The 2026-27 Quarterly Webinars topics are set!
Play Like a Pro (And Keep Your District Out of the Penalty Box)
It's game day and an open enrollment for a special education student just landed in your inbox. A student hasn't been to class in three weeks and you're not sure whether it's time to escalate to the truancy officer. A student's TikTok mocking her English teacher just went viral, and you need to know exactly where you stand. A parent owns two houses and swears their kid lives at the one in your district, but everyone in town knows different.
South Dakota school leaders face the same high-pressure decisions every school year. KSB School Law is offering a quarterly webinar series specifically designed for South Dakota school administrators. This year’s series follows a student from the front door to the sidelines and back again: how they get in, whether they show up, what rights they carry once they're here, and every other way they might land on your enrollment roster. Each one-hour (12-1) session comes loaded with the forms and checklists you need to put the law into practice.
Topic: Welcome to the Never-Ending Transfer Portal: Surviving Open Enrollment
Date & Time: October 6, 2026 at 12:00 PM
College athletes aren't the only ones changing schools with regularity these days. Every year, South Dakota families use open enrollment to move their kids to the district (or the program) that fits best, and every year, school leaders get tripped up on the same handful of deadlines and capacity decisions. Under SDCL 13-28-40 through 13-28-47, open enrollment turns heavily on the written capacity standards each board must adopt. Add in the twice-a-year application deadlines (the last Friday in September for first semester and the last Friday in January for second), the law regarding accepting siblings, the wrinkles around alternative-instruction students, and some persistent myths about the process for accepting or denying students with IEPs, and it's easy to see why this topic keeps prompting legal questions. KSB's attorneys will walk through the full open enrollment lifecycle — from setting capacity standards and reviewing applications to handling denials.
*Participants will receive scripts and checklists for central office staff, sample capacity resolutions reflecting common practices so you don't have to guess about all the blanks to fill in, and sample response letters ready to drop into your own process.
→ Ideal for: superintendents, principals, special education directors and central office staff who handle open enrollment calls, questions, and applications.
Topic: Bueller? Bueller? Getting Serious About Attendance and Truancy
Date & Time: December 1, 2026 at 12:00 PM
Ferris Bueller made skipping school look effortless. For the students missing class today, the reasons — and the legal consequences for schools that don't respond correctly — are a lot more complicated. Chronic absenteeism has become one of the defining student issues of the last several years, and South Dakota's own numbers show truancy-diversion success rates falling. Schools are under increasing pressure to intervene earlier, document more carefully, and know exactly what South Dakota law requires. This webinar walks through the full attendance continuum: drafting board policy and student handbooks to address absences, running a legally sound attendance-intervention process, the school board warning and report-to-the-truancy-officer steps required by SDCL 13-27-16, the truancy officer's duties and complaint authority under 13-27-17 through 13-27-20, coordinating with the state's attorney on filings, and avoiding the compliance traps that come with tracking attendance for IEPs and 504 plans.
*Participants will receive information on what to check in your attendance policies, sample intervention plan templates for common scenarios, and truancy referral checklists.
→ Ideal for: superintendents, principals, assistant principals, and attendance/truancy officers.
Topic: You Have the Right to Remain a Student: First and Fourth Amendment and Related Issues in Schools
Date & Time: February 2, 2027 at 12:00 PM
Students don't shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate — but they don't walk in with the same rights as adults on a public sidewalk, either. That gap is exactly where school leaders get into trouble. This session tackles two of the most active areas of constitutional law schools face: free speech (on campus and off, in person and online) and search and seizure (backpacks, lockers, phones, and vehicles). We'll cover what the courts have said about disciplining students for off-campus speech, how far administrators can go when searching a student or their device, and how to train staff to recognize the difference between a lawful search and a lawsuit waiting to happen. KSB's attorneys will provide practical, scenario-based guidance throughout.
*Participants will receive updated search-and-seizure guidelines and a free-speech decision-tree checklist for building administrators.
→ Ideal for: superintendents, principals, assistant principals, and school resource officers.
Topic: Where Do They Belong? Every Enrollment Question That Isn't Open Enrollment
Date & Time: April 6, 2027 at 12:00 PM
Just because it's not called "Open Enrollment" doesn't mean it's open to interpretation. Can an alternative-instruction (homeschool) student take band, art, and part-time classes — or open enroll just to play sports? (The Department of Education has taken a position on that; we'll cover it.) Which address actually establishes school residency when a student splits time between two parent homes in two different districts? What happens if a parent owns two houses? How does a school determine if a student is homeless under McKinney-Vento? This webinar rounds up every enrollment scenario that doesn't fall under the open enrollment statutes, giving school leaders a practical framework for handling part-time enrollment, residency determinations, and foster and homeless-student enrollment.
*Participants will receive a residency quick-reference guide and checklist of items to capture on enrollment forms.
→ Ideal for: superintendents, principals, activities directors, and enrollment/registrar staff.