Florida High School Student Defense

You have every right and interest to follow your Florida high school student's academic, social, and other development closely through the high school years. You know how important high school is to the full formation and healthy development of any child. As a parent or guardian, you should be fully invested in how your Florida high school student is doing during these years. High school success is the platform and foundation for college and university success, vocational success, social and familial success, and everything else good to come in your student's life. 

You also recognize that things can go badly wrong in a Florida high school. High school can be a volatile environment as students begin to reach adulthood and try to conform to adult expectations and norms. High school teachers, staff members, and principals are generally supportive of student development but can make bad judgments at times, especially over the discipline of students who are struggling with adjustments, academics, relationships, and other transitional high school challenges. 

If your Florida high school student faces disciplinary charges, academic progress issues, or other issues that the school's administrators are not handling well, placing your student at risk of academic and other developmental harm, then you need highly qualified legal representation to turn your student's course around. Retain the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team to communicate, negotiate, and advocate for your Florida high school student's rights and interests to save your student's high school education. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Florida public or private high school student's case. We are available in the Jacksonville, Miami-Hialeah, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Orlando, Tallahassee, Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood, and Gainesville areas, and statewide.  

The Florida Educational System 

If your Florida high school student faces school disciplinary charges or academic progress issues, state laws may come into play. Florida Statutes Section 1002.20, for instance, requires the school to notify the parent whenever a school is considering serious discipline like expulsion and alternative disciplinary placement. Federal laws, like Title IX addressing allegations of school sexual assault and harassment and the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), may also come into play. But the codes and policies of your student's local school district and school may be even more important to your student's outcome. To address your student's issue, you may thus need to know not only the student code of conduct for your student's school district and school but also state and federal law and rules. Let us help you discern the right laws, codes, and rules. 

Florida Board of Education 

Florida state law establishes the Florida Board of Education to organize and govern the state's local public K-12 schools. Under Florida Statutes Section 1001.02, the state's Board of Education has the authority and responsibility to adopt rules for the operation of local public K-12 schools. Florida Statutes Section 1001.212 mandates that the Board and Department of Education provide programs and standards for safe schools. Other Florida statutes set statewide requirements to address weapons, drugs, and gang activity in the schools, and truancy, bullying, hazing, and harassment. Those statewide standards guide your student's local school district and school in adopting the student code of conduct and applying it to discipline involving student safety.  

Florida School Districts 

If the Florida Board of Education has not adopted state-level rules saying otherwise, then your student's matter will fall under the local school district's rules. Florida Statutes Section 1006.07 requires the school district to adopt rules and standards for student health, welfare, safety, and discipline. Florida Statutes Section 1001.33 further vests authority over the local school in the superintendent of the local school district. Your student's matter may reach the superintendent's desk.  

Florida Local High Schools 

Your first dealings, though, are more likely to be with the high school's principal, especially if the matter involves discipline for alleged misconduct. Florida Statutes Section 1001.54 vests primary responsibility for student discipline in the school's principal, whom the local school district appoints and employs. Florida Statutes Section 1003.32 further grants teachers the authority and responsibility for student advancement, control, and discipline, subject to the principal's supervision. Thus, the best and closest look at your student's matter may be to the school's student code of conduct regarding academic misconduct, behavioral misconduct, sexual misconduct, and customs on handling academic progress. Here are some examples of student codes in major school districts across Florida: 

• the Code of Student Conduct for the Miami-Dade Public Schools; 
• the Code of Conduct for Jacksonville's Duval County Public Schools; 
• the Code of Student Conduct for Gainesville's Alachua County Public Schools; 
• the Student Code of Conduct for Tampa-St. Petersburg's Hillsborough County Public Schools; 
• the Code of Student Conduct for Orlando's Orange County Public Schools; and 
• the Code of Student Conduct for Ft. Lauderdale's Broward County Public Schools. 

Academic Misconduct in Florida High Schools 

Florida's public and private high schools concern themselves with academic honesty and integrity. They must do so not only to uphold their standards and reputations but also to prepare students for college, the workplace, and life generally. Character development is an important role for Florida high schools. The Code of Student Conduct at Ft. Lauderdale's Broward County Public Schools, for instance, prohibits “cheating, copying, plagiarizing,” and other forms of dishonesty, qualifying as disruptive of school operations and integrity. The Code of Student Conduct for Miami-Dade Public Schools does likewise.  

Definitions of Academic Misconduct in Florida High Schools 

Florida high schools may not publish elaborate definitions of academic misconduct. High school teachers and principals generally recognize that students at that level are still learning academic norms and customs. However, the above student codes of conduct clearly indicate that repeated violations of academic integrity can result in serious discipline once the teacher has clearly explained what academic integrity necessarily involves. At the high school level, academic misconduct allegations usually fall into one of these categories: 

• cheating from using unauthorized materials, unauthorized internet access, or unauthorized student assistance on problem sets, papers, or other course assignments, or quizzes, tests, and exams, gaining an advantage not reflecting the student's own individual work; 
• plagiarism, generally defined as representing another's work as one's own work without proper attribution or credit in an assignment submitted for academic credit, thus making the student's knowledge and skill appear more advanced than it is; 
• other acts of academic fraud, dishonesty, or misrepresentation, such as putting one's own name on work done by others, submitting one's own work a second time for academic credit while indicating that it is new work (self-plagiarism), or making up or altering data in reports of experiments. 

Detection and Punishment of Academic Misconduct 

Teachers are almost invariably the ones to discover cheating, whether from their own review and observation of student work or from reports from other students. School policies and customs likely give your student's teachers broad latitude to treat suspected cheating within the classroom, without formal investigation and hearing procedures. Your student's teachers may be cautioning your student against cheating, warning your student to stop suspected cheating, and even admonishing and reprimanding your student within the classroom. Teachers may also require students suspected of cheating to repeat the suspect work or do extra work. You may not hear from your student or the teacher about such guidance. 

Student codes of conduct, like the ones at Broward County Public Schools and Miami-Dade Public Schools cited above, also provide for out-of-classroom discipline for cheating, right up to in-school or out-of-school suspension. Usually, it takes more than one incident of cheating for the school to initiate a formal investigation and notify the parents of the prospect of an out-of-school suspension. But if cheating continues after cautions, warnings, and reprimands, the school's principal may get involved, initiating formal proceedings for a suspension. In the worst case, the school may combine cheating allegations with other concerns over tardiness, absenteeism, and disruptive behavior to seek expulsion and alternative disciplinary placement. 

Responding to Academic Misconduct Charges 

Beware of cheating charges, treating them seriously. While Florida high school teachers and principals may have much more serious disciplinary matters to which to attend, like weapons possession, bullying, fighting, and sexual assaults or harassment, discipline of any kind, even for academic dishonesty, could affect your student's honors and awards, athletic team and other co-curricular or extra-curricular privileges, college or university admission, job applications, reputation, and mentor relationships.  

Help your student resist any school discipline that goes onto your student's school record. Encourage your student to share with you any such issues so that you can help your student address the allegations with appropriate exonerating evidence or remedial education and training. Your student may face false or exaggerated allegations that you can help your student overcome. Or your student may just need further guidance to shape their behavior to meet school expectations. Let our highly qualified attorneys help you deal with school teachers, administrators, and principals who insist on proceeding with formal disciplinary charges. We may be able to help you and your student resolve the matter informally. If not, then we can help you invoke protective procedures and appeals. If your student has already suffered discipline for academic misconduct after exhausting all hearings and appeals, let us help pursue alternative special relief. 

Behavioral Misconduct in Florida High Schools 

Behavioral misconduct is typically a Florida high school's greater concern. Behavioral misconduct is conduct that threatens the safety of students, teachers, or other members of the school community, disrupts classrooms or other school operations, or threatens the security of school facilities and property. Take the allegations seriously if your Florida high school student faces behavioral misconduct disciplinary charges. The school and district may suspend your student long-term, expel your student, and refer your student for alternative disciplinary placement. 

Types of Behavioral Misconduct in Florida High Schools 

High school behavioral misconduct can run the gamut. High school students can be creative in their youthful shenanigans and horseplay. Your student's school may thus define its safety and security prohibitions broadly or peculiarly. Tampa-St. Petersburg's Hillsborough County Public Schools, for instance, prohibit “social media disruption,” while Gainesville's Alachua County Public Schools prohibit “inappropriate public displays of affection.” Encourage your student to read the school's code of conduct closely for broad and peculiar rules. Generally, though, behavioral misconduct involves behaviors like the following: 

• physical assaults, fighting, tripping, shoving, and similar forms of school violence or threats of violence implicating student physical integrity, health, and safety; 
• drugs, alcohol, tobacco, including vaping products, and other controlled substances, inappropriate or illegal for minors to possess or consume on school property, and students attending school while under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances; 
• firearms possession, other weapons possession, or possession of a simulated weapon as Florida Statutes Section 1006.07 prohibits, including possession of pocket knives, box cutters, and razors, possession of explosives or the materials to make explosives, possession of fireworks, or the offer or terroristic threat to bring such items to school in disruption of school safety and security; 
• hazing, bullying, or intimidating as Florida Statutes Sections 1006.147 and 1006.135 prohibit; 
• vandalism, trespass, theft of school or student property, or damage or destruction of school or student property; and 
• insubordination or disrespect toward teachers or school administrators, disruption of classes, running, shouting, horseplay, or other disruptive displays and conduct in the hallways or other common areas of the school, and other actions that interfere with orderly school operations. 

Responding to Behavioral Misconduct Charges 

If your Florida high school student faces behavioral misconduct disciplinary charges threatening school suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement, you need the help of our skilled and experienced attorneys to invoke the school's and district's protective procedures. Florida school district codes of conduct routinely authorize discipline right up to expulsion for disruptive, unsafe, and threatening behaviors like the ones listed above. Your student, though, may not have committed what the school alleges, or your student may have been reacting in self-defense, dealing with learning or emotional disabilities, or acting out over bullying by other students. Or your student may just need an appropriate, positive behavioral intervention plan. Let our attorneys help you and your student fight and defend the charges for your student's best outcome. Keep your student on the right educational path. 

Sexual Misconduct in Florida High Schools 

If behavioral misconduct allegations are serious, then sexual misconduct allegations are even more serious as Florida high school disciplinary charges. Florida high school officials must take sexual misconduct charges especially seriously because of federal Title IX protections for complainants and alleged victims of school sexual wrongs. Schools can lose federal funding, risk substantial civil liability, and face harsh public condemnation for ignoring or minimizing student complaints of sexual assault or harassment. School and district officials may overreact. Get our help defending these most serious disciplinary charges. 

Definitions of Sexual Misconduct in Florida High Schools 

Title IX and related school sexual misconduct policies define sexual misconduct more broadly than you and your student may think. Those definitions include not just teacher, administrator, or other adult sexual offenses but also student-on-student sexual activity. Under these definitions, sexual misconduct certainly includes rape, sexual assault, stalking, dating violence, and similar sexual violence. But it can also include offensive sexual touching such as kissing and fondling, unwelcome sexual proposals and advances, and repeated sexual slurs, jokes, innuendo, or displays of sexual materials when qualifying as sexual harassment in a hostile environment form. Schools may even extend discipline to cover various forms of sexual exploitation like sexting or voyeurism. See, for instance, the Code of Student Conduct for Jacksonville's Duval County Public Schools, prohibiting and punishing “sexually oriented jokes, verbal advances, sexually-oriented kidding, teasing, [and] using language that has a double meaning and is sexually suggestive.” 

Responding to Sexual Misconduct Allegations 

Beware of allegations of any kind of sexual misconduct. Retain our skilled and experienced Title IX defense attorneys the moment you hear allegations that your student committed a sexual offense at school. Title IX law, rules, and procedures are complex. They provide special protection to complainants that can make defending the allegations more difficult. But they also provide the accused student with protection. We can help your student strategically invoke those protections for the best possible outcome to these serious disciplinary charges. 

Academic Progression Issues in Florida High Schools 

Academic progression means proceeding through the high school curriculum with one's student peers without failing courses and getting held back a grade or kicked out of school. Florida high schools must meet certain academic standards. They also have reputations to uphold. Your student's high school would not be the first school to attempt to kick a student out of school to make the school's academic profile and statistics look better or to make the lives of teachers, advisors, and administrators easier. Get our help if you learn that your student's Florida high school is considering holding your student back or removing your student to an alternative high school. 

Causes of Academic Progression Issues in Florida High Schools 

Academic progression issues can have complex causes. High school teachers and administrators used to treat holding a student back as an ordinary means of motivating the student or simply ensuring that the student repeats grades, courses, and materials until the student “gets” the subjects and instruction. But learning theory has come a long way since then. Educators now recognize the complex set of factors that influence whether students can benefit from standardized instruction and meet standardized assessment measures. Grades, in short, are not always sound measures of a student's motivation, abilities, needs, and benefits from schooling. These other factors, well beyond student effort, intelligence, capability, or commitment, can also play a role where holding the student back a grade or removing the student to a disciplinary school would do more harm than good: 

• English as a second language and related language, custom, convention, and cultural differences and obstacles; 
• socioeconomic status of the student's family, the student's family structure at home, and family support; 
• teacher, administrator, and other school biases for or against particular racial or ethnic groups or countries of origin; 
• the design of instruction materials and assessments, the nature and quality of instruction, and the personality, ability, and commitment of particular teachers; 
• student learning disabilities and teacher perceptions of student mental, physical, and emotional abilities and disabilities; and 
• how the school treats the student in disciplinary investigations, allegations, and proceedings. 

Responding to Academic Progression Issues 

Do not take your Florida high school student's academic progression issues lightly. If your student's school holds your student back a grade, your student can lose contact with supportive peers, lose the support of teachers, advisors, and mentors, and suffer discouragement, depression, and other psychological, motivational, and developmental harms. When you retain our Student Defense Team, we can appear on your student's behalf in any proceeding to remove your student to an alternative school. By invoking the school's protective procedures, we can advocate and negotiate for your student's remedial support, keeping your student in the regular classroom at the same grade level with supportive student peers. We can also invoke your student's education disability rights and other rights and interests to ensure that the school is providing appropriate instruction, including accommodations, resources, and services. 

Sanctions Florida High Schools Impose 

Your student's Florida high school may have a wide range of disciplinary sanctions it can impose if it determines that your student committed misconduct. Some school districts, like Jacksonville's Duval County Public Schools, permit Teen Courts or other student groups to advise school officials on the appropriate form of discipline. Those student groups may propose creative forms of discipline that could, in theory, serve the wrongdoing student well but may also lead to undue embarrassment, demotivation, isolation, and reputational harm. The traditional forms of punishment or sanction include, in order from least to most severe: 

• extra work, guidance, and admonishment in the regular classroom; 
• reduced score, credit, or grade; 
• failing grade requiring repeating a course or coursework; 
• loss of athletic, social, or recreational privileges; 
• in-school and after-school detentions; 
• restitution, school service, or community service; 
• in-school removals and suspensions to special classrooms; 
• short-term out-of-school suspensions; 
• long-term out-of-school suspensions; and 
• expulsion and removal to an alternative disciplinary school. 

Issues with Florida High School Disciplinary Sanctions 

In theory, a little discipline can be helpful in guiding, correcting, and motivating a student whose behavior is not helping the student and is disrupting school operations. However, Florida high school disciplinary officials do not always impose discipline properly and fairly after appropriate investigation and hearing. School officials sometimes impose discipline when none at all is warranted or impose discipline that is much more severe than any misconduct justifies. As suggested above, discipline that is more severe than the misconduct warrants can discourage your student, embarrass your student, and lead to your student distrusting the school's commitment to your student's healthy development. Your student may do worse, rather than better, after unduly harsh, inappropriate, and undeserved punishment. 

The Adverse Impact of Florida High School Disciplinary Sanctions 

Discipline can also adversely affect your student's educational, vocational, recreational, and other developmental opportunities. Discipline that removes your student from the regular classroom and other school environments that your student enjoys can interfere with study groups, peer support, and other social relationships on which your student depends. Barring your student from sports teams, activity clubs, and other privileges can isolate your student and deprive your student of healthy engagement in the school community. Discipline that lowers your student's class standing and disqualifies your student from academic or school honors and awards can discourage your student and cause your student to lose out on admission to a preferred college or university. Discipline that ends up on your student's school record can further interfere with college or university admissions, internship opportunities, and job or other vocational opportunities.  

Limitations on Florida High School Disciplinary Sanctions 

Florida law limits certain forms of disciplinary sanctions. We can help you hold your student's Florida high school officials accountable for violations of these laws restricting certain forms of discipline. For example, corporal punishment, meaning punishment involving the student's physical discipline, such as by swatting or paddling, is an uncommon sanction that Florida Statutes Section 1002.20 limits to specific conditions. The school district must adopt a policy approving corporal punishment, the school must notify the parent if requested, and a second adult must be present and informed of the reasons for the discipline. Many school districts, like Gainesville's Alachua County Public Schools, prohibit corporal punishment. Miami-Dade Public Schools is another example of a district prohibiting corporal punishment. Beware corporal punishment. Not only can it discourage and embarrass your student, but it can also cause physical injury. 

Florida law closely regulates other forms of discipline in addition to corporal punishment. Florida Statutes Section 1003.573 limits physical restraint and seclusion of students to certain terms and conditions. The school must notify the parent promptly and prepare and submit reports on the punishment that include the student's behavior, age, grade level, race, and other identifying characteristics. The concern is that Florida high schools may be restraining, isolating, secluding, and excluding students in unlawfully discriminatory patterns based on sex, race, religion, disability, or other protected characteristics.  

Defending Your Florida High School Student 

Your student generally has the constitutional right to due process before suffering a longer-term out-of-school suspension or expulsion. Due process means the right to fair notice of the disciplinary charges and a fair opportunity to defend against the charges at a hearing before an impartial decision maker. Florida's education laws accordingly repeatedly invoke the procedural protections of Section 120.569 of the state's Administrative Procedure Act for any instance in which your Florida high school student faces the prospect of school expulsion. Those instances can include virtually any serious disciplinary charge but typically involve issues like weapons possession, drug or alcohol possession, sexual assault, and other conduct threatening school safety and security. The Administrative Procedure Act offers extensive notice, discovery, prehearing, hearing, and appeal procedures, and even limited court review. 

Why You Need an Attorney 

The above procedural protections of Florida's Administrative Procedure Act, available whenever a student faces Florida high school expulsion, are not self-executing. You may have to request or demand that the school provide the detailed notice and formal hearing the Act ordinarily requires. Our skilled and experienced academic administrative law attorneys can help you do so. When the school offers the formal hearing, your student will have the right to present your student's exonerating or mitigating evidence and to challenge the school's evidence of wrongdoing. Again, our attorneys can help you do so. We can also take appeals of any adverse decision if you have already lost your student's hearing. Our attorneys also know the laws, rules, and procedures for court review if you have already lost your student's administrative appeals. Do not give up hope. Let us help you exhaust all avenues to keep your Florida high school student in school and on track with a clean school record. 

Why You Need the Lento Law Firm 

Effectively navigating academic administrative proceedings requires unusual law knowledge and strategic procedural skills. Parents do not generally have that knowledge and skill. Trying to represent your student in a suspension or expulsion hearing on your own is often an unwise approach. Local criminal defense lawyers and civil litigation attorneys also generally lack the substantial academic and administrative skills and experience that effective representation requires. Your student's Florida school district's hearing procedures differ markedly from the court procedures with which lawyers in general practice are familiar. Don't hire unqualified local defense counsel. Instead, retain our highly qualified attorneys from the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team. Even if you have lost all hearings and appeals, let our attorneys seek alternative special relief from the school district's general counsel's office or other oversight officials. We may be able to gain your student's reinstatement to the regular classroom with a clean school slate. 

Premier Florida High School Student Defense 

Hundreds of students nationwide have retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team for the successful defense of disciplinary charges or successful resolution of other school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Florida high school student's case. We are available at school districts across the state.