Foxborough Officials Halt Assistance Animals At Schools For Now

FOXBOROUGH, MA — School officials have decided against allowing assistance dogs in Foxborough classrooms for the time being. Legal liabilties and issues with insurance coverage arose at a meeting earlier this month and led to the school committee post-poning a final vote on a proposed assistance animal policy.

The proposal was initially presented in January and included policies for assitance animals in the school district. Among the requirements in the draft were documentation of all vaccines, licenses and therapeutic accreditations, according to the Sun Chronicle, which first reported this story. But liabilities and insurance issues were not as clear. According to school Business Manager William Yukna, legal libability and insurance for assitance animals would have to be covered by the dog's owner.

"Unless the town owns the dog, the town’s insurance company cannot insure the dog,"Yukna said after researching the issue with the town's insurance carrier.

School Committee Chair Tina Belanger said the town has also explored having a town-owned assistance dog based out of the police department. She said it would live with one of the school resource officers. School Committee member Richard Pearson, who helped create the draft, said much of the proposal came from similar policies in school districts in Mansfield, Easton and Walpole.

For more on this story, check out the Sun Chronicle.

Correction: This story originally used the term service dog rather than assistance dog. The Foxborough School District has policies for service dogs to help students with disabilities. An assistance animal is an animal that has been individually trained, evaluated, and registered with their handler to provide animal-assisted activities and animal-assisted interactions within a school or other facility.