Your Louisiana high school student risks school suspension with severe impacts when facing misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Don't let your student suffer crippling discipline when our highly qualified defense services may defend and defeat the charges or obtain positive remedial relief as a substitute for harsh discipline. The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available for your student's representation in New Orleans, Lafayette, Metairie, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Lake Charles, Kenner, Bossier City, Monroe, Alexandria, Prairieville, Houma, Marrero, Central, or any other Louisiana location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form for our skilled and experienced representation. For your Louisiana high school student's best outcome to misconduct charges or academic progress issues, retain the best available attorney representation.
Your Louisiana High School Student's Future
Think of your Louisiana high school student's future when deciding how to help your student face, defend, and defeat misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Your student has likely expressed laudable ambitions, hopes, and dreams that you want to honor, preserve, and promote. Those ambitions may be for college or university admission, a valuable vocational program, and a rewarding job and career. Your student likely also has hopes and expectations for friendships, marriage, family, and community participation. You probably have your own dreams for your student's future, maybe even that your student will attend your college or university alma mater or enter your vocational or professional field.
Unfortunately, Louisiana high school misconduct charges and academic progress issues can crush your student's hopes, dreams, and ambitions right at a time when your student needs them to persevere through a challenging transitional time. Think back to your own high school years and how uncertain your future seemed to you. Louisiana high school discipline can throw your student off course, even changing the trajectory of your student's life, not just your student's educational and vocational future. High school suspension and expulsion can turn your student down a different path, away from the educational, vocational, and personal goals that you and your student know are not only attainable but also best for your student's happiness and flourishing. Louisiana high school misconduct charges and academic progress issues put all those hopes and dreams at risk of loss. Let us help you preserve your student's future at this critical transitional time. A successful Louisiana high school education is a foundation for your student's future.
Louisiana High School Parent Commitments
Now, when your Louisiana high school student faces misconduct charges or academic progress issues, it is also a good time to evaluate your parental role and commitments. Beware the temptation to let your high school student go it alone. Now is not the time to let your student learn a lesson, take the lumps, and struggle through it without your help. Your high school student is still learning and developing. Your student does not have the mature brain, cognitive function, social and emotional skills, and procedural and administrative knowledge to handle a complex and challenging Louisiana high school misconduct charge or academic progress issue. The very fact of the charges or issues having arisen shows that your student may lack the discipline, discernment, judgment, wisdom, reserves, and resolve to navigate the high school's highly regulated environment without loss and incident. High schools deliberately challenge students beyond their capability to help them learn. However, misconduct charges and academic progress issues are not the time to let your student flounder. Your job as a parent isn't over, at least until your Louisiana high school student reaches that traditional standard of earning a regular high school diploma. And your best move to help your student is to retain us to help your student succeed through this formidable challenge and trying time.
Louisiana High School Discipline Impacts
For you to devote the appropriate time, effort, and resources to your Louisiana high school student's misconduct charge or academic progress issue, you should also know the potential impacts on your student. Louisiana high school discipline can harm your student more than you may have at first considered. Those adverse impacts begin with how the charges and issues can affect your student within the high school. Discipline can cause your student to lose peer, teacher, and advisor support, embarrassing and isolating your student from the social network that keeps your student engaged, motivated, and on track. Discipline can kick your student off the sports team and out of the club or social events that give your student rewards and a supportive structure. Discipline can also remove your student from the regular classroom and even from the school so that your student loses instruction, loses academic honors and class rank, and fails to advance and graduate. Educators know the potentially harsh impacts of school discipline.
Louisiana high school discipline can also affect your students outside of the high school. Your student might lose admission to the college or university that you and your student prefer. Your student might not be able to get into the vocational program that your student values, which is the doorway to the valuable job and career that best fits your student's interests and capacities. Discipline can also cause your student to lose the support of mentors, advisors, and even friends and family members when a strong network is what a high school student and young adult needs most. Discipline can also delay your student's academic, social, mental, and emotional development in ways that may take your student years to catch up. Don't let your student succumb to the worst impacts of Louisiana high school discipline. Instead, get our defense help.
Louisiana's High School Discipline System
Your student's Louisiana high school teachers, principals, and other officials have plenty of statutory and regulatory authority to discipline your student. Louisiana Statutes Section 17:223 specifically authorizes high school teachers and principals to discipline students, including suspending students from the school. Other Louisiana statutes require the state's high schools and district officials to discipline students for cyberbullying, hazing, weapons possession, substance abuse in school, tobacco use or possession, obstructing or interfering with school operations, and other specific acts. The Louisiana legislature has also authorized Louisiana high schools to send students to alternative disciplinary schools when in-school discipline and out-of-school suspensions do not address the misconduct. Don't doubt the school's authority to discipline. Instead, get our help defending the disciplinary charges.
The Louisiana State Board of Education
Your student's Louisiana high school officials can also rely on state agency rules and regulations for the authority and grounds on which to discipline your student. Louisiana Statutes Section 17:7 expressly grants the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education the power and duty to “adopt rules and regulations for the discipline of students....” The State Board of Education has acted on that authority by adopting an extensive administrative regulation, Title 28, Part CXV, Bulletin 741, in the form of a Louisiana Handbook for Administrators. Chapter 13 of the Handbook provides detailed rules for discipline. Your student's Louisiana high school officials can look to that state agency Handbook for further authority, grounds, and guidelines for your student's discipline.
Louisiana Local School District Authority
Your student's Louisiana high school disciplinary matter will also likely involve the local school district, its board, and other officials. Section 1301 of the above Louisiana Handbook for Administrators requires Louisiana local district school boards to “adopt such rules and regulations as it deems necessary to implement and control any disorderly conduct” at the school, on school buses, in the high school's vicinity, or at a school-sponsored activity off school grounds. The Handbook further requires the school principal to enforce the district's disciplinary policy and even to explain to the district board any failure to do so.
Your student's Louisiana high school disciplinary matter may thus quickly advance to the district level, involving the district superintendent or designee. Our highly qualified attorneys are available to represent your student at any district across Louisiana including the Jefferson Parish Schools, East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools, St. Tammany Parish Public Schools, Caddo Parish Public Schools, Lafayette Parish Public Schools, Calcasieu Parish Public Schools, Livingston Parish Public Schools, Ascension Parish Public Schools, Bossier Parish Public Schools, Rapides Parish Public Schools, Tangipahoa Parish Public Schools, Ouachita Parish Public Schools.
Louisiana Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
The discipline policy that your student's Louisiana school district adopts, as required under Section 1301 of the Louisiana Handbook for Administrators, may be similar to the following example policies from large Louisiana districts:
- the Jefferson Parish Schools publishes a Procedures & Policies Manual with a long list of disciplinary rules, grounds, and sanctions;
- the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools publishes a Student Handbook detailing discipline for many different violations of district rules;
- the St. Tammany Parish Public Schools publishes a District Handbook for Students and Parents with an extensive set of disciplinary rules and
- the Lafayette Parish Public Schools publishes a Student/Parent Handbook with many disciplinary provisions.
Your student's Louisiana school district discipline policy will likely include similar provisions to the above policies but may also differ in important respects. Our attorneys can help you and your student apply your student's district policy and deploy its procedural protections to advocate effectively for your student's best disciplinary outcome.
Louisiana High School Academic Misconduct
Louisiana high school misconduct charges fall into different categories. The first concern students and parents may face is over academic misconduct. Academic misconduct typically involves some manner of disobeying a teacher's instructions, school rules, or academic conventions so that the student gains some undue advantage, such as passing a test, completing a homework assignment, or getting a better score or grade. Because academic misconduct does not endanger student safety or damage school property, it can be a less serious offense than other forms of misconduct. Yet, don't ignore or minimize the potential impact of discipline for academic misconduct. While your student may not face school suspension for a first cheating offense, any record of cheating, dishonesty, or fabrication could disqualify your student from admission to preferred colleges, universities, or vocational or professional programs.
Definitions of Louisiana High School Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct gets various labels in Louisiana's local school district discipline policies. Some policies label academic misconduct as academic dishonesty, scholastic dishonesty, plagiarism, or simply cheating. No matter the label that Louisiana district discipline policies give to academic misconduct, they tend to define misbehavior as involving the accused student's effort to gain an undue academic advantage. High school teachers and principals will often look for the student's willfulness, lying, concealment, or other deception, treating cheating as an intentional wrong rather than a merely careless act. Academic misconduct discipline also generally requires the school to show that your student violated a class syllabus, teacher's written or oral instruction, school academic rule, or academic custom.
The East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools Student Handbook, for instance, prohibits cheating, defined as “copying someone's homework,” “peeking at someone's test,” or unauthorized test materials, or “using notes or writings on arms or body for information to answer items on a test or quiz.” The St. Tammany Parish Public Schools District Handbook for Parents & Students, by contrast, prohibits only “cheating and/or copying work of another student.” Other common high school academic misconduct charges can involve prohibited collaboration between students, prohibited materials used for a quiz or test, misuse of electronic devices or services like Chegg and Course Hero to get problem answers or papers, and plagiarism, meaning copying or paraphrasing others' expression without proper attribution.
Punishing Louisiana High School Academic Misconduct
Louisiana high school teachers and principals may be willing to treat your student's academic misconduct with only remedial measures like repeating the exam, completing extra problem sets, or redoing the paper or other assignments. Training in academic customs and conventions may also be an appropriate form of remedial measure. But your student's high school principal may be much more willing to impose punitive sanctions like lowered grade, loss of course credit, loss of academic honors and class rank, or even school suspension and expulsion if the violation is flagrant, a second or subsequent offense, involves other students or destroys the value of a confidential exam or answer key.
Louisiana High School Academic Misconduct Defense
You can see that your student's Louisiana high school teachers and principal may have broad discretion as to how to treat and punish your student's alleged academic misconduct. That discretion gives us the opportunity to advocate effectively for remedial measures over punitive sanctions that create a permanent record of high school discipline. We may be able to show the school principal that both the school and your student would benefit more by your student repeating classwork or extra work, accepting remedial training, suspending or expelling your student, or imposing loss of privileges, honors, and class rank. With the right advocacy, you may find the principal and teacher sympathetic to your student's better interests for additional education over punishment. However, we may also be able to use the district's discipline procedures to prove at a conciliation conference or formal hearing that your student did not cheat. Your student may have followed conflicting teacher instructions or not been present when the teacher gave an oral instruction your student violated. Other students may have cheated, for which the teacher mistakenly blamed your student. Let us help investigate and present a defense to the charge and a case to mitigate any penalty. We may also be able to negotiate alternative special relief through the district's general counsel's office if your student has already lost all hearings and suffered punitive discipline.
Louisiana High School Behavioral Misconduct
In Louisiana high schools, behavioral misconduct charges can be significantly more serious than academic misconduct charges. Behavioral misconduct has nothing directly to do with academics. Instead, it involves conduct that the district's discipline policy and high school rules prohibit because the conduct endangers students' physical safety or moral welfare, damages or destroys school or personal property, or disrupts school operations. Fighting, bullying, hazing, intimidation, harassment, drug, alcohol, tobacco, or weapons possession, vandalism, trespass, theft, setting off school fire alarms, damaging fire suppression equipment, blocking exits or hallways, or disobeying direct orders of school officials as to safety or security issues are common examples.
Punishments for Louisiana High School Behavioral Misconduct
Your Louisiana high school student may face punishment for behavioral misconduct that is more severe than the punishment your student faces for academic misconduct. Your student's school and district officials may construe the Louisiana statutes requiring discipline for cyberbullying, hazing, weapons possession, substance abuse in school, tobacco use or possession, and obstructing or interfering with school operations as limiting their discretion when it comes to imposing punishment. Automatic or presumptive suspension and expulsion is a distinct possibility, depending on your student's alleged behavioral wrong. The East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools Student Handbook, for instance, publishes elaborate tables providing for progressive discipline through four levels, from in-class intervention right up to school expulsion. The policy elevates several forms of behavioral misconduct to the highest punishment level, warranting suspension and expulsion.
Louisiana High School Behavioral Discipline Impacts
If your student suffers Louisiana high school behavioral discipline, expect the potential impacts to be both short term and long term. Your student can lose immediate social and network support, structure, and accountability if the discipline involves loss of sports team participation, club and social privileges, and academic honors and awards. If the discipline involves suspension and expulsion and referral to the district's alternative high school, then your student can lose valuable instructional structure and time, fail to make satisfactory academic progress, not advance in grades, and even fail to graduate with peers or at all. Longer term impacts can involve losing admission to preferred college, university, vocational, and professional programs and losing jobs and careers. Behavioral discipline can also delay your student's academic, cognitive, social, and emotional development in ways that make it hard or impossible for your student to catch up.
Louisiana High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Yet Louisiana high school behavior charges do not guarantee that your student will suffer discipline. We may be able to invoke the district's protective procedures to show at a formal district hearing that your student did not commit the alleged misconduct and that others misidentified your student or blamed your student for their own wrongs. Even if your student did engage in some degree of behavioral misconduct and violation of the district's discipline code, we may be able to present mitigating information and evidence, to advocate for remedial measures rather than punitive discipline. The State Board of Education's administrative regulation Title 28, Part CXV, Bulletin 741, Part 1301, requires your student's Louisiana high school officials to provide your student with due process protections. Our skilled and experienced attorneys know how to invoke those protections, including arranging conciliation conferences, invoking formal hearings, and taking appeals if your student has already lost all hearings and suffered harsh discipline. If your student has already lost all appeals, our attorneys have the reputation and relationships to reach district general counsel to advocate and negotiate for alternative special relief. The point is that your student's defense may well be possible, even to the point of avoiding any record of behavioral misconduct discipline in favor of remedial measures.
Louisiana High School Sexual Misconduct
If your student faces Louisiana high school sexual misconduct charges, the risks of severe discipline can be even greater than the risks of discipline for other behavioral misconduct. High school officials have a natural concern for protecting high school students from sexual assault and dating violence. However, federal Title IX regulations also require Louisiana high schools to prohibit sexual harassment based on sexual slurs, innuendo, and unwanted sexual advances. Your student's high school officials know that if they fail in their Title IX duties, they and the high school can face civil liability, and the high school can lose federal education funds. Your student's school principal and other disciplinary officials at the district level will swiftly investigate sexual misconduct allegations and aggressively pursue misconduct charges if credible evidence exists of sexual assault or sexual harassment. Let us help your student avoid a rush to judgment. Let us invoke the district's protective procedures to ensure your student has the best possible outcome to sexual misconduct charges.
Punishment of Louisiana High School Sexual Misconduct
You and your student can also reasonably expect your student's Louisiana high school officials to punish sexual misconduct more severely than other behavioral misconduct for the above reasons. The Jefferson Parish Schools Policies & Procedures Manual, for instance, refers to and incorporates its Title IX duties throughout the manual, making clear that officials in that district are aware of their federal obligations and take those obligations seriously. Punishment for sexual misconduct can include immediate emergency removal from the school, followed by suspension and expulsion if disciplinary proceedings confirm the occurrence of a Title IX violation and referral to an alternative disciplinary program to continue with high school instruction.
Louisiana High School Sexual Misconduct Discipline Impacts
Louisiana high school sexual misconduct discipline can have especially severe impacts on your student. Of course, school suspension and expulsion disrupts all the peer and staff relationships, instruction, and accountability of the regular high school program. Retention, advancement, and graduation statistics for alternative disciplinary programs are generally poor. Even if your student does persist to graduate from another program or obtain a GED, a high school record of a sexual wrong can discourage colleges, universities, vocational programs, professional programs, and even employers from entertaining your student's enrollment or hiring. Sexual misconduct discipline can also severely discourage, demotivate, and depress your student, stalling your student's academic, mental, emotional, and social development.
Louisiana High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Louisiana high school sexual misconduct charges are not the same as a finding of sexual misconduct. Your student's high school officials may have serious questions regarding the accuser's allegations. They may hope and expect that your student can present exonerating evidence. Accusers do sometimes fabricate allegations out of regret for consensual action, to protect a wrongdoer other than the person they accuse, or to retaliate against the accused student. Accusers can also make mistakes when identifying a wrongdoer or remembering the details of an incident. Fortunately, Title IX regulations offer your student procedural protections that our highly qualified attorneys can invoke on your student's behalf to challenge allegations, present your exonerating evidence, and present mitigating evidence if your student was involved in some degree of misconduct. Let us help your student defend sexual misconduct charges for your student's best possible outcome.
Louisiana High School Academic Progress Issues
Your Louisiana high school student may instead face academic progress issues. Academic progress issues differ from misconduct charges in that academic progress issues do not involve violations of a Louisiana district discipline policy. Academic progress instead involves the student's inability to meet the state's academic standards for grade advancement or graduation. The Louisiana Department of Education publishes academic standards that your student's local district and high school must enforce. If your student doesn't meet those standards, high school teachers and educational support staff should provide remedial education. Discipline should not generally be on the table. But high school officials may instead blame your student for a lack of discipline and motivation, for chronic absences and tardiness, for failing to turn in classwork, and even disobeying and disrespecting teachers. Discipline may, in fact, occur. High school officials may be only too willing to send your student to an alternative high school to relieve your student's school of the burden of educational support and to improve the school's academic success. Let us help your student gain remedial education and avoid discipline and school removal for academic progress issues.
Addressing Louisiana High School Academic Progress Issues
When academic progress is the issue, your student has additional legal rights that our attorneys can assert to gain remedial education for your student and avoid discipline. If your student has a qualifying disability, then we may be able to show that the high school owes your student an individualized education plan (IEP) and special education services under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). If your student is already under an IEP, we may be able to invoke a manifestation determination review to prevent discipline that changes your student's IEP placement. We may also be able to raise your student's extenuating circumstances like illness, injury, or a loss in the family to excuse academic issues and gain time and other relief.
Louisiana High School Sanction Defense
Even if your student's Louisiana high school officials find that your student violated the district discipline policy, that finding does not necessarily mean that your student must suffer discipline that remains on your student's high school record. Educators everywhere, including in Louisiana, recognize the benefit of restorative relief over punitive sanctions in appropriate cases where the student's misconduct or issues do not endanger other students. The East Baton Rouge Parish Student Handbook, for instance, asserts that “it is the expressed policy of the School Board to utilize alternatives to suspensions and expulsions” when finding student misconduct. The same policy asserts that the district's schools should “reserve the use of suspensions and expulsions as the last step” in discipline only after pursuing remedial measures. East Baton Rouge further requires principals and other school staff “to address student behavior with a focus on evidence-based interventions and supports.” High school, after all, is an educational institution. Education should come before punishment. Our attorneys know how to advocate for restorative justice measures that your student's Louisiana high school officials are more likely to accept, keeping your student's high school record clear of discipline.
Premier Louisiana High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in New Orleans, Lafayette, Metairie, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Lake Charles, Kenner, Bossier City, Monroe, Alexandria, Prairieville, Houma, Marrero, Central, and other Louisiana locations to defend your student against Louisiana high school disciplinary charges and academic progress issues. We have helped hundreds of students in Louisiana and across the country obtain favorable outcomes. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Louisiana high school student's case.
