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Colorado high school students facing misconduct charges or academic progress issues need skilled and experienced defense attorney representation. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your student's Colorado high school defense in Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora, Fort Collins, Lakewood, Thornton, Arvada, Westminster, Pueblo, Greeley, Centennial, Boulder, Highlands Ranch, Longmont, or any other Colorado location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our highly qualified attorneys for your Colorado high school student's most effective defense.
Your Colorado High School Student's Future
You first need to know what's at stake for your Colorado high school student when facing misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Like any devoted parent, you have an idea of your student's hopes and dreams. Indeed, you have your own expectations for your student's success. You may expect your student to attend your own college or university alma mater, enter your own profession, or pursue other education, vocation, and interests that you see as uniquely suited to your student. Your student's ambitions likely extend beyond education, jobs, and careers to include marriage, family, children, and various charitable, recreational, and volunteer opportunities and community commitments. Picture your student's success. Then, consider the potential impact of high school discipline or academic failure on that success. High school expulsion or other discipline can deter and discourage your student and burden and destroy those dreams. See the possibilities to understand the stakes. Let us help your student meet the considerable challenge of high school disciplinary charges or academic progression issues. Your student's future is worth it.
Colorado High School Parent Commitments
Also, consider your appropriate parental role in your Colorado high school student's disciplinary matter. You know that you remain responsible for your student's care, interests, and concerns even when, and especially when, your student is in high school troubles. High schoolers can act as if they are capable of leading their own lives and making their own decisions. But parents, psychologists, and developmental specialists know better. Your high schooler's brain, cognition, and other necessary capacities have not yet matured. Key planning and assessment skills may not ripen until age twenty-five. In a high school disciplinary matter, your student will especially need your planning, assessment, administrative, and relational skills. Procedural thinking is a learned skill that can develop later in life, well after the high school years, which is why high schoolers are known for occasional senseless actions. Your high school student will also need your mental and emotional stability, wisdom, judgment, discernment, and poise. Think back to your own teenage years, and you'll remember how daunting matters like a high school disciplinary or academic issue could be. Those issues may have frightened, discouraged, and depressed your student already, or your student may be ignoring those issues to avoid those mental burdens and emotional responses. You know that you want to give your student the coaching, guidance, and support your student needs. And your best support is to retain us for your student's defense.
Colorado High School Discipline Adverse Impacts
Unfortunately, the impact of high school discipline does not always remain within the school. High school should be a time of growth and molding, where students have a chance to overcome and correct mistakes. In-school discipline can have its own adverse impacts. If your student's Colorado high school removes your student's athletic, club, social, or recreational privileges, your student can lose important structure, motivation, and support, languishing in school and underperforming. However, high school discipline can also include school suspension and removal to an alternative disciplinary school or boot camp. Your student could suffer loss of academic credit, loss of class rank, loss of awards and honors, and even getting held back a grade or failing to graduate. Any of those academic losses can lead to the loss of a preferred college or university admission or losing entry into a preferred vocational program. Your student may also have to disclose high school discipline on applications for professional licenses, vocational certifications, and other privileges, causing a loss of those opportunities. Your student can also lose adult mentor and advisor support both inside and outside of the high school. Studies document the adverse impact of school discipline. Don't minimize your student's Colorado high school disciplinary issues. Get our help.
Colorado's High School Discipline System
Don't doubt the statutory and regulatory authority of your student's Colorado high school officials to suspend, expel, or otherwise impose discipline against your student. Colorado Statutes Section 22-33-105 authorizes the school district to delegate to the school principal or another school official the authority to suspend, expel, or otherwise discipline high school students. Colorado Statutes Section 22-33-106 states several grounds for discipline. Colorado Statutes Section 22-32-109.1 also authorizes the local school district and the high school itself to adopt a student code of conduct, the violation of which may result in school discipline. Other specific Colorado school discipline statutes authorize or require discipline for bullying, weapons possession on school grounds, and drug possession. Your student enters a highly regulated environment when on Colorado high school grounds or at a high school off-campus activity. Beware the breadth of disciplinary grounds.
The Colorado State Board of Education
Colorado state agencies and their administrative regulations can also play a role in your student's Colorado high school disciplinary proceeding. Colorado Statutes Section 22-33-109 grants the Colorado Board of Education authority to promulgate administrative regulations further detailing the above disciplinary authority. Under that statutory authority, the Colorado Board of Education has adopted administrative regulations for the discipline of students involved in bullying and other acts of physical aggression. The Colorado Department of Education has also adopted academic standards that your Colorado high school student must meet to advance in grade levels and graduate. These state agencies will back your student's Colorado high school principal and other officials in enforcing discipline and requiring your student to meet academic standards.
Colorado Local School District Authority
Colorado's legislature involves your student's Colorado school district and its board in the high school's disciplinary matters. Colorado Statutes Section 22-32-109 authorizes the school district board to adopt policies prohibiting student tobacco use or possession on school grounds and the use or possession of psychotropic drugs. The same statute authorizes the school district to adopt and enforce academic standards for the district's schools. Colorado Statutes Section 22-32-109.1 authorizes the school district board to adopt disciplinary policies for bullying, weapons possession, and other disciplinary grounds. If your Colorado high school student faces disciplinary charges or academic progression issues threatening school suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement, expect the school district and its board policies to be involved. Your student's matter may quickly reach the school district level. Our attorneys are available to represent your student at the district level in any district across Colorado, including the Denver Public Schools and Jefferson County School District No. R-1, Douglas County School District No. RE-1, Cherry Creek School District, Aurora Joint School District No. 28, Adams 12 Five Star Schools, St. Vrain Valley School District, Poudre School District, Boulder Valley School District, Academy School District No. 20, District 49, and Colorado Springs School District No. 11.
Colorado Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
Your student's Colorado high school disciplinary matter is likely to implicate the high school or district student code of conduct. Colorado Statutes Section 22-32-109.1 authorizes the local school district and high school to adopt a student code of conduct. Your student's Colorado high school almost surely has a student code of conduct in one form or another. State statutes and regulations define some punishable high school wrongs, like drug or weapons possession. But your student's Colorado high school student code of conduct will likely greatly expand the punishable wrongs. Violations of the student code of conduct can result in serious discipline. Your student's high school likely maintains a student code of conduct like the codes at these large Colorado high schools:
- the Littleton Public Schools publish a Student & Family Handbook Code of Conduct with elaborate disciplinary provisions, often including multiple offense levels;
- the St. Vrain Valley Schools publish a very lengthy Behavioral Code of Conduct with detailed prohibitions covering a host of subjects, providing for graduated sanctions based on the severity and number of offenses;
- the Colorado Springs Schools District 11 publishes an elaborate Student Conduct Discipline & Attendance Code providing for progressive discipline up to school suspension and expulsion and
- the Douglas County School District publishes a Code of Conduct and Discipline with multiple offense levels, providing for a range of disciplinary sanctions.
Our skilled and experienced attorneys can help your student navigate disciplinary charges under your student's Colorado high school student code of conduct. The codes often give the school principal or other disciplinary official broad discretion to shape appropriate sanctions or alternative remedial relief. We know how to negotiate and advocate in your student's best interests for an outcome that avoids any record of school discipline. Let us help if your Colorado high school student faces code of conduct charges.
Colorado High School Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct may be the first form of misconduct that high school students and parents fear. Academic misconduct generally involves some form of cheating, defined as taking or attempting to take undue academic advantage in violation of teacher instructions, academic conventions, or school rules. The St. Vrain Valley Schools Behavioral Code of Conduct, for instance, prohibits scholastic dishonesty defined to include “cheating on any test, quiz, or class assignment,” “plagiarism of another's work or work product,” and “unauthorized collaboration with another person in preparing any written work or work product submitted as the work of one student.”
The problem Colorado high school students can face is that they are still learning those academic conventions and school rules. Academic standards are not always common sense. We generally praise and accept help from one another, for instance. But in the academic environment, helping another student or getting another student's help may constitute cheating, unauthorized collaboration, plagiarism, or other academic wrongs. Your Colorado high school student may also still be learning the habits of discipline and practices of integrity, including learning that taking shortcuts and cutting corners may constitute punishable offenses. High schoolers, in other words, are still learning the seriousness and consequences of violating rules that may seem to them to be artificial and largely pointless, beyond the purpose of those rules to promote respect for conventions, develop good character, and instill discipline. Common academic misconduct charges include:
- misusing electronic information services for homework, paper, or test help;
- bringing unauthorized materials or devices for use on a quiz, test, or exam;
- copying others' work without teacher permission and proper attribution;
- changing answers, scores, or grades on homework, problem sets, or papers already submitted and graded;
- submitting the same work twice for credit without teacher knowledge and permission; or
- fabricating or altering data or research for academic credit.
Punishing Colorado High School Academic Misconduct
Colorado high school teachers, principals, and other disciplinary officials may treat academic misconduct in a variety of ways. On the one hand, teachers may rightly regard cheating as a learning opportunity, holding off with severe discipline while instead permitting the offending student to undergo remedial training on academic rules and conventions while perhaps completing some non-disciplinary work like repeating the assignment or exam on which the cheating took place. But if your student gets charged with a second offense or if your student disrupts instruction by inviting and encouraging other students to cheat, then the sanctions could be much more serious. The point is that discipline policies generally give the disciplinarian broad discretion. The Littleton Public Schools Student & Family Handbook Code of Conduct, for instance, expressly grants that discretion while also suggesting “appropriate intervention designed to address the problem behavior.”
Your student's Colorado school district or high school may expressly define academic misconduct as only a low-level offense, in contrast to behavioral wrongs that harm students, damage property, or disrupt school operations. However, school officials may punish cheating much more severely for repeat, flagrant, and disruptive acts under other conduct rules authorizing sanctions for disobeying school authorities and disrupting instruction. Beware the potential for school suspension and expulsion in the worst case.
Colorado High School Academic Misconduct Defense
Your Colorado high school student's defense to cheating charges may well be possible. Our skilled and experienced attorneys may be able to show that your student did not cheat as the school charges. Your student might not have been aware of the teacher's restrictions that your student violated and might have been confused or misled by other instructions or conventions. Another student may have committed the act of which the school accuses your student. Even if your student did violate a teacher's instruction or academic convention, we may be able to show that your student did so with good intentions rather than in an obvious effort to gain an undue advantage. We may also be able to show that your student's actions did not involve others or disrupt instruction. Our attorneys may be able to invoke the school's procedures for informal conciliation conferences, at which we may propose an acceptable remedial alternative to punishment, keeping your student's record clean. We can also invoke a formal hearing to present exonerating and mitigating evidence if the teacher and principal insist on unreasonable punishment.
Colorado High School Behavioral Misconduct
Behavioral misconduct allegations are generally considered to be more serious than academic misconduct, especially when the misbehavior injures or endangers students, damages school property, or disrupts school instruction or operations. Colorado high schools generally define behavioral misconduct in that manner as endangering student safety, damaging school or personal property, or disrupting instruction or operations. Colorado statutes requiring discipline for bullying, weapons possession on school grounds, drug possession, and other criminal, violent, or destructive acts can play a big role in determining how your student's Colorado high school officials treat your student's matter. They may believe themselves limited in their discretion and required to suspend or expel your student, depending on the wrong and the applicable statute. The Douglas County School District Code of Conduct and Discipline, for instance, dictates mandatory expulsion for weapons possession but discretionary discipline for possessing a weapon facsimile. Other serious behavioral wrongs may include pornography, gambling, hazing, intimidation, vandalism, and trespass.
Colorado High School Behavioral Discipline Impacts
Behavioral discipline can have severe in-school and out-of-school impacts. Colorado high school disciplinary officials may revoke your student's athletics, club, social, and recreational privileges, cutting your student off from important social supports and motivations. School suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement may result from more serious behavioral wrongs. However, even lesser misbehaviors resulting in school discipline may cause your student to lose teacher, advisor, and peer support and respect, isolating and discouraging your student. Your student's grades may suffer as a result, causing your student to lose honors and awards and threatening your student's advancement and graduation. Colleges and universities to which your student applies may construe behavioral discipline as disqualifying, especially from preferred and highly competitive programs. Behavioral discipline could also affect vocational training admissions and vocational certifications or professional licensure. Behavioral discipline can clearly have short-term and long-term effects.
Colorado High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Let us help your student fight behavioral misconduct charges to avoid the worst impacts. Our goal would be to avoid any record of discipline that could affect your student's future. We may be able to show that your student did not commit the alleged offense or that anything your student did was not endangering, damaging, or disruptive. Colorado Statutes Section 22-32-109.1 requires the high school to offer protective procedures that we can invoke to advocate and negotiate for alternative remedial relief rather than formal discipline up to school suspension and expulsion. Your student may benefit from remedial training, school service, community service, or providing an apology and restitution rather than suffering formal discipline. Remedial measures do not generally leave any record of discipline that your student must disclose. That is their purpose: to preserve your student's clean record. We can also invoke formal hearings and take appeals of adverse decisions to reverse findings and avoid discipline. If your student has already lost all hearings and appeals, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief through the district's general counsel's office.
Colorado High School Sexual Misconduct Charges
Your student's Colorado high school officials will take allegations of sexual misconduct even more seriously than the above academic and behavioral issues, in all likelihood. Federal Title IX regulations require Colorado's high schools to prohibit sexual misconduct, on threat of losing federal taxpayer funding. School sexual misconduct allegations can also ruin a high school's reputation, especially if school officials do not take swift and sure public action. School officials are also aware of the significant civil liability risks of ignoring complaints of school sexual misconduct. For all these reasons and other reasons, you and your student should expect your student's Colorado high school officials to aggressively investigate sexual misconduct allegations and severely punish any student found to have committed sexual misconduct. The Douglas County School District Code of Conduct and Discipline is an example, providing for the automatic expulsion of students found to have committed criminal sexual misconduct while also broadly defining other sexual harassment wrongs. The Littleton Public Schools Student & Family Handbook Code of Conduct is another example, expressly recognizing its Title IX obligations while incorporating Title IX sexual harassment prohibitions. Your student's Colorado high school may punish not only criminal sexual misconduct like sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking but also sexual slurs, jokes, and unwanted advances.
Colorado High School Sexual Misconduct Discipline Impacts
Colorado high school, sexual misconduct discipline can lead to even greater adverse impacts than discipline for academic or behavioral misconduct. The reason is not only that sexual misconduct can be criminal in nature but that it can also threaten the health, safety, and moral welfare of others, particularly students and the young. If your student's Colorado high school disciplines your student for sexual misconduct, your student can expect school suspension and expulsion, alternative disciplinary placement, denial of college and university applications, and denial of applications for vocational programs and certifications or licenses. Your student may also lose peer, teacher, advisor, mentor, and even family relationships. The adverse impacts could last a long time, severely burden your student, and delay your student's graduation and academic, social, and emotional development.
Colorado High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, the Title IX regulations that require your student's Colorado high school to investigate and punish sexual misconduct also grant the accused certain procedural protections. The high school must generally afford your student due process, meaning giving notice of the details of the charge and the evidence against your student and allowing your student some form of hearing. Our attorneys know how to invoke those protections to evaluate the charges and evidence, identify, gather, and present contrary exonerating and mitigating evidence, invoke conciliation conferences and hearings, and take appeals of adverse decisions. Even if your student has already lost all hearings and appeals, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief through the district's general counsel's office. Don't leave your student's sexual misconduct charges to chance. Retain our highly qualified student defense attorneys.
Colorado High School Academic Progress Issues
Academic progress issues differ in several ways from the above misconduct issues. However, misconduct issues can contribute to academic progress issues, just as academic progress issues can cause or exacerbate misconduct issues. The outcome of academic progress issues can be the same as the outcome of misconduct issues, meaning school suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement. Colorado high schools must ensure that their students are meeting the academic standards of the Colorado Department of Education to advance through grades and graduate. The Colorado Department of Education holds your student's high school accountable for those standards, gathering, analyzing, and publishing annual reports, putting internal and public pressure on the high school to ensure that students are performing well.
Your student's high school might ordinarily treat your student's academic progress issues with remedial education and perhaps special education services. However, high schools can also, unfortunately, blame students for academic failures and attempt to remove low-performing students from other schools and programs to avoid the time, effort, expense, disruption, and reputational hits the school may incur from low academic performers. The high school may find excuses for treating academic progress issues as misbehavior, such as when the student exhibits teacher insubordination, attendance issues, chronic tardiness or absenteeism, and other behaviors disrupting instruction. In the worst case, your student's Colorado high school could hold your student back, refuse your student's graduation, and transfer your student to an alternative disciplinary school.
Addressing Colorado High School Academic Progress Issues
We may be able to help your student remain in your student's regular Colorado high school program, advance in grade, and graduate on time, avoiding all of the above adverse impacts. We may be able to invoke federal and Colorado educational disability laws, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to show that your student deserves special education services and disability accommodations. We may alternatively be able to show that your student's academic progress issues are due to bullying by other students or other extenuating circumstances beyond your student's control, like your student's illness, injury, or death or serious illness of a close family member. Let us help you show the school the root cause of your student's academic progress issues to gain appropriate remedial relief and avoid sanctions.
Colorado High School Disciplinary Sanctions
Colorado Statutes Section 22-32-109.1 authorizes a broad range of disciplinary sanctions right up to suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement in an alternative high school, also known as a reform school or boot camp. While your student's Colorado high school officials may encourage you and your student to accept a transfer to an alternative school, beware of that request. Retention, advancement, and graduation statistics for those alternative programs are generally poor, much lower than for traditional high schools. Your student's school removal to an alternative program could lose your student critical peer and staff relationships and sports team, club, and other opportunities for social and emotional development. Lesser sanctions may involve loss of student privileges, academic honors, and class standing, required school or community service, required counseling or remedial education and training, and restitution.
Colorado High School Disciplinary Sanction Defense
Don't assume that if your student's Colorado high school finds that your student committed misconduct, you and your student have no role in determining the sanction. The contrary may well be true that the evidence we present on your student's behalf may go more toward mitigating the wrong and minimizing any sanction. We may be able to gather and present mitigating evidence, show the extenuating circumstances, and propose remedial measures, all to avoid crippling sanctions and a permanent discipline record. We may also be able to show a statutory limit on discipline. Colorado Statutes Section 22-1-140, for instance, prohibits corporal punishment.
Colorado High School Restorative Measures
While Colorado Statutes Section 22-32-109.1 authorizes suspension and expulsion as disciplinary sanctions, the statute also urges Colorado high school disciplinary officials to make “appropriate use of prevention, intervention, restorative justice, peer mediation, counseling, or other approaches” to avoid crippling sanctions, including potential criminal or juvenile justice system exposure. The Douglas County School District Code of Conduct and Discipline, for instance, authorizes school officials to use those and other alternative measures in appropriate cases. We can help advocate that your Colorado high school student's matter is one of those cases warranting restorative rather than punitive measures.
Premier Colorado High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora, Fort Collins, Lakewood, Thornton, Arvada, Westminster, Pueblo, Greeley, Centennial, Boulder, Highlands Ranch, Longmont, and other Colorado locations to defend your student against Colorado high school disciplinary charges and academic progress issues. We have helped hundreds of students in Colorado and across the country gain favorable outcomes for their school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Colorado high school student's case.
