To expand: Back in 1st Grade, I left my babysitter's house with some friends who were also in my grade, and when we went to a railroad crossing that we crossed to get to school every day, the trains were blocking the crossing for a pretty long time! We didn't want to be late, because the teacher had a way of dealing with any student who was tardy, and it was not exactly something for me to look forward to. My friends thought the same way. Therefore, we discussed for about 30 seconds or so whether we should crawl under the trains, and somehow, we all agreed. This was 1/4 mile away from school, and though we made it there on time, about 30 minutes or an hour later, we were called into the office. The school found out somehow. (I think they found out after a bus driver saw us do this after driving his/her bus back to the school district's busyard. I don't remember the exact details though.) The principal gave us a lecture, and told us that he was going to call our parents. An in-class sanction at the time was putting our names on the chalkboard for a first offense, and checkmarks for any subsequent offenses. I think all of us had our names written on the board for doing this. Therefore, it brings me to this question: Why would elementary school officials punish students who break rules outside of school property? This was a whopping quarter-mile away from school where we crawled under the trains. Think of it this way: If a Border Patrol officer was watching the Mexican Border one night, and saw a group of thugs break into and steal from a store just across The Fence, and no Mexican Police were around, could they do a thing about it? No; they're not allowed to cross into foreign territory and intervene, because they're OUT OF JURISDICTION. Therefore, why did the school punish us for breaking a rule (unwritten even) OUTSIDE OF elementary school grounds? I don't think they even had a rule that said: "Students are not to crawl under trains while going to or from school." (Afterword: I know it was common sense to punish kids for things like this, and for safety's sake, and possibly also because the teachers had no fear of children that young bringing up the matter of jurisdictional limits. However, this is the child in me that has decided to speak tonight, armed with the knowledge of jurisdictional authority, plus other limits that various officials have.)

Yes. They are a responsible public agency, that assumes such a role when and where it is warranted to provide for the welfare of their students. They are more than justified to take such actions if they see fit. Speaking as a parent, I would expect them to use their judgement where they see fit. When I attended a private school, all students were required to travel to and from school in their uniforms. The school reserved the right to take disciplinary action against any student in uniform who was behaving in a way detrimental to the image of the school or who was violating any school rule (e.g., smoking while in uniform). This was done with the agreement of the parents. If you wanted to attend that school, you accepted their rules.

Unless they were on a school field trip, I do not think it should be the school's place to punish students for anything that happens off of school property. That should be for either their parents or the police depending on the severity of what they did.

at my schools it had to be either on a field trip or some other school related function outside the school otherwise they had no juristiction

The school can only get involved if it was on school property or field trips sports events etc. an exception would be skipping school or things like it. If the school gets involved with anything else not mentioned above you should call a lawyer because that is NOT in there realm of jurisdiction.