If you have a student attending school at any level in the Metro Atlanta area – whether it's grade school, middle school, high school, or college – you know what an important role education plays in their daily life. They spend so much time at school, and school is such an important part of their future, that when bad things happen to them at school, it can deeply affect their life at home as well. And while no school is perfect, sometimes you need to take a stand on behalf of your child, to protect their rights and to defend them in situations where their education and their future are put at risk because of what their school is doing, or is failing to do.
When you find yourself in that situation, it can be difficult to figure out exactly what your child's rights are and the best way to assert those rights. When you work with the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team, you will benefit from the knowledge and experience that our education attorneys have earned helping other students and families in similar situations. We can explain to you what your child's rights are, how we can help protect those rights, and what steps to take to resolve the difficulties they are facing at school. Call us today at 888.535.3686 or fill out our online contact form, and we will schedule a confidential consultation where you can tell us about your child's situation, and we can tell you how we can help.
Student Issues in Schools in the Metro Atlanta Area
The number of laws, rules, and regulations that schools in the Metro Atlanta area have to follow are enormous. Federal, state, and even local governments have requirements that school officials must be aware of and that directly affect the way your child is treated when they are at school. The website for Georgia's Department of Education provides a gateway to a lot of this information, offering separate sections for parents, for students, and for school personnel. But there is a lot of information available on this website, and it can be hard to be sure that you've found the right answer when you have questions about your student's rights.
Grade, middle, and high schools across the Metro Atlanta area need to pay close attention to student rights and their own obligations to follow the policies and procedures that have been put in place. Whether your child is attending school in the Atlanta Public Schools system, or is enrolled in a school in a nearby city such as Sandy Springs, South Fulton, Roswell, Johns Creek, or Alpharetta, your child has rights that deserve to be protected – especially when their school makes mistakes and disregards those rights.
The same thing also applies at the college level. Metro Atlanta is home to a number of prominent colleges and universities, including Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State, Oglethorpe University, and Spelman and Morehouse colleges, as well as a number of other four-year and community colleges. Hundreds of thousands of college students study in and around the Metro Atlanta area, and each school is required to follow the same federal and state laws as well as the individual policies and procedures that the school has established for students, faculty, and staff to observe.
The Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team is here to help when your child's school fails to live up to its legal obligation to respect your child's rights. Sometimes those rights are set by federal or Georgia law. Other times, those rights are ones that the school specifically states its students will have – for example, the right for the student to have a fair hearing when they've been accused of serious misconduct. What we can do is take a close look at your child's situation and advise you on the best way to resolve issues with their school. In many cases, meeting with school officials and pointing out where they have made mistakes will be enough to remedy the problem. Other times, we may need to take things further, such as by filing a lawsuit to ask a judge to order the school to respect your child's rights. No matter what the situation, the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team maintains its focus on your student protecting their rights and remedying the wrongs that can damage their education and their future.
Some of the issues that the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team regularly helps students and families with are listed below. Contact us if you have questions, or if you have an issue we have not listed here.
Special Education and Disability Rights
Georgia requires its schools to provide special education services to students who have “emotional, physical, communicative and intellectual” issues that interfere with their schooling and that require “modifications or alterations in their educational programs.” Federal law also plays a significant role in special education situations.
Public schools must evaluate students who may have a disability. The purpose of the evaluation is to determine if the student has one or more disabilities that entitle them to special education services. Sometimes it can be a struggle to get a school to agree to evaluate a student. When that happens, the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team can help by reviewing your child's situation with you and assisting you with the appropriate steps to take to get your child evaluated by their school or school district. Schools need to make reasonable accommodations for students who have disabilities, and must also provide them with what is called a Free and Appropriate Public Education, or FAPE.
The federal laws that apply in this area include the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans With Disabilities Act. Together they provide a network of protective requirements designed to help students who have disabilities learn to their fullest potential – something that can make a significant difference in their lives once they finish their schooling.
While the Georgia DOE has an “IDEA Ombudsman” who is supposed to help parents of special needs students with questions and issues that may arise, it can be extremely helpful to be working with an experienced education law attorney who can help you understand your student's rights in any particular situation. Of course, you can research questions yourself – the DOE website has a lot of information available to parents and students on special education and related issues. But it's one thing to research questions on your own, and another thing to be confident that you have all of the information you need to be comfortable with your answer.
When you work with the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team, you will have the benefit of the years of experience that our education law attorneys have helping other students face similar situations to the one you and your child are facing. We know the laws, rules, regulations, and policies that apply in special education situations, and we are ready to use that background to help you and your child.
Individualized Education Programs and 504 Plans
Many students who have been evaluated and found to have a disability that entitles them to special education benefits will be entitled to an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. The focus of the IEP, which is unique to each student, is to provide them with the specific assistance they need to meet their educational goals. Each year the student's IEP is supposed to be updated, with input from parents, teachers, and other administrative professionals. Teachers are expected to follow the IEP, typically in coordination with other members of the school community.
It isn't unusual for parents and educators to disagree about the content of the student's IEP. While it is meant to be a collaborative document, parents can sometimes feel as though their views are not being taken into account when the IEP is created. If that is happening to your child in the Metro Atlanta area, the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team can help by working with you and the school to try to arrive at an agreed solution. In other cases, where a teacher fails to follow the instructional guidance for your child provided by the IEP, we can also get involved – to remind the teacher of what they should be doing, and to take the matter to administrators if the teacher fails to correct the situation.
Another thing that students with disabilities are entitled to is something provided under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 called a Free and Appropriate Public Education. Schools are required to make reasonable accommodations for students with diagnosed disabilities by modifying the way those students are taught so that their particular needs are addressed. If your Metro Atlanta school fails to take the proper steps to meet your child's FAPE requirements, our experienced education law attorneys can help advocate for your child. As in other cases where necessary, we can institute legal proceedings against the school to ask a judge to order the school to correct the situation.
Student Discipline
Schools at all levels across Metro Atlanta have codes of conduct that they expect students to follow. Those codes – which can go by various names, depending on the school – also typically explain how the school will go about reviewing allegations of student misconduct; how the school will resolve those allegations; and what types of sanctions or punishments the school will apply where it determines that misconduct has taken place.
The Atlanta Public Schools, for example, has its own Student Code of Conduct that generally applies to schools throughout the system. Each school will typically link to the Code of Conduct, which is incorporated as part of the school system's Student Handbook. The Fulton County School System, which covers a number of cities in Metro Atlanta, including Alpharetta, Sandy Springs, Roswell, and others, has its own Code of Conduct that applies to schools that are part of that system. And of course, every college and university has a code of conduct that it expects its students to follow – Georgia Tech, for example, has a Student Code of Conduct that covers both academic and non-academic student conduct.
These codes of conduct, by whatever name, state how your child's school expects them to conduct themselves in school-related situations. It is important to understand what is written in these codes if your child is facing a disciplinary investigation or proceeding, so that you can determine if the school is following its own procedures. It is not unusual for school officials to take shortcuts or to fail to properly implement the written procedures the school has in place for disciplinary situations. Typically, when that happens, it is the accused student who suffers. When you are working with the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team, however, we can highlight the school's failure to follow its own rules or to apply those rules unfairly. That can often make a significant difference in the outcome for the student accused of misconduct.
Bullying and Harassment
The State of Georgia prohibits bullying in schools and requires schools to adopt anti-bullying policies. In line with this requirement, schools across Metro Atlanta have anti-bullying policies in place. That doesn't mean, however, that these policies are uniformly followed. Parents often express frustration when bullying reports appear to be ignored by schools, especially when the effect that continued bullying can have on their child becomes apparent. When a child is reluctant or even afraid to go to school because of an ongoing bullying situation, especially when bullying reports appear to have been ignored or mishandled by the school, it is time to take action.
Our attorneys can help with that. At the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team, we have a comprehensive understanding of Georgia's anti-bullying law and what schools are expected to do to investigate and put a stop to student bullying. We can help you bring your child's situation to the attention of school authorities, and if they fail to act as their own policies say they should, we can take things to the next level – including, where appropriate, filing a lawsuit to secure a court order requiring the school to take the required steps.
Again, our main concern is always with the welfare of your child. Nobody should be afraid of going to school. We can get involved in these kinds of situations quickly, because the sooner they are resolved the better life will be for your student.
Discrimination
In Georgia, students are protected against discrimination based on a number of federal laws. These include:
- Title IV and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
- The Age Discrimination Act of 1975
- Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments of 2008
- The Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act
- USDA Title VI
Depending on the situation, it can sometimes be difficult to understand which law or laws may protect your child against discrimination in any particular case. When you work with the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team, we will apply our comprehensive understanding of these and other laws to your child's situation to determine what their rights may be, how those rights may have been violated by their school, and what steps we can take to correct those violations.
Student Rights and Free Speech
While students have the right to free speech just as everyone else does, schools also have the right to maintain order in the school and classroom setting so that they can provide the education that they are there to deliver. That, of course, means that students may not always get to say what they want to say whenever they want to say it.
However, school personnel can often go overboard when it comes to restricting free speech in the name of maintaining order. When that happens, especially if your child is punished for exercising their free speech rights in a reasonable way, the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team is ready to step in and fight to protect your child's free speech rights.
The Lento Law Firm Can Protect Your Student's Rights in the Metro Atlanta Area
If your child is attending school anywhere in the Metro Atlanta area, the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team is here to fight for their rights and protect them against unfair efforts by their school to discipline them or discriminate against them. Whether the problems are with special education issues, disciplinary matters, or any other situation where school officials are not following required laws, rules, regulations, or policies, we can help.
Call the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team today at 888.535.3686 or fill out our contact form, and we will schedule a confidential consultation to discuss your child's situation. We understand how important it is for your child to get the education they deserve; let us help you make that happen for your child!
