Delaware has a diversified economy, a stable state government, and an educated population to support strong public schools. You and your Delaware high school student have every right and reason to expect a solid high school education and sound experience for your student. If, though, your student now faces Delaware high school misconduct charges or academic progress problems, then you need the skilled, effective, and experienced representation of our attorneys. Your student has too much at stake to go unrepresented or to have unqualified representation. Instead, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for defense of your student's disciplinary charges or academic progress issues, whether your student attends high school in Wilmington, Dover, Newark, Middletown, Bear, Glasgow, Brookside, Hockessin, Smyrna, Milford, Pine Creek Valley, Odessa, Claymont, North Star, or any other Delaware city or town. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now. Our attorneys can help your Delaware high school student obtain the best possible disciplinary outcome.
Your Delaware High School Student's Future
Think of your Delaware high school student's future. Your student surely has some idea of what would make a good life, likely patterned after things your student has learned from you and other close family members and friends. Your student may hope to attend your alma mater or another fine college or university, enter your professional or vocational field for a good job and fine career, and engage in other charitable, volunteer, leadership, and community activities, all depending on a good reputation. Those are the very ambitions, though, that Delaware high school disciplinary charges or academic progress issues place at risk. Serious discipline can frustrate college or university admissions, admission to vocational and certification programs, and job applications. Discipline of any kind can also discourage your student from pursuing those opportunities with the energy and diligence attaining them may require. Don't let the wind out of your student's sails. Retain us to keep your student moving forward toward high school graduation with a clean record. Your student's future awaits.
Delaware High School Parent Commitments
You also have hopes and dreams for your student's success. You may even see things for your student that your student does not yet see and does not expect to be able to attain. Your action on your student's behalf may thus be more important than your student's own commitment to your student's future. Your student may feel overwhelmed and incapable of addressing the disciplinary charges or academic progress problem. That's where a good parent comes in. You have the maturity, balance, and judgment to take the right actions when your student lacks the resources and adult character to do so. Your best action as a concerned parent is to retain our attorneys for your student's prompt and effective representation. Our goal is your student's goal, which is to preserve your student's future without crippling discipline. Our means is to apply our substantial skill, experience, and reputation toward navigating your student's matter to the earliest and best resolution possible under the circumstances. Let us go to work on your student's behalf.
Delaware High School Discipline Impacts
Short Term Disciplinary Impacts
Not only should you be considering your student's future, including all that your student has at stake. You should also be considering how the pending misconduct charges or academic progress problems can affect your student's future. And make no mistake: those matters could have serious impacts, even in the short term. Delaware high school disciplinary officials can remove students from the classroom and even from the campus with little cause, at least for the short term. Any such removal can not only affect your student's instruction and grades but also embarrass and discourage your student while affecting your student's teacher and peer relationships. The school could also curtail your student's participation in athletics, clubs, and school social events, further isolating and discouraging your student. You know that your student depends heavily on supportive structure and relationships. Don't let discipline pull the rug out from under your student at such a critical time as high school development.
Long Term Disciplinary Impacts
These shorter-term school discipline impacts can accelerate into longer-term impacts, especially if your student's school removal or activities ban endures into the longer term. Missing out on college, university, or vocational program admissions is then in the cards, especially considering that your student may well have to disclose high school discipline on college, program, job, license, and certification applications. As competitive as the preferred admissions are, any mark, no less a mark of serious high school discipline, can result in your student losing the best opportunities. High school discipline can also affect peer and mentor relationships in the long term. Your student may no longer feel comfortable around school peers and could lose out on the long-term relationships that we often draw from school experiences. Your student may lack not only peer and mentor support but also motivation toward any desired goal. It's not too much to say that high school discipline can, in the worst cases, change the course or trajectory of a young person's life. Our commitment is to help your student avoid those consequences and to keep on track toward a fruitful life.
Delaware's High School Discipline System
Delaware's legislature authorizes the state's Department of Education to govern student conduct in the state's public schools, including establishing and implementing a discipline system. Your student's Delaware high school officials likely have the state authority to do what their misconduct charges threaten to do with respect to your student's high school enrollment. Delaware Code Title 14, Section 121, requires the Delaware Department of Education to establish definitions for student misconduct that may result in expulsion and alternative disciplinary placement. The same provision requires the Department of Education to establish due process protections for students accused of removal misconduct. Delaware Code Title 14, Section 701 grants teachers and other school officials the power of in loco parentis, meaning that they may act as you would act to discipline your student while your student is in their care, including to remove your student from the classroom or school. A teacher need only show that your student's removal was reasonable and necessary under the circumstances, with a strong presumption that it was so. Other statutes or regulations authorize or mandate removal for possession of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or weapons and for truancy and other misconduct disruptive of the school. Don't doubt the school authority. Instead, retain us to defend your student against the charges.
The Delaware State Board and Department of Education
Delaware's legislature created the State Board of Education with the authority to advance education policy, approve disciplinary and other systems, and resolve disputes. If your student suffers adverse disciplinary action at the high school or district level, requiring an appeal to a higher authority, the State Board of Education is that authority. The State Board of Education relies on the Delaware Department of Education to carry out its governance edicts. The Delaware Department of Education adopts and implements administrative rules and regulations carrying out that role. Rule 614 publishes the uniform standards for student discipline that the local district and high schools must follow. While the local district or high school student code of conduct will initially govern your student's disciplinary matter, that local code must meet Rule 614 standards. The Department of Education also publishes content standards that your student must meet to advance grade levels and graduate from high school. You and your student will likely deal with local district and high school officials, not state-level officers. However, we can invoke state-level rules and procedures and appeal to those state officials in appropriate cases.
Delaware Local School District Authority
As indicated above, Delaware Department of Education Rule 614 states the uniform standards for student discipline that your student's local school district and high school must follow. Your student's local district and high school officials have the primary responsibility for implementing those state standards. They do so through district policies and high school handbooks, adopting student codes of conduct. The student codes of conduct incorporate the state disciplinary standards, which would, in any case, supersede the local codes if omitted. Our attorneys can help you identify, interpret, and apply the appropriate local district policy or high school student code of conduct to your student's matter. We can help whether your student attends any school district across Delaware, including its largest districts the Red Clay Consolidated School District, Appoquinimink School District, Christina School District, Indian River School District, Brandywine School District, Colonial School District, Capital School District, Caesar Rodney School District, Smyrna School District, Cape Henlopen School District, Milford School District, Laurel School District, Woodbridge School District, and Lake Forest School District.
Delaware Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
Your student's Delaware local school district discipline policies and high school student code of conduct may vary substantially from other local district policies and high school codes. As just indicated above, they must meet state Department of Education conduct standards. However, within those broad standards, the local district and high school have latitude in adopting widely varying conduct rules. Your student's local district policy or high school student code of conduct may be similar to one of the following policies or codes in some of Delaware's larger districts:
- the Brandywine School District Student Code of Conduct proscribes four successive levels of student conduct violations, each with stronger sanctions;
- the Dover High School Student-Parent Handbook includes dozens of pages of rules and violations, each with its own schedule of sanctions and
- the Appoquinimink School District Student Code of Conduct includes dozens of misconduct infractions addressed under eight progressive steps of sanctions.
These codes illustrate just how highly regulated the educational environment your student enters when attending a Delaware public high school is. Any large or small infraction could lead to disciplinary consequences when the codes tend to leave the school disciplinarians with substantial latitude in defining violations and imposing progressive sanctions. Let us help your student navigate these rules and deal with school officials for the best possible disciplinary outcome.
Delaware High School Academic Progress Issues
Under the Delaware Department of Education's content-area standards, Delaware high school students must generally meet the benchmarks to make satisfactory academic progress. Your student's Delaware high school cannot simply advance your student if your student isn't gaining the knowledge and skills the standards require. Requiring repetition of failed courses and even holding back a grade level to repeat are available options, neither of which may favor your student who desires to graduate on time with peers. Academic progress issues can interfere substantially with your student's graduation and post-graduation plans. Take academic progress issues seriously. Let us help resolve those issues, especially if the school turns to disciplinary charges when your student struggles academically. Don't let school officials accuse your student of insubordination, truancy, disrespect, or other behavioral wrongs when the problem instead lies with the school's inadequate instruction.
Addressing Delaware High School Academic Progress Issues
Our attorneys know the federal and state laws and other arguments, options, and avenues to help you and your student address unsatisfactory academic progress. One of those tools is the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandating an individualized education plan (IEP) if your student has a qualifying disability. We can help your student gain a referral for disability testing to qualify for an IEP or help you implement or modify an existing IEP to get your student the accommodations and special education services your student needs and deserves. Other tools to address academic progress issues can include the state laws requiring high schools to prohibit hazing, harassment, and bullying. Your student's struggles could be the result of such unlawful interference. We can also advocate for your student's special extenuating circumstances if your student suffered an illness, injury, death in the family, or other mental, emotional, or physical disruption affecting high school studies. Let us help your student with academic progress problems.
Delaware High School Academic Misconduct
Your Delaware high school student may be doing fine academically, without academic progress issues. Your student may instead face academic misconduct charges. Academic misconduct charges involve allegations that your student violated an academic rule or norm, in effect, cheating for an undue academic advantage. You and your student should take academic misconduct allegations every bit as seriously as allegations that your student is not making satisfactory academic progress. Academic misconduct discipline can carry a heavy implication of dishonesty and other bad character, discouraging colleges, universities, vocational programs, employers, and others from favoring your student's applications. Let us help your student keep a clean academic record when facing academic misconduct charges.
Definitions of Delaware High School Academic Misconduct
Although most Delaware high school student codes of conduct will prohibit academic misconduct, some Delaware student codes of conduct define academic misconduct, while other codes do not. For example, the Brandywine School District Student Codes of Conduct has an elaborate section addressing and defining “Academic Cheating/Dishonesty,” including several forms of cheating, like using unauthorized materials or assistance or copying another's work without credit. By contrast, the Dover Public High School Student-Parent Handbook prohibits cheating and plagiarism while only giving them cursory definitions. Other forms of cheating may include altering graded papers to improve a score, faking research results, and using unauthorized devices or services for test or assignment information. However, violation of any teacher instruction, written or oral, could lead to charges.
Punishing Delaware High School Academic Misconduct
Delaware high school teachers and principals may treat a first-time cheating offense without serious sanction, depending on the circumstances. The Appoquinimink School District Code of Conduct, for instance, defines cheating and plagiarism as only a Step 2 offense out of the district's eight offense steps, warranting parent notification, warning, and instruction. However, repeat offenses may fall into the category of disruptive behavior, defined as a Step 3 offense warranting punitive loss of privileges and leaving a record of discipline. Further cheating offenses, or offenses that destroy confidential materials, involve other students and disrupt instruction, may fall into the category of defiance, a Step 4 and Step 5 offense warranting school suspension or even instigation, a Step 6 offense warranting longer out-of-school suspension and requiring a written plan for school return. Remember that any record of academic misconduct can carry severe consequences, such as loss of opportunities for preferred college and university admission.
Delaware High School Academic Misconduct Defense
An academic misconduct charge is not the same as a finding that your student committed the alleged wrongs. The high school's teacher and principal may expect your student to come forward with an explanation of what only appears to have been an academic rule violation. We can help your student make a clear, accurate, and complete disclosure of any circumstances excusing the alleged offense, such as a misunderstanding of instructions, vague or conflicting instructions from multiple sources, or inadvertence rather than a deliberate or reckless wrong. If your student did intentionally attempt to cheat, we may be able to show mitigating circumstances such as a prior clean record, no involvement of other students, no disclosure of confidential materials, and other intervening conditions or stresses that affected your student's usually sound judgment. We can also invoke school procedures to gain a fair hearing if the school initially declines to accept your student's explanation and insists on unnecessary punishment.
Delaware High School Behavioral Misconduct
If academic misconduct presents a significant risk of interfering with your student's college, university, and other prospects, behavioral misconduct can present even greater risks. Behavioral misconduct involves non-academic wrongs that either threaten student safety or morals, damage school property or disrupt school operations. Behavioral misconduct can carry a greater risk of harm to your student's educational and employment prospects because of the implication that your student is not safe or otherwise presents a danger. A college that admits a student or an employer that hires a student with a record of serious behavioral misconduct risks civil liability and public condemnation if the student injures another. Expect Delaware high school administrators to treat serious and credible behavioral misconduct allegations with aggressive investigation and stiff discipline. Retain us for an equally thorough investigation and comprehensive presentation of your student's best behavioral misconduct defense.
Definitions of Delaware High School Behavioral Misconduct
Delaware high school student codes of conduct generally take one of two approaches toward defining behavioral misconduct. A few codes define behavioral misconduct only generally as endangering, inappropriate, or disruptive behavior, while most codes offer long lists of specific behavioral violations, often with a catch-all provision to back up the list. The Brandywine School District Student Code of Conduct takes the latter approach, listing literally dozens of different behavioral violations, from abusive language to dress code violations, technology misuse, fighting, stealing, pornography, and arson, among many other examples, while sorting the many offenses into four offense levels. The Dover High School Student-Parent Handbook also lists many offenses, although it does so alphabetically, mixed in with non-disciplinary alphabetical subjects and without grouping violations into offense levels. The Appoquinimink School District Code of Conduct similarly lists approximately fifty behavioral violations, assigning each to one or more of the eight-step offense levels.
Punishments for Delaware High School Behavioral Misconduct
As just indicated, Delaware high school student codes of conduct generally assign various offense levels to their listed behavioral wrongs or otherwise give some indication of where on the spectrum of progressive discipline behavioral punishments should fall. That spectrum runs from reprimands for minor behavioral offenses like dress code violations to loss of privileges, restitution, and required school service for moderate offenses like insubordination, disrespect, or technology misuse, all the way to suspension, expulsion, and disciplinary placement in an alternative high school for serious offenses like assault, gang activity, drug, alcohol, or weapons possession, and arson. The above codes for the Brandywine, Dover, and Appoquinimink high schools and districts authorize those and other punishments, depending on the wrong's reprehensibility.
Impacts of Delaware High School Behavioral Discipline
As briefly mentioned above, a record of behavioral discipline can keep a student from gaining college, university, or vocational program admission, especially in preferred programs. If suspension and expulsion result from the finding of a behavioral wrong, your student could end up in a boot camp or reform school, lacking peer support, program structure, and other motivation. While the efforts of those alternative programs are laudable, their statistical outcomes are generally poor, placing your student at risk of not graduating on time or graduating without the academic preparation needed for rigorous college, university, or vocational programs. Severe behavioral discipline can also affect your student's mental, emotional, and physical development.
Delaware High School Behavioral Misconduct Procedures
Delaware Administrative Code Title 14, Section 616 mandates that the local school district provide due process for any student that it considers expelling for behavioral misconduct. Due process means that the school district must provide your student with fair notice of the alleged wrongdoing and offer your student a fair hearing before an impartial decision maker. Due process, though, requires that your student invoke those and other protections. We can help your student do so to your student's best advantage. Our attorneys can gather and present your student's exonerating and mitigating evidence while challenging the district's evidence of wrongdoing. If your student has already lost the hearing, then we can take appeals to higher district or state officials to correct errors in the procedures or rulings. We can also seek alternative special relief through the district's general counsel's office or outside retained counsel if your student has already lost all appeals. Civil court relief may be another option. Let us help you and your student exhaust all avenues for relief until your student obtains the best possible outcome.
Delaware High School Sexual Misconduct Charges
The stakes for your student can be even higher when the misconduct matter involves allegations of sexual misconduct. A record of sexual misconduct can indicate to colleges, universities, vocational programs, and employers that your student presents a risk of violence and corruption. A record of sexual misconduct can close doors not only to preferred educational and vocational opportunities but to all such meaningful opportunities, depending on the nature and seriousness of the sexual wrong. Delaware high schools are also likely to aggressively investigate, pursue, and punish allegations of sexual misconduct, not only because of the endangerment of students but also the reputational, regulatory, and liability risks. Title IX regulations require Delaware high schools to protect students against sexual harassment at risk of losing their federal funding. For all these reasons, your student needs our skilled and experienced defense representation if facing sexual misconduct allegations.
Definitions of Delaware High School Sexual Misconduct
Title IX regulations define sexual misconduct to include sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, and sexual harassment. Delaware school districts and high schools routinely recognize their Title IX obligations while often expanding the protections to reach other sexual misconduct beyond the Title IX definitions. The Dover High School Student-Parent Handbook is an example, incorporating Title IX regulations, obligations, and protections, while elsewhere defining sexual misconduct as literally “any type of verbal/physical abuse of a sexual nature” such as “suggestive comments, unwanted touching, obscene hand/body gestures, suggestive notes,” and other things. Allegations of sexual conduct of any kind can be a minefield for a Delaware high school student facing a disciplinary proceeding.
Punishment of Delaware High School Sexual Misconduct
Delaware high school students committing Title IX sexual misconduct generally face a default punishment of school suspension and may also face expulsion. Our attorneys, though, can invoke Title IX procedural protections, ensuring that your student has due process. We may be able to cross-examine the complaining witness and other adverse witnesses to show that they have misidentified your student or are fabricating or exaggerating the allegations. Consent to the conduct, confirmed by participation in it, maybe another available defense. We may also be able to show in mitigation of any wrongs that your student injured, threatened, or harmed no one, misunderstood the boundaries, or reasonably mistook the complainant's words and actions as consent. Remedial education and training, as well as restorative practices involving peer mediation, counseling, and adult mentoring, may be other alternatives to avoid a disciplinary record.
Delaware High School Disciplinary Sanction Defense
Keep in mind that even if your Delaware high school student is responsible for the wrongs that school officials allege, your student may have a good case to mitigate and even eliminate any disciplinary sanction. Delaware high schools have the primary obligation of educating, not punishing, your students. Our attorneys may be able to show that your student's severe punishment serves no educational or protective purpose. Our assurances and evidence on your student's behalf that your student presents no safety, morals, or disruption risk may minimize the concerns of school officials, leaving remedial and restorative measures as the only appropriate school response. Many Delaware high schools favor restorative practices like peer mediation, adult mentoring, counseling, school service, and restitution. Some even require disciplinary officials to consider restorative practices before imposing punitive sanctions. The Brandywine School District's Student Code of Conduct is an example, referencing restorative practices as a preferred response for many of its defined behavioral wrongs. Let us advocate for your student's remedial treatment to keep your student's record clear, even if your student is responsible in whole or part for the alleged misconduct.
Premier Delaware High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available anywhere in Delaware for your student's high school discipline defense, including in Wilmington, Dover, Newark, Middletown, Bear, Glasgow, Brookside, Hockessin, Smyrna, Milford, Pine Creek Valley, Odessa, Claymont, North Star, and other Delaware locations. We can defend against any form of Delaware high school misconduct charge or academic progress problem. Our attorneys have represented hundreds of students nationwide to achieve successful outcomes in cases involving all kinds of school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain us for your Delaware high school student's disciplinary defense.
