Michigan has a substantial commitment to the education of its high school students. That commitment is reflected in the state's strong support of high school students on their path into one of the state's flagship higher education institutions or into a licensed trade, profession, or other vocation. You doubtless have high hopes for your Michigan high school student. But beware of high school misconduct charges. Michigan law authorizes school officials to suspend and expel students for a wide range of misconduct and academic progression issues, and to send students to alternative disciplinary high schools. Don't let your Michigan high school student lose everything to school discipline. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your student's defense, whether you are located in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights, Pontiac, Lansing, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Livonia, Macomb, Troy, Westland, Farmington Hills, Birmingham, Jackson, Cadillac, Traverse City, Flint, Midland, Mt. Pleasant, or any other Michigan location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for the skilled and experienced Michigan high school defense services your student needs.
Your Interest as a Michigan High School Parent
Parents of Michigan high school students have every reason to have high hopes for their student's education, graduation, and progression into higher education or a fruitful job and career. Your student may have the ambition to attend the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, or another outstanding college or university program within or outside of the state. You surely hope and expect your student to graduate from high school well-adjusted, mentally and physically developed, with good character and habits, and with strong social skills. You'd also like your student to graduate with a fruitful network of peers, mentors, and supporters, and with a good reputation and record. Keep those many laudable interests and ambitions in mind when helping your student face, defend, and defeat high school misconduct charges or academic progression issues. Let us help.
Michigan High School Discipline Impacts
Don't underestimate or mistake the potential adverse impacts on your student of Michigan high school discipline. High school discipline could undermine and defeat every ambition you and your student have for your student's growth and development through high school. High school expulsion, suspension, or other discipline may keep your student from gaining admission to a preferred college or university program. High school discipline could also prevent your student from gaining a professional or vocational license or certification. High school discipline can ruin your student's peer and mentor relationships, removing a critical network of social support. These and other losses could result even if the discipline involves only a loss of academic honors and athletic, club, or social privileges. Discipline can also demotivate, embarrass, and ostracize a high school student, affecting the student's mental, emotional, and physical growth and welfare. Beware the impact of high school discipline on your student's most important opportunities. Let us defend your student against Michigan high school misconduct charges or academic progress issues.
Michigan's Education Discipline System
Michigan school laws give high school officials broad discretion to suspend, expel, or otherwise discipline students. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1311 expressly authorizes a school board, district official, building principal, or other school disciplinary official to suspend and expel students on a range of grounds. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1310d allows disciplinary officials to consider your student's age, disciplinary history, particular wrong, and safety, among other factors, when deciding whether to impose suspension, expulsion, or other discipline. Your student's future is, in a respect, in the hands of the high school's disciplinary officials. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1309 further gives your student's classroom teacher authority to suspend your student for endangering misconduct. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1311g also expressly authorizes school districts to establish strict discipline academiesto which to send violent, truant, disruptive, failing, or otherwise expelled students. If disciplined, your student may still get an education, but that education may be at a boot camp or reform school.
Michigan Board of Education Authority
Michigan's state Board of Education draws its authority not just from the legislature's laws but directly from the 1963 State Constitution. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 388.1009 is the primary legislative enactment granting the Board of Education broad powers over state public education. The state's Board of Education authorizes the administrative Department of Education to publish academic standards for Michigan's high schools and other elementary and secondary public schools. Your student must generally meet those high school academic standards to advance through the high school program to graduation. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 752.913 further authorizes the Department of Education to establish school safety standards enforced through the local schools. Your Michigan high school student must generally meet those safety and related behavioral standards to remain in high school. Your student is, in short, in a highly regulated school environment. Let our attorneys help if your student runs afoul of those standards and faces school discipline, suspension, or dismissal.
Michigan School District Authority
While Michigan's Board of Education, Department of Education, and legislature establish state education standards, Michigan's school laws authorize the Board and Department to empower local school districts, school superintendents, and building principals to enforce those academic and behavioral standards. If your Michigan high school student faces disciplinary charges or academic progress issues threatening your student's enrollment, school and district disciplinary officials are likely handling those issues, with the state's broad authority. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1312, for instance, requires the local school district to adopt and enforce a code of student conduct: “A local or intermediate school district or a public school academy shall develop and implement a code of student conduct and shall enforce its provisions with regard to pupil misconduct....” Our attorneys can help your student defend student code of conduct charges in the Detroit Public Schools, Ann Arbor Public Schools, Utica Community Schools, Dearborn City School District, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, Rochester Community School District, Grand Rapids Public Schools, Chippewa Valley Schools, Livonia Public School District, Warren Consolidated Schools, Troy School District, Kalamazoo Public Schools, Lansing Public School District, Wayne-Westland Community School District, Forest Hills Public Schools, and other districts throughout Michigan's Lower and Upper Peninsulas.
Michigan Local High School Conduct Code Enforcement
Michigan school district officials generally look to the specific high school for enforcement of the district's mandated student code of conduct. Your student's Michigan high school officials likely know all the ins and outs of the district's student code of conduct. The school principal, assistant principal, or other disciplinarian threatening your student's suspension, expulsion, or other discipline draws their authority from a student code of conduct like these codes in place at several of Michigan's major school districts:
- the Detroit Public Schools Community District Student Code of Conduct;
- the Lansing School District Student Code of Conduct;
- the Troy School District Student Code of Conduct;
- the Farmington Public Schools Student Code of Conduct; and
- the Grand Rapids Public Schools Student Handbook.
Michigan High School Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct is a first concern for Michigan high school students. Michigan high school programs establish and enforce academic standards, the violation of which could result in your student's discipline. School cheating may not seem like a big deal, especially to your student or other high school students adjusting to ever more sophisticated academic norms. However, high school programs prepare students for college and the workplace, where dishonesty can have serious, even criminal or life-threatening consequences. High school teachers and principals may take cheating charges especially seriously when the misconduct disrupts instruction and undermines learning. The Lansing School District Student Code of Conduct prohibits cheating and plagiarism, while the Grand Rapids Public Schools Student Handbook similarly prohibits cheating. Teacher instructions and school norms may further define any of the following as academic misconduct, subject to discipline:
- using unauthorized materials on a quiz, test, or exam;
- getting another student's unauthorized assistance on an exam;
- getting parent or student help on homework assignments;
- providing answers to another student for assignments or exams;
- taking credit for another's work, known as plagiarism; and
- falsifying references, credits, or other information in a work submitted for academic credit.
Punishing Michigan High School Academic Misconduct
Punishments for Michigan high school students for academic misconduct or cheating may vary widely. Some school teachers or officials may treat the first academic wrong as a learning opportunity. However, repeated cheating may bring severe sanctions. And even a first offense that is clearly deliberate, clearly violates teacher rules, and tends to disrupt examination or instruction may result in discipline. The above Grand Rapids Public Schools Student Handbook, for instance, treats repeated academic misconduct as a Level II offense worthy of discipline up to suspension. Charging academic misconduct not just as an academic issue but as insubordination, disrespect of teachers, and disruption of the program may result in more severe discipline.
Michigan High School Academic Discipline Impacts
Although academic misconduct does not involve a health danger or safety risk, the impact of academic discipline could nonetheless be severe, especially on a student's ambition for higher education or professional employment. Academic misconduct generally involves some form of dishonesty. Dishonesty, while not directly endangering, can indicate bad character for complying with laws, rules, and regulations that protect financial integrity, property, and even personal health and safety interests. Competitive college and university programs or even professional or vocational programs may decline admission to a student who has suffered from Michigan high school academic discipline. Your student could also lose school honors and awards, athletic or club privileges, and peer, teacher, and mentor support, leading to other harms. Don't unwisely minimize the potential impact of Michigan high school academic discipline.
Michigan High School Academic Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, if your student's Michigan high school intends to discipline your student for academic misconduct with an out-of-school suspension or expulsion, federal and state rights require the school to provide your student with protective procedures. Our attorneys may invoke those procedures on your student's behalf to challenge false allegations and negotiate alternative remedial relief in the event that the school finds your student has committed academic misconduct. Let us help ensure that your student retains a clean academic record, even if having your student perform additional schoolwork or accept remedial education or training is a reasonable compromise to discipline. Keep your student's academic record clean.
Michigan High School Behavioral Misconduct
Michigan high school officials will generally distinguish academic misconduct, like the forms of cheating addressed above, from behavioral misconduct involving school wrongs having to do with things other than academics. Behavioral misconduct threatens school safety or security or disrupts school operations. Under the above Michigan state laws, your student's Michigan high school will enforce a wide range of behavioral prohibitions having to do with things like weapons, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gangs, bullying in the school, the theft of school or student property, misuse of school computers, trespass, vandalism, and school fighting or other forms of violence. The Troy Public Schools Student Code of Conduct, for instance, prohibits a wide range of conduct it defines as bullying, cyberbullying, or harassment. Similarly, the Detroit Public Schools Student Code of Conduct prohibits fighting, other physical assaults, and gang activity. Michigan high school conduct codes commonly prohibit many or all of the following classes of offenses:
- interfering with fire alarms, fire extinguishers, and other fire suppression equipment;
- blocking school entrances, hallways, offices, sidewalks, or roadways, whether in horseplay or protest;
- bringing guns, knives, explosives, fireworks, dangerous chemicals, and other weapons or dangerous items onto school grounds;
- bringing alcohol, drugs, tobacco products, vaping materials, pornography, or other unhealthy, addictive, or corrupting items onto school grounds;
- physical violence of any kind, including fighting, shoving, tripping, slapping, spitting, and threats to engage in the same;
- intimidation or harassment based on race, sex, religion, disability, and other protected characteristics, including slurs, jokes, and epithets;
- vandalizing, damaging, destroying, or stealing school property or personal property on school premises;
- interfering with buses and other school transportation, including disobeying the instructions of drivers or aides;
- unauthorized access to facilities, teacher materials, student records, or computer files;
- disobeying teachers, principals, or other school authorities constituting insubordination or disrespect; and
- chronic and flagrant tardiness, absenteeism, or truancy.
Michigan High School Behavioral Discipline Impacts
Michigan high school disciplinary officials may punish behavioral misconduct more promptly and severely than academic misconduct, especially when it harms or endangers students or damages or destroys school property. Your student could face immediate suspension and expulsion, for instance, for drugs, weapons, alcohol, or gang offenses, or even just for non-endangering acts that school officials label as disrespectful and, therefore, disruptive. As with the case of academic discipline, competitive colleges, universities, and professional and vocational programs can construe behavioral discipline as grounds to disqualify your student from a preferred admission. Behavioral discipline may lead admissions officials and licensing officials to believe that your student is dangerous, disobedient, disruptive, and otherwise unworthy of granting access to education and vocations. Behavioral discipline could also cut off your student from friends, teammates, teachers, advisors, and others on whom your student depended for growth, support, and encouragement.
Michigan High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, if your Michigan high school student faces suspension, expulsion, or another serious discipline for behavioral misconduct, your student will have procedural protections that our skilled and experienced attorneys may invoke to ensure that your student has the best possible outcome. We may be able to invoke a formal district hearing or take an administrative appeal that could lead to the dismissal of the charges. We may alternatively be able to arrange conciliation conferences and informal resolution meetings, at which we propose and negotiate remedial relief in exchange for the dismissal of the charges. Your goal and your student's goal should be to keep your student's behavioral record clean of discipline so that your student does not have to disclose and answer well into the future for a record of behavioral misconduct.
Michigan High School Sexual Misconduct
One of the worst forms of discipline for a Michigan high school student to suffer is discipline for sexual misconduct. Michigan public high schools routinely enforce elaborate and strict codes against sexual misconduct under federal Title IX regulations. The Troy Public Schools Student Code of Conduct is an example, prohibiting sexual harassment under a lengthy and broad definition of the wrong. The Detroit Public Schools Student Code of Conduct is another example, prohibiting a list of sexual wrongs. Your student's Michigan high school will very likely have similar prohibitions satisfying the school's Title IX requirements to ensure the school continues to receive federal funding. Your student's disciplinary officials must take sexual misconduct allegations seriously under those regulations or risk losing school funding and facing civil liability. Because of that pressure to prohibit and punish sexual misconduct, your student faces a significant challenge in overcoming any such allegations. Let us help defend sexual misconduct charges. They allege serious wrongs.
Michigan High School Sexual Misconduct Discipline Impacts
If Michigan high school officials impose discipline against your student for sexual misconduct, your student could face severe academic, vocational, and reputational impacts. College and university admissions officials can certainly take an applicant's high school record of sexual misconduct into account to deny admission to your student's preferred school program. Those higher education officials have the same Title IX obligations to protect students that your student's high school disciplinary officials faced. Discipline for sexual misconduct can also affect applications to vocational and professional programs, certifications, and licenses, especially in healthcare, education, and other fields involving close care of vulnerable individuals. The social, psychological, and developmental impact of sexual misconduct discipline could also be severe, affecting your student's peer, teacher, advisor, and mentor relationships and even affecting your student's mental and emotional health. Don't let sexual misconduct discipline destroy your student's good name and solid prospects. Get our help.
Michigan High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Our skilled and experienced attorneys stand ready to help your student face and overcome Michigan high school sexual misconduct charges. The same Title IX regulations that require Michigan high schools to prevent and punish sexual misconduct guarantee your student certain procedural protections against false, exaggerated, and unfair sexual misconduct charges. Those protective procedures enable our attorneys to obtain a specification of the charges, gain disclosure of the evidence against your student, and invoke a hearing to challenge adverse witnesses through cross-examination while presenting your student's exonerating and mitigating evidence. If you and your student have already invoked and lost the formal hearing, we may be able to take an appeal that reverses any discipline. If you have already exhausted or missed an appeal, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief through the district's oversight channels. Let us help, no matter the stage of your student's proceeding.
Michigan High School Academic Progress Issues
You may be surprised to learn that your Michigan high school student faces getting held back a grade or even school suspension or expulsion over academic progress issues. School misconduct is one thing. Academic progress is another thing. Your Michigan high school student must generally make the grades, meeting the state's academic standards, to advance through high school and to graduate. Academic progress is not ordinarily a misconduct issue. Teachers and other school officials tend to treat academic struggles as learning issues. However, school officials may treat academic progress issues under student codes of conduct when they believe the academic progress issues have more to do with misbehaviors like teacher disrespect, lack of effort and care, chronic tardiness, absenteeism, or truancy. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1586 gives express authority to Michigan high school officials to summon parents to school over their student's nonattendance, failing schoolwork, or behavioral issues affecting schoolwork as a first step toward serious discipline. Let us help you respond to any such academic progress charges threatening your Michigan high school student's advancement or enrollment.
Michigan High School Academic Failure Causes
Your student's Michigan high school teachers, principal, and other school officials may unfortunately blame your student unfairly for academic progress issues. Academic struggles can have many causes. While some causes may fall at the student's feet, other causes of academic failure can include undiagnosed or unaccommodated learning disabilities, school bullying, illness or injury, and even the death or illness of a close family member or other struggles outside the school. If you find your student's teachers and principal blaming your student when you believe that your student's academic progress issues are instead multifactorial, let us help you show school officials their responsibility to better educate and serve your student without academic progress discipline.
Addressing Michigan High School Academic Progress Issues
Your Michigan high school student may have substantial legal rights on which to rely to get the academic help and support services your student needs to address and resolve your student's academic progress issues without discipline. Let us help you and your student evaluate and enforce those rights so that your student can stay on track or get back on track without facing failure, suspension, expulsion, transfer to an alternative disciplinary school, or other sanctions. We may be able to help your student gain a disability evaluation referral for an individualized education plan (IEP), enforce an already existing IEP, or modify an IEP that is not adequately serving your student. Alternatively, we may be able to help your student put a stop to bullying, hazing, or other conditions affecting your student's ability to study and gain from instruction. Our skilled and experienced attorneys may have several other fruitful options to propose and pursue to keep your student on track toward timely graduation with grade peers. Get our help for your student's academic progress issues.
Michigan High School Disciplinary Sanctions
You should already see from the above discussion that Michigan state school laws authorize discipline right up to suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement, depending on the grounds school officials show for disciplining your student. Suspension is, unfortunately, a common default option for harried school administrators with little time for due process. Don't underestimate the risk that your student's principal will simply kick your student out of school for an extended period, requiring home instruction or alternative disciplinary placement instruction. The Detroit Public Schools Student Code of Conduct, for instance, clearly authorizes suspensions and expulsions, even if granting students an opportunity to seek reinstatement after satisfying conditions. Each of the other student codes of conduct cited above does likewise. Don't assume that your student's Michigan high school disciplinary officials will sanction your student with only a slap on your student's wrist. Worse may be coming. Get our help to minimize and, if possible, eliminate any disciplinary sanction.
Michigan High School Disciplinary Sanction Issues
Michigan high school disciplinary officials face issues in proving a student's misconduct. Our attorneys have the skill and experience to challenge those proofs while also pursuing alternative remedial relief. However, Michigan high school officials also face issues when imposing sanctions for misconduct that they find a student has committed. You might think that your student's school officials will be balanced and fair, choosing only necessary discipline while preferring remedial and restorative measures. However, in practice, Michigan high school officials exhibit the same flaws and foibles as other persons and professionals. Your student's disciplinarian may have it in for your student, may intend to make an example of your student, or may hold some other bias, prejudice, or conflict of interest, causing the disciplinarian to impose harsh, unwarranted, and unnecessary discipline. Don't let that unfortunate outcome be your student's experience. Let our highly qualified attorneys ensure that your student does not suffer unnecessary discipline when remedial measures or other non-disciplinary relief may be available and appropriate.
Michigan High School Discipline Limitations
Michigan's school laws limit and condition the discipline that your student's high school officials may impose in certain cases. We may be able to help you and your student invoke those laws to avoid or minimize disciplinary sanctions. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1310c, for example, requires school districts and boards to consider the use of restorative practices whenever intending to suspend or expel a student. While restorative practices may include virtually any positive option, the statute specifically mentions that the student engaging in misconduct might “apologize,” “participate in community service, restoration, or counseling,” or “pay restitution.” Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1307b, for another instance, prohibits corporal punishment, meaning the use of force such as in paddling or spanking. The same law also prohibits certain use of restraints or seclusion. Other federal and state laws may require that the school conduct a manifestation determination review before changing your student's placement under an IEP due to discipline. Our attorneys have substantive law knowledge and strategic skills to invoke these limitations on your student's behalf for the best disciplinary outcome for your student.
Michigan High School Student Defense Rights
Your Michigan public high school student has constitutional rights to due process before the school deprives your student of your student's property and liberty interest in public school education, for anything longer than a brief emergency suspension. Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1311 and other Michigan school laws carry out that guarantee with various due process protections. Your student may well have rights not only to a detail of the charges and disclosure of any incriminating evidence but also to challenge that evidence at a formal hearing with the help of our skilled and experienced attorneys. Your student may also have a right of appeal to the district and to a review by the state's administrative agencies, as well as a limited right of court review under Michigan's Administrative Procedures Act. Don't stand silent on your student's rights. Let us help you invoke those rights strategically and effectively for your student's best disciplinary defense. We may also be able to help invoke the district's oversight review and gain reversal of any discipline, even if you have already lost all hearings and appeals.
Premier Michigan High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights, Pontiac, Lansing, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Livonia, Macomb, Troy, Westland, Farmington Hills, Birmingham, Jackson, Cadillac, Traverse City, Flint, Midland, Mt. Pleasant, and other Michigan locations to defend your student against Michigan high school disciplinary charges. Hundreds of high school and other students nationwide have wisely trusted our attorneys for a successful defense of misconduct charges and academic progress issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Michigan high school student's case.
