Partner Laura Schulkind leads the firm’s Public Education Practice Group. With over 30 years of experience, Laura is a sought-after education-law expert in a wide range of areas that confront California’s public school and community college districts. Her areas of expertise include district governance and board efficacy; ethics and conflicts of interest; government transparency under the Brown Act and Public Records Act; student rights and discipline, including FERPA, Title IX, DACA, and serving students with disabilities under Section 504 and the IDEA; academic, certificated and classified evaluation and discipline; administrator contracts and evaluation; employee leave rights and the interactive process; contract grievance arbitration; unfair labor practices charges before PERB; labor negotiations with academic employees; harassment; employee misconduct investigations; and discrimination complaints made to outside bodies including OCR, EEOC and DFEH. Laura also taught education law in UC Berkeley’s Principal Leadership Institute for ten years.
Laura is particularly recognized statewide for her expertise in designing lawful strategies to promote employment diversity in the community colleges. She was a primary writer of the updated Title 5 Regulations relating to diversity hiring, and was instrumental in their adoption. She has since trained thousands of community college administrators, faculty and staff across the State on designing and implementing strategies to improve workforce diversity, and processes for unbiased decision making. She has also developed strategies and practices for improving the diversity of vendor pools in district RFP and RFQ processes.
Prior to joining Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, Laura was a partner at a Bay Area law firm that specializes in education law. While there, she represented school districts and other public entities on a wide range of school law and employment issues. Among other things, she twice represented coalitions of school districts challenging aspects of the STAR testing program and has a particular interest in psychometrics and legal issues relating to equity in testing.
A sought after presenter, Laura regularly conducts workshops for school districts, community college districts and professional organizations across the State in areas such as diversity hiring, Title IX/CLERY, board effectiveness, the Brown Act, conflicts of interest, harassment, best practices in management, certificated evaluation and discipline, school safety, employee leaves, student discipline, and serving students with special needs.
Professional and Community Involvement
Laura is a member and Past President of the California Council of School Attorneys.
Recognitions
Laura is a recipient of the Association of California Community College Administrators (ACCCA) – Progress in Diversity Award in 2014.
