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Minnesota high school students can readily face misconduct charges or academic progress issues warranting our highly qualified defense attorney representation. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your student's Minnesota high school defense in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester, Bloomington, Duluth, Brooklyn Park, Plymouth, Woodbury, Lakeville, Blaine, Maple Grove, St. Cloud, or any other Minnesota location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys for your Minnesota high school student's best outcome to misconduct charges or academic progress issues.
Your Minnesota High School Student's Future
Your Minnesota high school student can have very high stakes when facing the school's misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Don't lose sight of those stakes. Instead, take stock of your student's dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Also, consider your own expectations for your student when deciding how to help them navigate the charges or issues. You and your student may expect your student to attend your own college or university alma mater, enter your own trade or profession, or pursue a different education and vocation that fits your student's unique character and specific interests. You and your student likely also have expectations for marriage, family, and children, as well as volunteer, charitable, recreational, and community pursuits. Minnesota high school discipline can affect all of those interests, expectations, and ambitions. Step back to look at the big picture. Do not minimize your student's Minnesota high school charges and issues. Get our help addressing those issues.
Minnesota High School Parent Commitments
You are also likely already considering what your role is and should be when helping your Minnesota high school student deal with a disciplinary matter or academic progress issues. You may want to believe that your student is capable of handling the issues on your student's own and might be better doing so to learn the skills and develop the judgment and character. However, the stakes of Minnesota high school discipline are too high, and the matters are too subtle and complex to leave to the skills and judgment of virtually any high school student. Your student won't mature in brain development, procedural skills, social and emotional capacities, and other important ways until as late as age twenty-five. Much as you wouldn't generally let an infant play with a gun or knife, you shouldn't let a high schooler handle a matter with long-term or even permanent effects all alone. Your Minnesota high school student will need and benefit from your social poise, emotional control, procedural judgment, and general life skills. Your job as a parent isn't over, at least until your student graduates from high school, and likely not until even later, perhaps ever. Don't miss the opportunity to stand by your student when your student needs it most. Retain us to help you help your student through the most important external matter your student may have yet faced in life.
Minnesota High School Discipline Adverse Impacts
Minnesota high school discipline can certainly affect your student's high school growth, success, and experience. With a finding of misconduct, your student could lose sports team privileges, social club and recreational privileges, and peer, teacher, and advisor relationships, even if the school does not impose greater punishments. However, the school could also suspend your student, expel your student, and require your student to complete high school in an alternative disciplinary placement, boot camp, or reform school. Those alternative programs often have poor retention, advancement, and graduation outcomes, putting your student's high school education at risk. Educators and policymakers document the many potential adverse impacts of school discipline.
The term longer-term impact of Minnesota high school discipline can include your student's inability to gain admission to your student's preferred college or university. Your student may also lose the ability to enter a preferred vocational or professional program and to get a vocational certification or professional license. Discipline also places teacher, advisor, mentor, and family relationships at risk, potentially destroying your student's valuable network of social support. Discipline can also directly affect your student's mental, emotional, and physical health and delay your student's academic, social, and physical development. Don't unwisely minimize the impact on your student of Minnesota high school discipline. Instead, retain our help.
Minnesota's High School Discipline System
Your student's Minnesota high school officials have clear legislative and regulatory authority to discipline your student. While we rightly regard public K-12 education as a right, students who engage in serious misconduct or do not make satisfactory academic progress can lose the full benefit and enjoyment of that right. Minnesota Statutes Section 121A.61 authorizes high school officials to remove your student and even expel your student from the school under policies and procedures the school district adopts. Minnesota Statutes Section 121A.45 authorizes school removal and expulsion on any one of three different general grounds, including (1) willful violation of a school district policy, (2) willful conduct that disrupts the educational rights of other students, or (3) willful conduct that endangers others or threatens damage to school property. These grounds are extraordinarily broad and subject to interpretation. Other statutes authorize discipline for bullying, hazing, drug possession, and other wrongs. Your student's Minnesota high school is a highly regulated environment. Violating its rules and policies can easily lead to your student's discipline.
The Minnesota State Board of Education
Minnesota state agencies and their administrative regulations can also dictate or influence your student's disciplinary or academic progression outcome. For instance, the Minnesota Department of Education has promulgated administrative regulations on behavior interventions, disciplinary procedures, and expedited hearings. Your student's Minnesota high school disciplinary officials will follow these administrative rules in your student's disciplinary matter. The Minnesota Department of Education also publishes academic standards to which your student's Minnesota high school must hold students accountable. If your student faces academic progress issues, those issues may well implicate these state standards. We can help you interpret and navigate these administrative provisions for your student's greatest benefit in your student's disciplinary or academic matter.
Minnesota Local School District Authority
Minnesota's legislature has also authorized your student's Minnesota school district board to participate in school discipline. For instance, Minnesota Statutes Section 121A.61 requires your student's school district to adopt a districtwide discipline policy. That policy will govern your student's high school discipline matters. The district's discipline policy must state the disciplinary grounds and procedures consistent with state law, rule, and regulation. Your student's district discipline policy will likely provide for hearings, appeals, and other involvement at the district level. You may find yourself soon dealing with district officials. Let us help you and your student do so. We are available to represent your student at the district level in any district across Minnesota, including the Anoka-Hennepin Schools, Saint Paul Public School District, Minneapolis Public School District, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Independent School District, Osseo Area Schools, South Washington County School District, Rochester Public School District, Independent School District No. 728, Wayzata Public Schools, Mounds View Public School District, Lakeville Public School District, Robbinsdale Area Schools.
Minnesota Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
Your student's Minnesota school district discipline policy, adopted under the requirement of Minnesota Statutes Section 121A.61, will likely look in part like other district policies found across the state. Policies must, for instance, recognize the Minnesota statutes on discipline for bullying, hazing, drug possession, and other wrongs. And districts often draw from one another when adopting state-required policies. However, your student's district discipline policy is also likely to be different or even unique in at least some respects, potentially impacting your student's disciplinary matter. We can help you locate, interpret, and apply the district policy in your student's best interest. Your student's district discipline policy may look like one or more of the following example policies from larger Minnesota districts:
- the Minneapolis Public Schools publish Policy 5200 on Behavior Standards and Code of Conduct, requiring effective and sensitive discipline under other policies stating disciplinary grounds;
- the Lakeville Area Schools publish a Secondary Student Handbook listing many grounds for discipline up to suspension and expulsion;
- the Saint Paul Public Schools publish a Rights & Responsibilities Handbook listing different levels of disciplinary violations; and
- The Robbinsdale Area Schools publish a Student Handbook that provides a progressive discipline policy with corrective strategies.
We can help you and your student defend disciplinary charges under your student's specific Minnesota school district student code of conduct, like the above district codes. Keep in mind that the outcome of your student's disciplinary charges will likely depend on how you and your student approach the disciplinary proceedings. The codes typically give the school principal substantial discretion to either impose punitive sanctions or fashion remedial relief. Let us negotiate and advocate for your student's best possible outcome, including that your student avoids any record of school discipline.
Minnesota High School Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct may look at first like a minor concern. In some cases, high school teachers and principals will treat academic misconduct as a learning opportunity, giving your Minnesota high school student a chance to avoid formal discipline and instead do remedial work and accept remedial training. However, Minnesota school district discipline policies often include academic misconduct as a sanctionable disciplinary offense. Your student's district discipline policy may authorize high school officials to suspend and expel your student over academic misconduct, especially if it involves other students, disrupts instructional integrity, or is a flagrant repeat offense. In those more serious cases, your student's high school disciplinary officials may treat your student's violation not just as an academic matter but also as a behavioral matter, such as insubordination, disrespect, and disobeying school authorities. Those interpretations may result in school suspension and expulsion. Beware of academic misconduct charges. Get our help defending them.
Definitions of Minnesota High School Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct can go by that name or bear the labels of cheating or academic dishonesty. Academic misconduct involves gaining or attempting to gain undue academic advantage, violating school rules, academic customs, or teacher instructions for the assignment, exam, or course. The Lakeville Area Schools Secondary Student Handbook, for instance, prohibits scholastic dishonesty, defined as “cheating on a school assignment or test,” “plagiarism,” “collusion,” or using “phones or other technology to accomplish” collusion. Common forms of high school academic misconduct can include collaborating with other students when supposed to work alone, misuse of electronic devices and information services, using unauthorized materials on a quiz or test, copying the work of others without attribution (plagiarism), falsifying research data, and submitting the same work twice for credit without the teachers knowing.
Punishing Minnesota High School Academic Misconduct
Minnesota high school teachers and disciplinary officials can diverge in how they treat allegations of student cheating. Because high school students are still learning academic customs and conventions, disciplinary officials may afford a student a second chance. The student may have to accept remedial training in things like proper citation of sources. The student may have to repeat assignments or retake an exam on which the student allegedly cheated. The student may even lose credit or suffer a reduced grade. The Saint Paul Public Schools Rights & Responsibilities Handbook, for example, treats a first offense of cheating as a Level 1 violation, warranting remedial measures.
However, second and subsequent offenses can elevate punishment levels for academic misconduct. trying There can be flagrant offenses where the student obviously knew of the instructions, deliberately violated the instructions for undue advantage, and tried to conceal or later lie about the violation. High school disciplinary officials can also elevate the punishment for academic misconduct when a student steals and discloses an answer key, destroys the value of assessment materials, involves other students in cheating, or otherwise disrupts instruction on a wider scale. In those cases, school suspension and expulsion are a real possibility. Academic misconduct charges can easily become behavioral misconduct issues, depending on how reprehensible, flagrant, and disruptive the conduct is.
Minnesota High School Academic Misconduct Defense
We may be able to take several approaches to reduce your Minnesota high school student's risk of serious discipline from academic misconduct charges. Our early appearance on your student's behalf may give us the chance to communicate with the involved school officials, demonstrating your student's willingness to act responsibly, improve academic conduct, and conform to all rules and conventions. We may be able to propose alternative remedial measures and advocate that those measures serve both the school and your student better than punitive sanctions would accomplish. Your student may alternatively have an outright defense to the charges. The involved teacher may have misidentified your student, perhaps because of the responsible student's lies and cover-up. Your student may have followed other instructions that the teacher or an aid gave that conflicted with the instruction that the school cites as grounds for alleging your student's violation. Or your student may not have been present when the teacher gave the instruction the school alleges your student violated. We may also be able to present mitigating evidence showing that your student's academic misconduct did not affect other instruction, did not destroy the value of answer keys or other assessment materials, and did not involve other students.
Minnesota High School Behavioral Misconduct
Behavioral misconduct raises different student concerns and implicates different school interests. In the case of behavioral misconduct, the allegations usually involve that the student either injured or endangered others, damaged or destroyed school property, or disrupted school operations. Weapons possession, drug possession, bullying, hazing, vandalism, trespass, theft, and disobeying school authorities are examples. Minnesota high school disciplinary officials are thus usually concerned with the student's immature, unreliable, dishonest, or dangerous character and with protecting students, property, and operations from that character.
Punishments for Minnesota High School Behavioral Misconduct
Punishment for behavioral misconduct is often more severe than for academic misconduct. By its definition and forms, behavioral misconduct is more likely than academic misconduct to harm or endanger others and affect school property and operations. Minnesota high school officials thus cannot generally tolerate frequent behavioral wrongs. Behavioral wrongs also implicate the wrongdoer's character and may undermine the good character of other students who observe and may participate in the wrongs. Further, Minnesota statutes on discipline for bullying, hazing, drug possession, and other wrongs may limit the discretion high school officials usually have to choose remedial rather than punitive measures. Suspension and even expulsion may be automatic under the relevant statute. The Robbinsdale Area Schools Student Handbook is an example, defining endangering and destructive behavioral wrongs as a Level 4 offense warranting school removal.
Minnesota High School Behavioral Discipline Impacts
Do not underestimate the potential impact of behavioral discipline. At the same time, academic misconduct discipline may look to the school community and to others outside the school like a victimless and, therefore, minor wrong; both the school community and others outside the school may construe behavioral discipline as an indication that the student is unsafe and someone to therefore avoid. The direct impact of behavioral discipline may be more than just loss of school privileges. It may include school suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement. Students who commit criminal or criminal-like wrongs tend to get sent to reform schools. However, the indirect impacts of behavioral discipline could be even more severe, causing your student to lose college and university admissions, admission to desired vocational programs, and other losses resulting in long-term educational and career harm.
Minnesota High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Because your student's Minnesota high school has charged your student with behavioral misconduct doesn't mean that your student must suffer a severe punishment. When you retain our skilled and experienced attorneys, we may be able to show that your student simply did not commit the charged wrong. Other students may have been responsible, or others outside the school may have committed the wrong circumstances, making it appear that your student was responsible. Or your student may have had extenuating circumstances that contributed to your student's poor decision, such as bullying by other students that caused your student to act in self-defense or inappropriately retaliate. Minnesota Statutes Section 121A.46 promises your student protective procedures that we can invoke to present your student's exonerating and mitigating evidence. If your student has already lost all hearings and appeals that those procedures offer, we may still be able to negotiate with the district's general counsel for alternative special relief.
Minnesota High School Sexual Misconduct Charges
Minnesota high school sexual misconduct charges raise your student's stakes to another level. Minnesota high schools have several reasons for taking sexual misconduct allegations especially seriously. One of those reasons is that federal Title IX regulations require Minnesota's high schools to prohibit sexual misconduct. If your student's high school fails to investigate and punish student sexual misconduct, the school could lose its federal funding, face substantial civil liability, and lose its reputation and enrollment. Minnesota high school officials also appreciate that sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other sexual wrongs can have severe impacts on education and long-term impacts on the victim's mental, emotional, and physical health. Minnesota high school disciplinary officials typically promptly investigate and aggressively pursue sexual misconduct charges.
Punishment of Minnesota High School Sexual Misconduct
For the above reasons, Minnesota high school officials also tend to punish sexual misconduct more severely than academic or other behavioral misconduct. They may feel that Title IX regulations tie their hands, limit their discretion, and require strict enforcement with school removal and expulsion. Minnesota school district discipline policies tend to reflect that willingness to aggressively enforce Title IX obligations with harsh punishment. The Minneapolis Public Schools Policy Against Violence and Harassment is an example, stating that “harassment and violence will not be tolerated.” Your student's Minnesota high school may not reserve severe punishment, including school suspension and expulsion, for sexual violence. It may determine to suspend and expel for sexual slurs, jokes, and unwanted advances that it and the complainant regard as sexually harassing.
Minnesota High School Sexual Misconduct Discipline Impacts
Minnesota high school, sexual misconduct discipline, may have the most severe impacts of any form of high school discipline. Of course, the high school may remove your student to an alternative school, placing your student's advancement and graduation at risk. But high school discipline for sexual misconduct may also represent to other high schools, colleges and universities, vocational and professional programs, advisors and mentors, and others on whom your student may wish to depend that your student is a safety, liability, regulatory, and moral risk to avoid at all costs. Sexual misconduct tends to implicate more than just safety concerns when safety concerns are enough alone to create substantial adverse impacts.
Minnesota High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Just because your Minnesota high school student faces sexual misconduct charges does not mean that your student must suffer discipline. The same Title IX regulations protections encourage aggressive enforcement measures and offer the accused student procedural protection. Those protections include fair notice of the charges, discovery of the school's evidence, opportunity for informal resolution conferences, right to a formal hearing, right to attorney representation, cross-examination of adverse witnesses, and appeals. We may be able to show that any conduct in which your student was involved was consensual, non-threatening, not severe or pervasive, and not a Title IX violation. We may also be able to negotiate remedial measures, such as sexual violence education and school or community service, that leave no finding of sexual misconduct and no record of discipline.
Minnesota High School Academic Progress Issues
Your student may alternatively face academic progress issues. While academic progress issues do not sound as threatening as the above misconduct issues, academic progress issues can, in the worst case, lead to school removal, failure to advance, and failure to graduate, which looks very much like misconduct discipline. Recall that the Minnesota Department of Education publishes academic standards to which your student's Minnesota high school must hold your student accountable. Ordinarily, a struggling student would reasonably expect instructional support and perhaps special education services. But if your student's academic struggles appear to relate to frequent absences, chronic tardiness, a lack of motivation and discipline, or even outright insubordination, disobedience, and disrespect for school authorities, then your student's academic progress issues can quickly become misconduct issues, leading to discipline. Your student's Minnesota high school issues may even suspend, expel, and transfer your student to an alternative disciplinary school on these grounds when your student's genuine issue isn't behavioral but academic.
Addressing Minnesota High School Academic Progress Issues
Fortunately, your student has a range of federal and state laws, rules, and regulations that may protect your student from harsh and punitive consequences for academic progress issues. If your student has a qualifying disability, then the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates special education evaluation and services. If your student is already under an individualized education plan (IEP), then the high school should not discipline your student and change your student's placement without holding a manifestation determination review. If your student's academic issues are instead the result of bullying by other students, then the school has a statutory and regulatory obligation to protect your student. Bullying can cause otherwise capable students to withdraw from studies simply to reduce the likelihood of further bullying. We may alternatively be able to show that your student had extenuating circumstances excusing your student's failure to progress. Your student's illness or injury, or the death or serious illness of a close family member, are examples. We can help you and your student present these and other defenses to academic progress issues while helping your student qualify for educational support services.
Minnesota High School Disciplinary Sanctions
You have seen above that Minnesota high school disciplinary officials have abundant authority to discipline your student up to school suspension and expulsion and transfer to an alternative disciplinary program. High school disciplinary officials generally have discretion to impose other sanctions like restitution, school or community service, and loss of privileges or to offer remedial measures. If the school finds that your student committed misconduct in one form or another, your student's sanction is largely in the hands of high school officials who generally have substantial discretion.
Minnesota High School Disciplinary Sanction Defense
As much discretion as your student's Minnesota high school officials may have to sanction your student, Minnesota law generally requires that those high school officials act without bias and conflict of interest. We may be able to challenge an overly harsh sanction on those grounds. Other statutes may limit the punishment to certain forms. For example, Minnesota Statutes Section 121A.58 prohibits corporal punishment and punishment by isolation or restraint. But in general, our attorneys' efforts can always be directed toward presenting a case for mitigating your student's wrongdoing and advocating for remedial rather than punitive measures. Just because the school finds that your student committed some violation of the student code of conduct does not mean that your student must suffer a harsh sanction such as school suspension or expulsion. The default sanction often is suspension. But we know how to advocate for better remedial measures. We may also be able to invoke state and district commitments to favor restorative practices over punitive sanctions. For example, Minnesota Statutes Section 121A.031 requires your student's Minnesota school district discipline policy to ensure that “restorative practices, consequences, and sanctions are fairly and fully implemented....”
Premier Minnesota High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester, Bloomington, Duluth, Brooklyn Park, Plymouth, Woodbury, Lakeville, Blaine, Maple Grove, St. Cloud, and other Minnesota locations to defend your student against Minnesota high school disciplinary charges and academic progress issues. Recognize and respect what your student has at stake. Our highly qualified attorneys have helped hundreds of students in Minnesota and across the country gain favorable outcomes for their school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Minnesota high school student's case.
