” “Guest Book” and “Custom.”

The guest book page contained the following instructions:

“Please sign my guestbook but No profanity at all!!!!!! No profanity (that’s curse words and bad words) and no threats to any teacher or person ever. If you think it may be a bad word or it may be threatening do not type it in.”

Within the first week, the site received 450 hits from students, according to Barber.

“From April 1 through April 7, several visitors left comments in the guestbook that ranged from words of encouragement to criticisms of the site, to criticisms of the school and teachers,” according to the lawsuit.

On April 7, DiGiovanna contacted Dwyer’s mother at work to inform her that her son was suspected of creating a Web site that “might have criminal content,” according to the suit.

But Barber said the school was never able to identify what rule Dwyer violated.

“His parents drove up to the school and saw police and were told their son was responsible for a criminal act,” Barber said. “It turned out to be a big nothing.

“[Dwyer] said he did not like the school and the school acted like it was the first time they heard that a 14-year-old did not like their school,” she said.

Dwyer was suspended from school for one week, was kicked off the baseball team and was told he could not attend the eighth-grade field trip, according to Barber.

He was also barred from taking an Advanced Placement test for algebra and English, Barber said.

Barber said Dwyer’s parents would probably have dropped the lawsuit if the school district had apologized and administration had admitted they made a mistake.