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What You Can Do to Help School Officials Deal with Your Restraining Order - A Checklist for Parents

Produced by Massachusetts legal services' Domestic Violence and School Safety Workgroup
Created April, 2007

This Checklist is designed to help you work with: 

  • school departments,
  • administrators, and
  • staff, 

when a restraining order has been issued to protect you or your child.  

This Checklist contains some practical things that you can do to work effectively with your child's school.  The practical suggestions are from laws that protect survivors of domestic violence from further abuse.

Provide the school with copies of your restraining order and a photo of the abusive parent or person who is under the order.

Meet with the school principal: Review what the restraining order says.   Discuss the ways that the school can help you make sure that the order is obeyed.

Ask school officials to put a copy of the restraining order in your child's school record.

Ask school officials to give copies of the restraining order to key school personnel who have may contact with the abusive parent.

Ask school officials to put a policy into effect under which key school personnel inform the principal if they are contacted in any way by a parent who is under a restraining order or if they see a parent who is under a restraining order on or near school grounds. 

Ask to see your child's school "directory information." School directory information includes addresses and phone numbers. 

Ask school officials not to release your child's school directory information without your consent.  

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