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If your Indiana high school student faces misconduct charges or academic progress issues, your student needs skilled and experienced defense representation. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your student's Indiana high school defense in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville, South Bend, Carmel, Fishers, Bloomington, Hammond, Lafayette, Noblesville, Gary, Muncie, Greenwood, Kokomo, Terre Haute, Anderson, Elkhart, Mishawaka, Columbus, Jefferson, Lawrence, Westfield, West Lafayette, or any other Indiana location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our highly qualified attorneys for Indiana high school student defense.
Your Indiana High School Student's Future
For you to make the best judgment about how to help your Indiana high school student defend misconduct charges and overcome academic progress issues, you need to know what your student has at stake. Now is the time to think about your student's hopes, dreams, and expectations. You should also be thinking about your own dreams and expectations for your student's future. That's how serious Indiana high school misconduct charges and academic progress issues can be, impacting or even destroying your student's best ambitions. Your student may hope to enroll in your college or university alma mater or another preferred and competitive institution of higher education. Your student may have a professional or vocational interest. Your student also likely expects rewarding peer, family, and social relationships and may have volunteer, charitable, recreational, and creative interests. Severe Indiana high school discipline can burden, damage, and destroy all those hopes, ambitions, and expectations. Your student may need a clean Indiana high school record, sound education, positive self-image, and a strong support network to achieve those goals. Let us help your student overcome the challenges that Indiana high school misconduct charges and academic progress issues present.
Indiana High School Parent Commitments
While you and your student likely have hopes and dreams for your student's future, as a parent of an Indiana high school student, you also have commitments and responsibilities. You know that your student does not yet have the strong procedural and administrative skills, good judgment, wisdom, sense, and other resources and advantages of a mature adult. In this situation, you, not your student, are the one best positioned to help your student navigate your student's Indiana high school misconduct charges and academic issues. Now is probably not the time to cut your student loose. Now is instead the time to guide, coach, mentor, and help your student avoid potentially severe short term and even long term damage. That's what good parenting requires in situations like your student's situation facing Indiana high school misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Your student may be scared, embarrassed, and confused enough by the charges and issues to unwisely ignore or minimize them and not take the right procedural steps with the right discipline and attitude. You can help your student. And your best move is to get our help.
Indiana High School Discipline Adverse Impacts
You and your student should clearly understand how Indiana high school discipline can adversely impact your student's future. Indiana high school discipline may include immediate school removal, longer-term suspension, permanent expulsion, and referral to an alternative disciplinary school, also known as a boot camp or reform school. If that's your student's result, then your student is likely to suffer significant academic losses, perhaps not even earning a high school diploma or general education diploma (GED). Preferred and competitive colleges, universities, and professional or vocational programs may not give an alternative school diploma or GED the same recognition as a traditional high school diploma, causing your student to lose admissions. Discipline of any kind, even something so little as a reprimand and loss of high school privileges, can impact your student's teacher, peer, advisor, and mentor network and embarrass, discourage, isolate, and stigmatize your student. Your student could suffer not only academic losses but also mental, emotional, social, and other developmental harm. Discipline can lead to the loss of important opportunities. Don't unwisely minimize the potential adverse impact of Indiana high school disciplinary charges or academic progress issues.
Indiana's High School Discipline System
Your student's Indiana high school officials have ample Indiana state school law authority to impose discipline against your student for misconduct or academic progress issues. Indiana Code Section 20-33-8-14 authorizes Indiana elementary and secondary schools, including the state's high schools, to suspend and expel students for either “student misconduct” or “substantial disobedience,” as school district rules define that misconduct. Indiana Code Section 20-33-8-10 authorizes the school's principal to impose discipline on your student when “reasonably necessary to carry out or prevent interference with an educational function or school purposes.” Other Indiana school discipline statutes require your student's high school to discipline-specific wrongs like school bullying, firearm possession, and unlawful activity. You and your student can expect to encounter a comprehensive and complex set of school discipline laws, rules, regulations, codes, and standards when your student faces Indiana high school misconduct charges. We can help you parse those legal materials for your student's best defense.
The Indiana State Board of Education
Indiana state agencies and their policies, rules, regulations, standards, and procedures also play a role in your student's Indiana high school disciplinary proceedings. Indiana Code Section 20-19-3-4 authorizes the Indiana Department of Education to implement the disciplinary rules of the Indiana State Board of Education. The Department of Education collects and analyzes statistics on high school suspensions and expulsions provides technical assistance to high school officials and otherwise ensures proper implementation of high school discipline. Indiana Code Section 20-31-3-2 also authorizes the Indiana State Board of Education to develop and publish academic standards for your student's Indiana high school to enforce. The Indiana Department of Education helps the local districts and high schools enforce those state academic standards. Your student could suffer discipline, school removal, alternative placement, or delayed advancement and graduation for failing to meet those academic standards.
Indiana Local School District Authority
You can see from the above Indiana school laws that your student's Indiana school district has substantial authority and responsibility to discipline your student for misconduct or academic progress issues. Other Indiana school laws address the local district's authority even more directly. For example, Indiana Code Section 20-33-8-11 authorizes the district superintendent to take disciplinary action whenever “reasonably necessary to carry out or prevent interference with an educational function or school purposes.” Your student's misconduct or academic progress will start in the high school but may quickly reach the district level. Our attorneys can help you and your student deal with Indiana school district officials in any district across Indiana including the Fort Wayne Community Schools, Indianapolis Public Schools, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, Hamilton Southeastern School District, Perry Township Schools, Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, Carmel Clay Schools, South Bend Community School Corporation, Vigo County School Corporation, Tippecanoe School Corporation, School City of Hammond, and Metropolitan School District of Warren Township.
Indiana Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
Your student's Indiana school district will likely provide your student's high school with a district student code of conduct to enforce or may support the high school in articulating its own student code of conduct. The student code of conduct will incorporate the above statute prohibitions on weapons in the school, school bullying, and the like. However, the student code of conduct may also define a host of other actions that could result in your student's discipline. Your student's district or school code will likely be similar to the student codes of conduct in these large Indiana school districts:
- the Fort Wayne Community Schools publishes a Code of Conduct providing for progressive discipline for first, second, and subsequent offenses;
- the Indianapolis Public Schools publishes a Code of Conduct providing for four offense levels with progressively more serious consequences;
- the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation publishes Student Rules, Rights, and Responsibilities identifying a long list of prohibited behaviors and
- the Hamilton Southeastern School District publishes a Hamilton Southeastern High School Handbook that provides discipline for a long list of student wrongs.
Let us help you and your Indiana high school student defend against disciplinary charges or academic progress issues arising under your student's district or high school code like the above codes. Your student's code of conduct likely gives your student's high school principal and district officials broad discretion on pursuing charges and imposing discipline. We can advocate and negotiate with those officials for your student's best possible outcome, including early voluntary dismissal of charges or other remedial rather than disciplinary measures. Let us help you preserve your student's clean school record.
Indiana High School Academic Misconduct
If your Indiana high school student faces academic misconduct charges, help your student take those charges seriously. High school students are often just learning adult academic expectations, standards, and conventions. Your student may not know that certain actions, like using electronic services or resources or failing to give clear credit for another's published work, can violate academic rules. Or your student may have adopted common student practices of cutting corners and ignoring instructions and restrictions to make academic work easier and better without fully appreciating that the high school may impose academic misconduct discipline. Academic misconduct, or cheating, generally involves any action violating teacher rules or school academic standards for undue academic advantage. The Hamilton Southeastern High School Handbook, for instance, prohibits academic dishonesty in any form, including cheating, lying, and using unauthorized materials, assistance, services, or devices. Your student's cheating charges may involve:
- using artificial intelligence or an unauthorized electronic tutoring service for help with homework problems or class papers;
- using unauthorized materials, an electronic service or device, or student assistance on a quiz, test, or exam against instructions;
- copying or plagiarizing the work of others without teacher permission and without correct attribution;
- changing your exam answers, exam or paper grade, or exam or paper score on work already submitted and graded;
- submitting your own work twice or more in different classes for course credit without teacher permission or
- submitting fake, altered, or otherwise fraudulent data or research for academic credit.
Punishing Indiana High School Academic Misconduct
Your student's Indiana school district or high school may define academic misconduct as a low-level offense best addressed by the teacher rather than the principal or district disciplinary official. Or your student's applicable code of conduct may not address academic misconduct directly at all. But student codes of conduct and disciplinary officials may decide to treat academic misconduct under other code sections having to do with following school rules and teacher instructions. The Hamilton Southeastern High School Handbook, for instance, incorporates the teacher's syllabus to determine whether the student accused of cheating followed school rules. That's right: violating teacher instructions for class conduct, exam conduct, or papers and assignments could result in disciplinary charges. High school principals and district disciplinary officials will treat public cheating that involves other students, cheating that discloses confidential exam material or model answers, or cheating that disrupts instruction as higher-level offenses. Your student could suffer school suspension for academic misconduct.
Indiana High School Academic Misconduct Defense
We can help your student address and defend Indiana high school academic misconduct charges. We may be able to show the high school's teacher and principal that your student did not cheat, violate instructions, or misunderstand expectations so that remedial training is appropriate. If the teacher and principal remain convinced that your student cheated, we may be able to show that your student's conduct was not flagrant, repeated, or disruptive and did not disclose and destroy confidential exam information. We can also invoke the school and district disciplinary procedures to arrange conciliation conferences, invoke formal hearings, and take available appeals to ensure that your student does not suffer damaging academic discipline. Let us help your student keep your student's academic record clean for college and university admission and other good ends.
Indiana High School Behavioral Misconduct
Indiana high school, behavioral misconduct charges, can bring greater discipline risks than academic misconduct necessarily presents. Behavioral misconduct is generally conduct that either endangers student safety, threatens the security of school property, or otherwise disrupts school operations. Expect your student's high school teachers, principal, and district officials to pursue behavioral misconduct charges with greater speed and urgency and with greater intent to punish or even remove your student from the school. Your student's school disciplinary officials may construe the Indiana school discipline statutes requiring discipline for school bullying, firearm possession, and other unlawful activity as mandating no tolerance and requiring school removal or other severe discipline. The Hamilton Southeastern High School Handbook and Code of Conduct, for instance, urges school suspension and expulsion for fighting, disobedience, theft, vandalism, weapons possession, gambling, and many other behavioral wrongs. Drug possession, pornography, indecent exposure, hazing, computer misuse, profanity, harassment, intimidation, trespass, and other conduct that disrupts the school, undermines student morals, or affects school property may likewise result in severe discipline.
Indiana High School Behavioral Discipline Impacts
Indiana high school removal as a behavioral discipline can cause your student immediate academic harm. Your student may fail courses or leave coursework incomplete, lose grade advancement, and suffer delayed graduation. If your student's disciplinary officials send your student to the alternative disciplinary school, your student may even fail to graduate. Colleges, universities, and vocational and professional programs may refuse to admit your student or may impose onerous conditions on your student's probationary enrollment. Even if discipline is only mild to moderate, such as losing school privileges, your student may lose peer, teacher, and mentor support along with that discipline. Your student's embarrassment and ostracization may demotivate your student so that your student fails to progress academically. Behavioral discipline can have severe short term and long term effects.
Indiana High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Our highly qualified attorneys can help your student make the best of behavioral misconduct charges. Your student's primary goal is to remain in school. Your student's secondary goal is to avoid discipline on your student's school record, affecting your student's future. Indiana school laws give us the means to intervene to advocate for those and other goals. Indiana Code Section 20-33-8-19 and other Indiana school discipline statutes, rules, and regulations guarantee your student protective procedures before school suspension and expulsion. We can invoke those protections to find out exactly what the school alleges, discover the school's evidence, arrange settlement conferences to negotiate non-disciplinary relief, invoke formal hearings, present your student's evidence, and cross-examine opposing witnesses or otherwise challenge the school's evidence. If your student has already lost the formal hearing, we may be able to reverse the behavioral discipline with an appeal or court review.
Indiana High School Sexual Misconduct Charges
Federal Title IX regulations prohibiting sexual misconduct make Indiana high school officials treat sexual misconduct allegations especially seriously. Your student's Indiana high school could lose federal funding, face civil liability, and run other reputational and regulatory risks for ignoring sexual misconduct complaints. Indiana school districts thus typically incorporate their Title IX obligations into their student codes of conduct. The Indianapolis Public Schools Code of Conduct is an example, repeatedly confirming its Title IX duty to punish sexual misconduct. Title IX is broader than you and your student may think, punishing not just sexual assault and dating violence but also sexual harassment. Your student's sexual jokes, slurs, and advances may be enough to trigger sexual misconduct charges, even without any threat or incident of touching or violence.
Indiana High School Sexual Misconduct Discipline Impacts
Indiana high school, sexual misconduct charges, bring distinct risks, different than and in some cases greater than ordinary behavioral misconduct. Sexual misconduct discipline can carry a taint of bad moral character, like that of a sexual offender. Colleges, universities, and vocational programs may see your student's sexual misconduct discipline as a liability, regulatory, and reputational risk, in addition to the student safety risk. Your student could lose admission to higher education and lose employment opportunities for a record of high school sexual misconduct. Even if your student does not suffer school removal, which is a significant risk in these cases, your student's sexual misconduct discipline of any kind may cause peers, teachers, and mentors to withdraw support, leaving your student discouraged and unmotivated.
Indiana High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
The same Title IX regulations that require your student's Indiana high school to vigorously investigate and pursue sexual misconduct allegations also include procedural protections for the accused. We may be able to help your student invoke those protections to obtain an early voluntary dismissal of the charges through conciliation conferences and negotiation over alternative restorative relief. Your student's Title IX rights include the right to retain us to represent your student throughout the proceedings, including to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses at a formal hearing. Your student's matter must go before an independent decision maker to hear live testimony, where we can present your student's defense evidence. If you have already lost your student's Title IX sexual misconduct hearing, we may be able to reverse the discipline on appeal or have a court overturn it for due process violations or other legal errors. Let us help with your student's critical Title IX sexual misconduct defense.
Indiana High School Academic Progress Issues
Your student may not face any of the above misconduct issues but may instead face academic progress issues. Indiana high school academic progress issues involve your student's alleged failure to meet the Indiana State Board of Education's academic standards. The Indiana Department of Education must ensure that your student's high school is upholding and enforcing those state academic standards. Ordinarily, a high school may address academic progress issues with remedial courses and services. However, when a student fails to persist while demonstrating excessive absences, chronic tardiness, and repeated failure to complete assignments, the school may treat academic progress issues as misconduct. Your student may face disciplinary charges for failure to obey teachers, insubordination, or even disruption of the school's educational program. The high school may not only hold your student back a grade, destroying your student's peer support but also refuse or delay your student's graduation. You might even find the high school removing your student for referral to alternative disciplinary programs.
Addressing Indiana High School Academic Progress Issues
Our attorneys, though, may have several ways to help your Indiana high school student face and overcome academic progress issues. Of course, if the school treats your student's academic issues as misconduct, then we can invoke the district misconduct procedures to ensure your student gets a fair hearing to avoid school discipline. However, we may also be able to invoke federal and Indiana laws relating to learning disabilities. The federal IDEA law, for instance, requires your student's Indiana high school to identify any disability that may be causing your student's lack of academic progress, even if you do not already have a disability diagnosis. The high school may alternatively have failed to accommodate your student's known disability in the way that your student's IEP and IDEA law rights demand. Indeed, the IDEA law requires schools to conduct a manifestation determination review before changing a disabled student's IEP placement for disciplinary purposes.
If, instead, your student's Indiana high school academic issues are due to bullying, harassment, or intimidation your student is suffering in the school, then we can help your student assert the school's obligation to prevent those wrongs. We may also be able to use your student's unexpected injury, illness, or other outside-of-school challenges as extenuating circumstances for relief from Indiana high school academic standards and benchmarks. We can, in short, help you and your student determine and prove the root cause of your student's academic struggles and use that evidence to justify non-disciplinary relief that gets your student back on track toward graduation.
Indiana High School Disciplinary Sanctions
Indiana high school disciplinary sanctions can include just about anything that you can imagine that a school official would believe might protect school safety and security or improve student behavior. Indiana Code Section 20-33-8-14 clearly authorizes Indiana high schools to suspend and expel students for anything the school or district defines as misconduct. If the high school expels your student, your student is likely to end up in an alternative disciplinary program or reform school. Graduation rates are generally poor at those schools for a variety of reasons, including unstructured instruction, lack of positive peer support, and part-time schedules. But your student's high school or district disciplinary officials may impose other discipline, including barring sports participation, academic honors, club or social activities, and other privileges, or requiring your student to do school or community service.
Indiana High School Disciplinary Sanction Defense
That broad discretion to punish with different sanctions makes our representation of your Indiana high school student all the more important. Our attorneys give proper attention not only to disproving the misconduct charges but also to presenting mitigating evidence and arguments to avoid or minimize disciplinary sanctions. Ignore sanctions discretion at your peril. Indiana high school and district disciplinary officials tend to use school suspension as a default sanction, finding it easier to remove a student in many cases than to manage the issue within the school. We may be able to use the federal IDEA law and parallel Indiana disability protections to show that your student's misconduct or academic issues are related to an undiagnosed or inadequately accommodated disability. We may also be able to use other Indiana laws to limit or eliminate certain forms of punishment. Indiana Code Section 20-20-40-13 requires Indiana high schools to use positive reinforcement and behavioral support before using any student restraint or seclusion. Let us help your student minimize the risk of any form of sanction, especially discipline that leaves a negative school record.
Indiana High School Restorative Measures
We may also be able to point, in your student's sanctions defense, to Indiana law, rules, and codes encouraging the school's use of restorative relief over punitive measures. Indiana Code Section 5-2-10.1-2 is one example, emphasizing restorative measures in Indiana school district school safety plans. Under the statute, schools are to use “evidence based practices that contribute to a positive school environment, including classroom management skills, positive behavioral intervention and support, restorative practices, and social emotional learning.” The Indianapolis Public Schools Code of Conduct is another example, assuring students and parents that the district prefers progressive levels of corrective and restorative responses to misconduct over punitive measures.
Indiana High School Student Defense Rights
The above discussion shows how many opportunities our skilled and experienced attorneys have to vigorously defend your student against misconduct charges and academic progress issues. Keep in mind that your Indiana high school student has constitutional due process rights that we can enforce. We can assert those rights first in the Indiana school discipline proceedings and then in the federal courts if your student's Indiana high school violates those due process rights. Indiana school discipline laws recognize your student's due process rights. Indiana Code Section 20-33-8-19, for example, offers substantial procedural protections. We can invoke those protections to get the details of the school's allegations, discover the school's evidence, arrange mediation or settlement conferences, invoke formal hearings, and take appeals as necessary if your student has already lost the formal hearing. If your student has also already lost discipline appeals, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief through your student's school district's oversight channels, such as a general counsel's office.
Premier Indiana High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville, South Bend, Carmel, Fishers, Bloomington, Hammond, Lafayette, Noblesville, Gary, Muncie, Greenwood, Kokomo, Terre Haute, Anderson, Elkhart, Mishawaka, Columbus, Jefferson, Lawrence, Westfield, West Lafayette, and other Indiana locations to defend your student against Indiana high school disciplinary charges and academic progress issues. We help hundreds of high school students in Indiana and across the country reach favorable results. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Indiana high school student's case.
