Fayette County

educators appear to be acting properly in enforcing their rights to question

students in the absence of their parents, says a local civil rights leader.

"We have

not received any calls and that probably means that no violations have

occurred," said the Rev. Ed Johnson, president of the Fayette County

Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The legal concept

of in loco parentis gives educators the authority to assume the

role of parents when students have to be questioned about disciplinary

or legal problems, Johnson said.

He recently

issued an invitation, through The Citizen's Opinion page, to parents who

believe that educators had overstepped their authority, to phone the NAACP.

Johnson emphasized

that the invitation was not just for minority students, but for all students.

If educators

were to interview students without advising them of their rights to have

attorneys or parents present, and then turned the information over to

police, that would be a violation of their authority, Johnson said.

"We were

just seeking to obtain some data to assess whether the Board of Education,

the schools and teachers, were applying the rule of in loco parentis

properly," he said.

He added that

following the rules is especially important when resource officers, who

are sworn police officers, interview students. If there's any chance of

criminal charges being filed, the students must be informed of their rights,

he said.

"We have

been working in cooperation with the Board of Education" and officials,

Johnson said, adding that he believes it's part of the role of the NAACP

to make sure people's civil rights are not being violated.

"I'm confident that this is the case" in Fayette

schools, he added.