New Hampshire has fine public schools, including outstanding high schools. You have every reason to want to keep your New Hampshire high school student in your student's traditional high school, moving through the program with grade and age peers. High school misconduct charges and academic progress issues, though, can derail your student, leaving a record of discipline that threatens your student's future. Let us help if your student faces high school discipline in Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Derry, Dover, Rochester, Salem, Merrimack, Londonderry, Hudson, Bedford, Keene, Portsmouth, or any other New Hampshire location. The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available across the state for your student's misconduct defense. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys to protect your New Hampshire high school student's worthy ambitions.
Your New Hampshire High School Student's Future
Your New Hampshire high school student doubtless has ambitions for a great future filled with opportunities in education, jobs, careers, recreation, recreation, and family and other relationships. Your student's high school experience is a platform for that future. A strong high school experience can launch your student along the best path toward a flourishing future. A bad high school experience, though, can change the course and trajectory of your student's future. Your student may desire to pursue a college or university education, even to attend graduate or professional school. Your student may also have specific jobs or careers in mind, as well as laudable volunteer, charitable, recreational, and family hopes, dreams, and visions. High school disciplinary charges place all of those dreams and ambitions at risk. High school suspension or expulsion, placement in an alternative disciplinary program, and other sanctions can send your student on a detour from which your student may take a long time to recover. Let us help you keep your New Hampshire high school student on track toward timely graduation. Your student's future awaits. Let us help protect it.
New Hampshire High School Parent Commitments
You definitely have an important role in students' disciplinary or academic progress. While your student may appear mature and capable, handling school misconduct proceedings appropriately requires a level of maturity, knowledge, skill, and experience that high school students don't generally have. Your student likely lacks the necessary fortitude, insight, and discernment, not to mention the communication and negotiation skills that achieving the best outcome may take. That's where you come in. You have your own ambitions and expectations for your students. Those hopes and dreams may include your student attending your own alma mater or entering your own professional or vocational field. You likely have hopes for your student's reputation and relationships, too. Stand up for your student in your student's current school matter. And take the best step available to you and your student, which is to retain our efficient and effective representation. We can help you carry out your proper parental role.
New Hampshire High School Discipline Impacts
Short-Term Disciplinary Impacts
Your student may suffer both short-term and long-term impacts from New Hampshire high school disciplinary charges. The short-term impacts include sanctions like loss of athletic, club, social, and other recreational privileges, loss of academic honors and awards, and loss of student and teacher relationships. These things can impact your student's motivation and academic progress. Your student may suffer reduced grades and even fail and have to repeat courses. Misconduct charges and the sanctions that can come with them may result in your student's embarrassment and social isolation, further leading to academic and other developmental impacts. Your student could even face depression, anxiety, and other mental and physical impacts from disciplinary sanctions. The probability of those impacts increases substantially if your student suffers a school suspension or, worse, a school dismissal and expulsion. Your student may have to attend an alternative disciplinary program, otherwise known as reform school or boot camp.
Long Term Disciplinary Impacts
These are only some of the documented serious potential adverse impacts of school discipline. Discipline can also have long-term impacts. Those impacts may include your student's inability to gain admission to your student's preferred college or university program. Your student may also not be able to qualify for admission to a preferred vocational or professional program. Discipline for serious wrongs could even disqualify your student from gaining a special license or certification necessary for employment or other gainful activities. Discipline can also pull the support net from under your student, causing mentors and other helpful friends and acquaintances to cut off relationships. Promptly retain our attorneys to avoid the worst impacts. We can help your student navigate the disciplinary proceedings to the best outcome while keeping up the confidence necessary to move forward in the high school program.
New Hampshire's High School Discipline System
Do not question the authority of your student's New Hampshire high school officials to discipline your student, up to and including removal from the school. New Hampshire Statutes Section 193:13 authorizes local school boards and district superintendents to suspend and expel high school students for appropriate causes. Specific statutes mandate drug-free school zones, student safety and violence prevention, hazing prevention, firearm prohibitions, and other protections against endangering or disruptive harms. Your New Hampshire high school student studies in a highly regulated environment, more so than almost any other environment your student may encounter throughout life. High schools regulate not only endangering and disruptive conduct but also conduct affecting the health, welfare, and morals of students, such as tobacco possession, possession of vaping devices, and possession of pornographic materials. They may also impose sanctions for vaguely defined misconduct such as insubordination or disrespect toward teachers or refusal to comply with orders of school principals or other officials. Unfortunately, school officials can act with surprising strictness and even arrogance when enforcing these many rules.
The New Hampshire State Board and Department of Education
New Hampshire has a State Board of Education that the state legislature empowers to regulate the state's public schools. New Hampshire Statute Section 193-D-2 requires the State Board of Education to adopt safe school rules. The State Board of Education also holds hearings and reviews appeals from aggrieved students and their parents. We can help you and your student invoke those hearing and appeal procedures, if your matter does not resolve favorably at the local district or high school level. The New Hampshire State Board of Education relies on the Department of Education to carry out its mandates for the maintenance of safe and orderly schools. For instance, Department of Education Rule 317.04 expressly authorizes local school officials to suspend and expel students for school safety and other similar causes. The New Hampshire Department of Education also promulgates elaborate content standards in the various academic subjects that the state's high schools must teach. Those content standards set the benchmarks your student must meet to graduate from high school. While your student's matter may be resolved at the local level, we can help you and your student invoke these state procedures and interpret the state rules, regulations, and standards for your student's best outcome.
New Hampshire Local School District Authority
As indicated above, New Hampshire Statutes Section 193-D-2 requires the State Board of Education to adopt safe school rules. However, the same statute encourages local school district boards to augment those state-level safe-school rules with local rules regulating student conduct. Under this authority, your student's local school district will likely have adopted a student code of conduct with which your student must comply. Let our attorneys help you and your student deal with local school district officials. We can invoke district procedures and interpret district codes. Our attorneys are available across New Hampshire, including in the following largest school districts: the Manchester School District, Nashua School District, Bedford School District, Londonderry School District, Concord School District, Rochester School District, Dover School District, Salem School District, Merrimack School District, Timberlane Regional School District, Derry Cooperative School District, and Hudson School District.
New Hampshire Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
Your New Hampshire high school student very likely attends a school with a student code of conduct. That student code of conduct is the first document that the school is likely to interpret and apply to your student's disciplinary matter. The local high school student code of conduct may refer to the state and district-level policies with which the local student code must comply. However, it may impose its own obligations in addition to those state and district rules. Your student's high school likely has a student code of conduct similar to one of the following codes:
- the Manchester School District Student Code of Conduct details prohibitions at five offense levels, with serious more serious sanctions applying to each successive offense level;
- the Nashua Board of Education adopts Student Behavior Standards with three levels of offense from minor to moderate and severe, each listing the prohibited behaviors in each successive offense level and the corresponding sanctions;
- the Dover High School Student Handbook publishes behavioral standards at four offense levels from minor to moderate, major, and critical, each detailing the wrongs within that offense level and the sanctions applicable to that offense level.
Our attorneys can help you and your student obtain and interpret the student code of conduct, applying it to your student's situation to put forward your student's best possible defense to disciplinary charges.
New Hampshire High School Academic Misconduct
Your New Hampshire high school student's first challenge is to meet the school's academic rules, norms, customs, and conventions. High school naturally imposes greater academic expectations on students than middle school and elementary school, not just in the content standards but also in how students may study and perform within academic rules. Various forms of cheating, such as unauthorized assistance, unauthorized materials, and plagiarism, come into play at the high school level under circumstances where teachers and principals are more likely to punish violations with disciplinary sanctions. Students cheat at all levels. School officials may be reluctant to punish cheating at lower levels, instead treating cheating as an opportunity for character development and remedial instruction. However, at the high school level, teachers and principals are more willing to punish cheating with various sanctions. Beward cheating charges.
Definitions of New Hampshire High School Academic Misconduct
New Hampshire high school students' codes of conduct have varying definitions for cheating if they define cheating at all. The Manchester School District Code of Conduct, for example, simply lists “plagiarism/cheating” as Level 2 offenses, without further definition, leaving it to teachers and principals to define. The Nashua Board of Education Student Behavior Standards, for another similar example, simply lists “academic dishonesty” and “cheating” as Class III offenses, at the lowest offense level, again without further definition. By contrast, though, the Dover High School Student Handbook has elaborate definitions for academic misconduct under a relatively long section titled “Academic Integrity.” Cheating at Dover High School can include not only plagiarism but also unauthorized collaboration, duplication of another's work, alteration of graded papers, and other academic wrongs. Let us help you and your student interpret and apply your student's applicable code of conduct and associated teacher instructions, to make the best case for defense.
Punishing New Hampshire High School Academic Misconduct
You can see from the above three examples that New Hampshire high schools may differ in their approaches to punishing academic misconduct. Manchester, for instance, makes it a moderate, not a minor offense, while Nashua treats it as a lower-level offense. Dover addresses punishment for cheating in a lengthy section, making clear that the punishment will depend on the circumstances. First offenses may warrant only a zero for the assignment, while subsequent offenses may warrant a reduced or failing grade in the course. Dover's handbook further authorizes additional sanctions on referral to the school principal, including dismissal from honor societies and permanent record on the student's academic record that, the handbook warns, “could impact GPA, class standing, college acceptance opportunities, and reduce the potential for scholarships and awards.”
New Hampshire high school principals and district officials may impose additional sanctions, especially if the academic misconduct involved other students in widespread disruption of the academic program, destroyed confidential exam materials requiring the teacher to create new materials, and otherwise diminished the school's reputation for integrity, such as on repeat and flagrant offenses. In the worst case, those sanctions could include suspension, expulsion, and referral to an alternative high school, if the school or district construes the violations not just to be an academic matter but also a character issue involving insubordination and disrespect.
New Hampshire High School Academic Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, academic misconduct charges are not the same as a finding of an academic wrong. Nor do charges mean that a severe penalty or even any penalty will necessarily follow. Our attorneys have the communication and negotiation skills to advocate effectively for remedial relief rather than punitive sanctions. We may be able to show that your student did not cheat, was not a ringleader in cheating, did not destroy the value of confidential materials, was not a repeat offender, or had other mitigating or excusing circumstances.
New Hampshire High School Behavioral Misconduct
Behavioral misconduct differs from academic misconduct. Note the difference. It can mean a lot to the risks and potential outcomes your student faces. Academic misconduct involves the integrity of the school's instructional program, not generally the safety or health of students. Academic misconduct does not endanger students physically; instead, it affects their character and academic development. Behavioral misconduct, by contrast, tends to endanger student safety, affect student morals, damage school property, or disrupt school operations. Behavioral misconduct may thus trigger a stronger response from school officials and less of a willingness to treat the misconduct with remedial measures. The risk of punitive sanctions, including school removal, is generally greater with behavioral misconduct than academic misconduct.
Definitions of New Hampshire High School Behavioral Misconduct
New Hampshire high school student codes of conduct, like student codes elsewhere, generally list many potential forms of behavioral misconduct while also including a general, catch-all definition of anything that threatens or harms students, affects student morals or welfare, threatens or damages school property, or disrupts school operations. The Manchester School District Code of Conduct, for example, lists uncooperative behavior, tardiness, rude language, and refusal to follow instructions, among other things, as low-level behavioral offenses. The same code lists cutting class, forgery, profanity, and throwing objects intending injury, among other things, as mid-level offenses, and gang activity, hazing, arson, fighting, assaults on teachers, bomb threats, bullying, and weapons possession, among many other things, as higher-level offenses. Your student could face serious behavioral misconduct charges over any number of different alleged wrongs.
Punishments for New Hampshire High School Behavioral Misconduct
The above New Hampshire school district student codes of conduct show the wide range of progressive punishments high school principals and district officials may impose for behavioral misconduct. The Nashua Board of Education Student Behavior Standards are an example, defining three successive Class III, II, and I offense levels, each with more serious punishments available as the offense level progresses. Class III minor offenses generally warrant only teacher admonishment, principal referral, and parent contact, although removal from the classroom for the day may also occur, and repeat offenses can bring stronger sanctions. Class II moderate offenses add in-school and out-of-school suspensions of up to three days and referral to law enforcement for violent wrongs, as potential penalties. Class I severe offenses add ten days or longer suspensions and restitution as potential penalties, with expulsion also available upon referral to the district board. Loss of privileges, honors, and awards, and school or community service, are other potential sanctions.
New Hampshire High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Again, though, disciplinary charges are not the same as disciplinary findings and sanctions. Just because your New Hampshire high school student faces behavioral misconduct charges doesn't mean severe sanctions will necessarily follow. When you retain our skilled and experienced attorneys, we can notify school officials of our appearance on your student's behalf, so that we can communicate, advocate, and negotiate with them for your student's remedial relief. Your student's goal should be to keep a clean school record. Our investigation may show that your student did not commit the alleged wrong or had mitigating circumstances. Your student may, for instance, have been acting in self-defense, trying to avoid further bullying, or acting out after the school failed to accommodate your student's disability. We may alternatively be able to show that your student's behavior endangered no one and did not damage property or disrupt operations. New Hampshire Department of Education Administrative Rule 317.04 guarantees your student due process when facing school removal for more than ten days. We can help you and your student invoke due process protections for your student's best outcome.
New Hampshire High School Sexual Misconduct Charges
Federal Title IX regulations require New Hampshire high schools, like high schools in other states, to protect students against sexual harassment. New Hampshire high school officials must take these federal obligations or run the risk of losing their school's substantial federal funding. Federal law also imposes civil liability for certain sexual misconduct wrongs, once again requiring high school officials to take sexual misconduct allegations especially seriously. If your student faces sexual misconduct charges, your student needs skilled and experienced representation to avoid the worst of outcomes. A record of school sexual misconduct can haunt a student, depriving the student of college, university, and other program admissions, licenses, certifications, jobs, and careers, not to mention impacting reputation and relationships. Beware of sexual misconduct charges.
Definitions of New Hampshire High School Sexual Misconduct
Title IX generally defines school sexual misconduct as sexual assault, domestic or dating violence, stalking, or sexual harassment of the quid pro quo or hostile environment form. A hostile environment is one that a reasonable student would regard as interfering with educational opportunities due to offensive sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and gestures or comments of a sexual nature. New Hampshire school districts, though, may broaden the definition of sexual misconduct. The Dover High School Student Handbook, for instance, defines the wrong to include “an unpleasant environment caused by unwelcome verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that interferes with an individual's academic performance.” Watch out for the breadth and vagueness of sexual misconduct charges.
Punishment of New Hampshire High School Sexual Misconduct
Expect your student's New Hampshire high school officials to take swift and sure action in response to serious and credible charges of sexual misconduct. Title IX regulations may require school officials to remove the offending student from the school, even before making a final determination on the charges. New Hampshire high school officials are generally well aware of the federal obligation to protect alleged victims from further wrongs. The Dover High School Student Handbook, for instance, expressly references and incorporates federal Title IX protections. The punishment doesn't always fit the alleged wrong. Don't let school officials overreact. Get our help defending your student's sexual misconduct charges.
New Hampshire High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
While sexual misconduct charges may be the most serious of alleged wrongs, our attorneys correspondingly can have the greatest opportunity to effectively defend against them. Title IX regulations require the school to follow protective procedures, both for the putative victim and the alleged offender. Our attorneys know how to invoke those procedures to your student's best effect. We can often arrange early informal conferences at which to advocate and negotiate for voluntary dismissal of the charges. If the matter instead proceeds, we can invoke your student's right to a formal hearing, where we can challenge the incriminating evidence while presenting your student's exonerating and mitigating evidence. We can also take appeals if your student has already lost the hearing and seek alternative special relief through general counsel if your student has already lost appeals.
New Hampshire High School Academic Progress Issues
Making grades is a primary challenge for New Hampshire high school students. Your student must generally meet the New Hampshire Department of Education's subject matter content standards to graduate. Your student's teachers know those standards and will hold your student accountable for making satisfactory academic progress. Teachers generally cannot just pass a non-performing student on to the next grade. The standards will hold the school accountable at some point before high school graduation. Ordinarily, the outcome of academic issues is additional instruction, although it can also mean failed and repeated courses, even and failed and repeated grade levels, holding your student back from graduation. In the worst case, though, the school may blame your student for the failures, treating those failures as a disciplinary matter rather than a remedial matter. Your student could face school expulsion for chronic tardiness or absences, truancy, lack of motivation, and teacher insubordination or disrespect when the root cause instead involves academic issues.
Addressing New Hampshire High School Academic Progress Issues
Fortunately, when it comes to academic progress, our attorneys may have special grounds for your student's remedial relief. If your student has a qualifying educational disability, then your student's New Hampshire high school must respect the mandates of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that your student has an individualized education plan (IEP). We can help you advocate for referral for disability testing or for implementation or modification of an existing IEP. If your student has an IEP but faces disciplinary charges, we can help you invoke your student's right to a manifestation determination review, before the school changes your student's IEP services and placement. If, instead, your student has faced bullying at school, disruptions at home, or illness or injury, then we can advocate for other remedial relief. Let us present your student's best case for avoiding discipline or other negative impacts over academic progress issues.
New Hampshire High School Disciplinary Sanction Defense
Your student may have committed the wrong that the high school alleges. Even if so, though, you need not necessarily expect a severe sanction to follow. Indeed, if your student is responsible for the alleged wrong, then your student may need our help more than ever in putting forward a sanction defense. Our attorneys are often able to propose compromise resolutions that recognize the school's interest in protecting students while ensuring safe and orderly operations. The goal of those compromise resolutions is to keep your student's record clear and your student on track toward a timely graduation with peers. We may, for instance, be able to negotiate a peer or adult mentor arrangement, school or community service, restitution, or remedial education and training, instead of punitive sanctions like suspension and expulsion, or even loss of privileges, honors, and awards.
New Hampshire high school student codes of conduct often provide assurances that the school will consider a remedial approach before pursuing punitive sanctions. The Manchester School District Code of Conduct is an example, suggesting that responsive measures in many cases will begin with “Positive Behavior Actions” such as management protocols, counseling, peer mediation, and restorative conferences. The Dover High School Student Handbook similarly assures that “interventions to student misbehavior will incorporate educative and restorative components and utilize progressive disciplinary measures so students may grow in self-discipline.” Our attorneys can hold your student's New Hampshire high school officials to their own assurance that they will treat your student educationally rather than punitively, as is their proper role.
Premier New Hampshire High School Student Defense
You can retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team whether you are located in Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Derry, Dover, Rochester, Salem, Merrimack, Londonderry, Hudson, Bedford, Keene, Portsmouth, or another New Hampshire location. We are available statewide to defend your student against New Hampshire high school misconduct charges and academic progress issues. We help hundreds of students nationwide achieve their best possible outcomes for all kinds of school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys for your New Hampshire high school student's defense.
