As far as providing services to minors, you're not. You're providing services to he school/district. You don't touch or interact with children, you touch and nteract with inanimate objects. Even though we're there to work on inanimate object, just because we don't "interact" with children, if we go to a school during the time children are in the building, even if we tune a piano in a room when there are no children in the room, we have to walk through the hallways to get to the room. That when there is a chance that we would encounter a child. A child could even come into the room while we're working, even if they are not supposed to be there. It's those at those times when the school could claim we "interact" with children. A liability policy will protect you if a piano runs over a foot, and you're blamed, even if it happened two months after you were there. Malpractice is for when you did a bad job, and they want to sue you for it. I don't know what kind of policy there is to protect you from doing something bad to children, but that is what a back ground check is for. Up to now I have not had to get one, even though I tune for a lot of schools. But I bet there will come a time when it be a requiredment. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Mark Schecter <mark at schecterpiano.com> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Thu, Jan 20, 2011 9:03 pm Subject: Re: [pianotech] Malpractice insurance for working for a school district Hi, Diane, I don't think they have any right at all to your client list. If they want eferences, you can choose who to have them contact. As far as providing services to minors, you're not. You're providing services to he school/district. You don't touch or interact with children, you touch and nteract with inanimate objects. Perhaps by malpractice, they mean to say liability? That I could understand. But he rest seems completely misplaced to me. To suddenly burden you with these unprecedented demands itself seems unethical, f they have not required these things prior to paying previous invoices, and specially so if they're delaying paying for work that has already been erformed. If they want to make a new contractual arrangement, fine, but they an't just arbitrarily impose new restrictions on a working agreement whenever hey take a notion. They should settle up for work performed under the existing greement without changing anything, then negotiate a new agreement for future ork, if they can get you to go along with their new requirements. Just my take, of course. -- Mark Schecter PS Don't know about the punctuation, sorry¡ On Jan 20, 2011, at 6:57 PM, Diane Hofstetter <dianepianotuner at msn.com> wrote: > So I have been working for a school district for a couple of years. All of a udden, when I turn in my invoice, they say they can't pay it until I send them some paperwork". The paperwork is a request for my business license number, my lient list, and a contract. Item number seven says: 7. All Contractors providing services to minors must have valid malpractice nsurance coverage. Upon request by SCHOOL DISTRICT contractor must be able to how evidence of such coverage. I've never had malpractice insurance--except for dispensing hearing aids. oes anyone else Does anyone know why question marks suddenly stop working--- Thanks (exclamation points don't work either) Diane Hofstetter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110121/a97e8cbb/attachment.htm>
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