The Georgia State Board of Education, with the support of the state's Department of Education, promises students to maintain services and conditions in the state's schools that will lead to success for every student. The State Board of Education not only allocates substantial federal and state funding for schools, including special education services, but also provides technical support and guidance while enacting rules and regulations that school officials must follow. When you or your minor student enter a Georgia K-12 school, college, or university, you enter a very highly regulated environment where you have substantial education law rights. However, having laws is one thing, while following and enforcing laws is another. Georgia school officials at all levels frequently ignore student rights and interests and sometimes seriously violate those rights.
Our highly skilled and experienced Education Law Team is available to you and your minor student across Georgia to help with disability rights, special education services, discipline defense, discrimination protection, civil rights enforcement, and other school issues. We are available whether you attend the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Mercer University, Augusta University, Georgia Southern University, the University of West Georgia, Clark Atlanta University, or another fine Georgia college or university. We are also available to represent your minor K-12 student in any Georgia school district, including the Atlanta City School District, Buford City Schools, Oconee County Schools, Forsyth County Schools, Fayette County Public Schools, Bremen City Schools, Lowndes County Schools, Carrollton City Schools, or another fine Georgia school district. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team. Let us help you and your minor student achieve the best possible education law outcome.
Common Georgia Education Rights and Claims
You can trust our highly qualified attorneys to know and effectively deploy the right federal and Georgia state education laws in your college or university matter or your minor student's Georgia K-12 school matter. Our attorneys help hundreds of Georgia students and students nationwide with advocacy in school administrative proceedings. We also appear in Georgia state agency and federal agency proceedings and litigate education law matters in the Georgia state courts and federal courts. While we do not limit our education law services to specific types of school matters, our attorneys commonly handle the following education law issues. Let us know if you have other issues with which you need our skilled advocacy.
Georgia Disability Accommodations & Rights
The federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that Georgia K-12 schools, colleges, and universities offer students reasonable accommodations for their qualifying disabilities. Federal regulations require that school officials engage with you in an interactive process to determine the appropriate accommodations, which the school must provide unless the accommodations cause an undue hardship on school operations. Your disability or your minor student's disability may involve any mental or physical condition that substantially impairs normal life activities like walking, standing, sitting, transferring to and from seats, sight, hearing, speech, and even cognitive functions like attention, concentration, and processing. Your Georgia school may have to modify its buildings, classrooms, auditoriums, stages, gymnasiums, pools, and other facilities for wheelchair access or provide optical readers, large print text, note-takers, sign language interpreters, and similar accommodations.
Our attorneys can help you or your minor student enforce your full ADA rights. Georgia maintains an ADA Coordinator's Office to ensure that the Department of Education and local school districts fulfill their ADA obligations. Georgia colleges and universities maintain similar commitments and staff similar offices to ensure ADA compliance. The University of Georgia, for example, lodges its ADA coordinator in the university's Equal Opportunity Office. We know whom to contact at your school and what school procedures to invoke to ensure that you get the accommodations you need and deserve. Don't let a disability limit your access to Georgia college and university programs or your minor student's access to Georgia K-12 programs. Get our highly qualified representation.
Georgia Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) & 504 Plans
Substantial federal funding is available for Georgia K-12 students with a learning disability to receive special education services. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires Georgia K-12 schools to adopt an individualized education program (IEP) for students whom the school identifies as having a learning disability. The burden and expense is on the school, not on parents, to identify disabled students and refer those students for evaluation and diagnosis. Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is an earlier law requiring similar 504 plans for disabled students. Before these laws, students received little special education. Under these laws, schools can and do provide substantial special education for students with emotional impairments, ADD, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and other disabilities. The Georgia Department of Education maintains a Division for Exceptional Children to allocate federal funding and provide technical support for special education services.
Our attorneys help Georgia families with exceptional children gain special education services. If the school hasn't already referred your minor student for evaluation and diagnosis, we can advocate for that referral. We can also help you advocate at IEP team meetings for an appropriate IEP, adjustments to an inadequate IEP, or implementation of the IEP already established but ignored. Our attorneys can also invoke district procedures to challenge poor IEP decisions or implementation. The Lowndes County Schools, for example, promise their commitment to providing special education services. If you have already lost your district hearing, we can appeal through the district to the state or seek court review, reversal, and relief. Let us help you enforce your student's substantial special education rights.
Georgia School Discipline & Expulsions
Georgia K-12 schools adopt and enforce student codes of conduct under which they charge, punish, and suspend or expel students accused of code violations. See, for example, the Student Code of Conduct in the Student Handbook for the Atlanta Public Schools. The Atlanta Public Schools conduct code lists many different student actions, like gun, drug, or alcohol possession, fighting, threats, property theft or damage, and even truancy and insubordination, for which school officials can suspend or expel students or send them to an alternative disciplinary school. Georgia K-12 schools adopt their conduct codes to comply with Georgia Department of Education Rule 160-4-8-.15, mandating and guiding student discipline. Georgia colleges and universities, like Georgia State University, likewise have elaborate student conduct codes listing punishable wrongs. Under these codes, you or your minor student could face false, unfair, or exaggerated allegations of wrongdoing, threatening school removal.
Our attorneys can help you or your student defend the student code of conduct on disciplinary charges. Georgia Department of Education Rule 160-4-8-.15, while mandating student discipline, also requires certain protections, including a prompt hearing for a student facing school removal. Your college or university will have similar protective procedures to satisfy your constitutional due process rights. The Georgia State University Code of Conduct cited above is an example of repeatedly assuring accused students of their due process protections. Let our attorneys invoke these procedures to challenge, defend, and defeat the disciplinary charges. We may even be able to negotiate an early voluntary dismissal of charges for remedial measures.
Georgia School Bullying & Harassment
Your Georgia K-12 student should also not have to face school bullying, cyber-bullying, or other forms of harassment and intimidation. Georgia Code Section 20-2-751.4, for example, requires the state's schools to adopt anti-bullying measures. The Augusta Public Schools, for example, thus adopted an anti-bullying policy and prevention program. Similarly, Georgia Code Section 16-5-61 makes it a criminal offense to involve students in school or campus hazing. The Georgia State University Code of Conduct cited above accordingly prohibits hazing, as do local K-12 school districts in Georgia. Georgia students find similar protections in federal law. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, prohibits sexual assault, sexual harassment, dating violence, and stalking. Georgia colleges and universities, like Augusta University, accordingly adopt and enforce Title IX policies, as do Georgia K-12 schools.
Don't underestimate the importance of these rights and protections, not only for you but also for your minor student. School bullying, harassment, and intimidation can severely oppress and depress grade school students, to the point not only of causing educational harm but also mental and physical injury or worse. Our attorneys can intercede promptly and effectively on your behalf or your minor student's behalf to gain relief from violence and oppression. We can not only invoke school and agency procedures but also pursue court litigation for injunctive relief and monetary damages.
Georgia School Discrimination Cases
Other forms of discrimination are another hazard in Georgia K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. Federal Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits race, color, or national origin discrimination, while Title IX law prohibits unlawful sex discrimination. Other federal and Georgia state laws, including the state's Protect Students First Act, add protections against religious discrimination, anti-semitism, gender discrimination, and discrimination based on other protected categories, conduct, and characteristics. Districts like the Augusta County Public Schools accordingly adopt and protect students.
An anti-discrimination policy, though, doesn't guarantee anything. If you or your minor student face unlawful discrimination in a Georgia school program, our attorneys are ready to help. We can challenge discriminatory treatment in school admissions, program participation, school discipline, advancement, assessment, graduation, and other rights and privileges. We can not only invoke school and district procedures but also involve state and federal civil rights offices and even seek a civil court injunction and monetary damages. Let us help. Do not suffer unlawful discrimination and its damaging effects.
Georgia Student Rights & Free Speech
Georgia students at all public school levels also have First Amendment free speech rights. Georgia school officials should not be censoring your speech, inhibiting your free expression, or affecting your religious freedom or free association rights. In cases like Tinker v Des Moines, Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier, and Morse v Frederick, the Supreme Court has recognized the rights of students to federal court relief and even money damages for First Amendment violations. Schools may only restrict free speech rights when their exercise materially and substantially disrupts school operations. Georgia public schools, like Georgia State University, accordingly generally recognize their obligation to respect your free speech rights, even when addressing other obligations such as allegations of Title IX harassment.
You and your minor student also have other constitutional, statutory, and common law rights like the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. We can advocate for these civil rights in school administrative procedures, district procedures, and through the state and federal civil rights offices. We can also seek court review and relief, including monetary damages for substantial violations.
Retaining Qualified Representation
To effectively enforce your education law rights and the rights of your minor student in Georgia's schools, you need our highly qualified representation. Pursuing the wrong relief through the wrong procedures, involving officials lacking the authority or responsibility to address your concerns, can be a huge waste of time and resources and a big embarrassment. Even if you pursue the right channels but do so lacking a fine strategic and diplomatic sense, your matter can face delays for weeks, months, and even years, effectively destroying your rights. If you retain unqualified local criminal defense counsel for your education law matter, you may not gain timely and meaningful release, and you could even set your matter back, doing more harm than good to school relationships and rights. Instead, trust our skilled and experienced attorneys with your education law issues. Get our highly qualified help.
Premier Georgia Education Law Attorneys
If you or your minor student face education law issues at a Georgia K-12 school, college, or university, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team to effectively pursue and enforce all rights and claims. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for our skilled, strategic, and highly qualified representation.
