North Dakota high schools can offer sound, valuable, and practical instruction, given the state's substantial resources and stable and committed population. Yet as valuable as your North Dakota high school student's education can be, high school disciplinary charges for misconduct or over academic progress issues can undermine and destroy that value, frustrating your student's development and achievement of your student's ambitions and goals. If your student faces North Dakota high school disciplinary charges or academic progress issues, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your student's strategic and effective defense. Our attorneys are available in Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, Minot, West Fargo, Williston, Dickinson, Mandan, Jamestown, Wahpeton, Devils Lake, or any other North Dakota location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form to retain the skill, experience, and highly qualified attorney representation your student needs for the best possible outcome to North Dakota high school misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Preserve and protect your North Dakota high school student's future.
North Dakota High School Opportunities
North Dakota has many fine high schools like the top-ranked Century High School, Richland Junior-Senior High School, Fargo Davies High School, Jamestown High School, North High School, South High School, Northern Cass High School, Ashley High School, and South Heart High School. North Dakota also has many large and fine school districts including the Bismarck School District No. 1, West Fargo Public Schools, Fargo Public Schools, Minot School District No. 1, Grand Forks Public Schools, Williston Basin School District #7, Mandan School District No. 1, Dickinson School District No. 1, Jamestown School District No. 1, McKenzie County School District No. 1, Devils Lake Public Schools, Belcourt School District No. 7, Wahpeton School District No. 37, Central Cass School District No. 17, Valley City School District No. 2. These schools and districts offer valuable public school education. Our attorneys can help you and your student preserve that value for your student's best educational and vocational future.
North Dakota High School Parent Commitments
Our role includes helping you carry out your strongest commitments as the parent of a North Dakota high school student facing disciplinary charges or academic progress issues. Yes, your student has responsibilities to address the charges and issues. But as a parent, you also have responsibilities to support your student, obligations we are sure that you are eager to carry out. You want to see the best for your North Dakota high school student, both now in your student's current high school program and in the future as your student moves on to college, university, military service, vocational or professional training, and other opportunities. You and your student share hopes, dreams, and expectations for your student's life success. Your challenge when your student faces high school issues is in discerning how best to help your student. Retaining our highly qualified academic administrative attorneys is your best move to fulfill your parental obligations to provide your student with appropriate wisdom, experience, skills, resources, and support. Your student may appear mature but does not possess the wisdom and experience of an adult. Nor do you or your student have the substantive education law knowledge and academic administrative procedural skills of our premier attorneys. Get our help for your student.
North Dakota High School Discipline Impacts
Long Term Discipline Impacts
North Dakota, high school discipline, may seem like a short-term thing, but high school discipline can cause your students long-term impacts. Your student may plan on attending one of North Dakota's many fine colleges and universities including the University of North Dakota, North Dakota State University, North Dakota State College of Science, Minot State University, Maryville State University, Medcenter One College of Nursing, University of Jamestown, Dickinson State University, Dakota College at Bottineau, Bismarck State College, Valley City University, Williston State College, the University of Mary, or United Tribes Technical College. Alternatively, your student may plan on attending another competitive school, even your own alma mater, whether inside or outside North Dakota. North Dakota, high school discipline, can close the doors to your student's preferred college and university options. Preferred internships, vocational training programs, military academies, military services, and other job and career opportunities may also take high school discipline into account when denying your student access to their programs. Beware these and other long term impacts of high school discipline. Let us help you preserve and protect your student's future.
Short Term Discipline Impacts
North Dakota high school discipline can also carry immediate, short term impacts. Missing even so little as a few days of school can put your student behind on academic assignments, exams, and other studies. If your student is already behind, your student may find it difficult to impossible to catch back up. Your student doesn't necessarily have to miss school for discipline to have negative impacts if your student suffers embarrassment, isolation, withdrawal, and loss of student peer, teacher, advisor, and mentor support. School relationships are among the greatest motivators for many high school students. School activities like athletics, intramurals, clubs, and social events can also lend strong social support to your student's academic initiative and effort. When discipline denies your student those high school privileges, your student may suffer severe immediate impacts. Let us help keep your student on track while avoiding the worst disciplinary impacts.
North Dakota's High School Discipline System
North Dakota has an elaborate system of laws, rules, and regulations for the discipline of its public high school students. For instance, North Dakota Century Code Section 15.1-19-09 authorizes school district boards to adopt rules for the suspension and expulsion of students. The statute expressly authorizes suspension or expulsion for “insubordination, habitual indolence, or disorderly conduct” that disrupts school operations. For another example, North Dakota Century Code Section 15.1-19-10 authorizes suspension and expulsion for weapons possession in school, while other provisions address bullying, truancy, alcohol possession, drug possession, and other issues common to North Dakota high schools. Your student's North Dakota, high school officials, have plenty of state authority to impose discipline right up to suspension or expulsion. Don't question that authority. Instead, retain our attorneys to defend the disciplinary charges.
The North Dakota State Board of Public School Education
The North Dakota State Board of Public School Education holds the state's public school districts accountable to the state's education laws, including the laws governing student discipline. Your dealings on your student's North Dakota high school disciplinary matter will primarily be with local district and high school officials, not with state-level officials. However, we may be able to invoke state-level review to ensure that your student's local district officials and high school officials are meeting the procedural protections state and federal school discipline laws promise your student. We may also be able to bring state resources, guidance frameworks, and procedures to bear for a positive and restorative resolution of your student's disciplinary matter. Let us help draw on those state resources.
North Dakota Local School District Authority
As introduced above, North Dakota Century Code Section 15.1-19-09 authorizes school district boards to adopt specific rules stating the grounds and providing the procedures for the suspension and expulsion of students. The same provision requires the school district board's discipline policy to provide procedural due process to students facing expulsion. Due process generally requires notice of the charges and a fair hearing before an impartial decision maker. The same provision also permits the school district board to transfer the offending student to an alternative disciplinary school, otherwise known as a boot camp or reform school. The statute's general grounds for discipline include “insubordination, habitual indolence, or disorderly conduct,” but the local school district policy will generally specify those grounds into detailed prohibitions. Our attorneys can help you and your student identify, interpret, and advocate the applicable policies for your student's best disciplinary outcome.
North Dakota Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
North Dakota school districts and high schools generally adopt some form of a student code of conduct, student behavioral standards, or student expectations, usually within a district or school handbook. Your student's North Dakota high school handbook may contain provisions similar to the following examples:
- the Century High School Student Handbook, within the Bismarck Public Schools, provides for a long list of misbehaviors that may result in suspension or expulsion of students under the Handbook's procedures;
- the Fargo Davies North and South High Schools Student Handbook likewise provides a long list of student conduct expectations, the violation of which may lead to suspension, expulsion, or other discipline;
- the Northern Cass School District Policies include a policy on suspension or expulsion of students, listing nearly a dozen general categories of misbehaviors that may lead to those forms and other forms of discipline and
- the Ashley Public School Handbook includes detailed provisions governing student behavior and providing for discipline up to the suspension, expulsion, and alternative placement for students “disobedient or disruptive of the educational process,” as other policies and rules further define.
North Dakota High School Regulatory Environment
Do not be shocked or surprised at the degree to which your student's North Dakota high school regulates your student's conduct. Things that you would permit your student to do at home, your student's high school may not permit. Those activities may include possessing or imbibing alcohol, using vaping products, viewing materials or listening to audio that schools consider to be offensive or pornographic, or even dressing in ways that expose the body or exhibit symbols or insignia associated with gangs or other disfavored groups. Words, actions, and demeanor that you or your student's other family members, friends, or peers outside the school would accept, welcome, or expect, school officials may consider to be intimidating, harassing, or offensive. North Dakota high schools may impose dress codes and require respectful forms of teacher, staff, and student address. Let us help you place your student's behavior in the appropriate context if your student's school officials pursue disciplinary charges over conduct that you would accept, applaud, or tolerate in the home or otherwise outside of the school.
North Dakota High School Behavioral Misconduct
North Dakota high school student codes of conduct typically regulate much student conduct that has little or nothing directly to do with academics but instead preserves a safe, orderly, and secure learning environment. Examples include code provisions against various forms of violence or threats of violence, including fighting, other physical assaults like tripping, slapping, spitting, and striking, and coercion, bullying, harassment, and intimidation. North Dakota high schools also commonly prohibit conduct that may undermine the good moral character of students and student health and welfare, like tobacco use, gambling, pornography, substance abuse, and acts of dishonesty. North Dakota high schools also commonly prohibit various property wrongs like theft, vandalism, hacking or other computer misuse, and trespass. Teacher insubordination, disobedience, and disrespect are other common behavioral violations that can lead to serious disciplinary charges.
Definitions of North Dakota High School Behavioral Misconduct
As stated briefly above, North Dakota Century Code Section 15.1-19-09 defines behavioral misconduct broadly to include “insubordination, habitual indolence, or disorderly conduct,” worthy of student suspension and expulsion. Codes like the above ones in place at the Century High School within the Bismarck Public Schools, the Fargo Davies North and South High Schools, the Northern Cass School District, and the Ashley Public Schools detail those wrongs into literally dozens of specific forms of misbehavior. The student codes of conduct also routinely include catch-all provisions for other misconduct that does not land on the detailed list. The Northern Cass School District policy on suspension and expulsions, for instance, includes a catch-all provision prohibiting “l]earner behavior that is detrimental or disruptive to the educational process, as determined by the principal.” Provisions like this one give North Dakota high school officials the broadest possible latitude in determining what wrongs to charge and under what circumstances. That discretion makes our representation of your student all the more important.
Punishments for North Dakota High School Behavioral Misconduct
North Dakota high school officials also generally have broad discretion to impose a range of progressive sanctions, from cautions and warnings to reprimands, counseling, loss of privileges, loss of honors, school service, community service, restitution, and fines, up to suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement. Fortunately, school officials' discretion can be cut in both ways. School officials generally have the latitude to reduce or eliminate sanctions in appropriate cases. For instance, North Dakota Century Code Section 15.1-19-10 mandates at least a one-year expulsion for weapons possession on school grounds but simultaneously grants the school superintendent or principal to reduce that penalty to less than one year on articulable grounds. Once again, that broad discretion on the part of North Dakota high school officials gives our attorneys grounds on which to make a case for your student to avoid the worst sanctions and potentially avoid any sanction in favor of remedial measures that leave no school record of wrongs.
North Dakota High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
You must understand that North Dakota high school behavioral misconduct charges do not necessarily mean that your student has done anything wrong. School officials may hope and expect that your student can come forward with an explanation for what appears to be misconduct but could have an innocent explanation. We can invoke due process protections to ensure that school officials hear your student's side of the story, including exonerating and mitigating evidence. We may be able to arrange an early conciliation conference at which to present that evidence and negotiate voluntary dismissal of the charges. Otherwise, we can pursue your student's hearing rights and remedies, helping you and your student present your student's explanatory evidence while challenging unsupported allegations and false or mistaken testimony. If your student has already lost the formal hearing and faces suspension or expulsion, we may be able to appeal that finding and reverse the sanction in favor of your student's reinstatement. If your student has already lost the appeal, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief with the school district's general counsel.
North Dakota High School Sexual Misconduct
If behavioral misconduct charges are serious, then sexual misconduct charges are even more serious. North Dakota high school officials must treat sexual misconduct allegations seriously, or they can face civil liability and lose federal school funding relating to Title IX laws, rules, and regulations. Student victim protections and parent and public pressure can further hasten North Dakota high school officials to pursue sexual misconduct charges and impose severe penalties, even on questionable allegations and spare evidence. Those pressures to impose severe discipline where the facts and circumstances otherwise would warrant none make our retention all the more important for the best possible outcome to sexual misconduct charges.
The Impact of Sexual Misconduct Discipline
The potentially severe impact of sexual misconduct findings and discipline further warrants that you retain us to defend your student against any such charges. Colleges, universities, vocational programs, and employers all look hard at the qualifications of any candidate having a hint of sexual impropriety because of safety, liability, regulatory, and reputational concerns. Your student could lose admission to any competitive, preferred program if suffering North Dakota high school sexual misconduct discipline. Sexual misconduct can not only suggest danger but also corrupt and untrustworthy character, especially for sensitive roles involving the care of or contact with children and the disadvantaged. Retain us to help your student avoid the severe potential impact of sexual misconduct findings.
Definitions of North Dakota High School Sexual Misconduct
Federal Title IX law defines sexual misconduct broadly to include not only sexual assault, stalking, and domestic or dating violence but also sexual harassment. Sexual harassment generally involves sexual slurs, innuendo, advances, or other communications and actions that create an objectively severe and pervasive hostile environment, interfering with another student's access to education. Sexual jokes, displays of pornography or other sexual images, and sexual banter can, in some cases, lead to claims of hostile environment sexual harassment.
North Dakota school districts and high school student codes of conduct may adopt and incorporate these Title IX definitions and prohibitions, or they may add their own definitions, expanding the reach of sexual prohibitions. The Century High School Student Handbook is an example, naming a Title IX coordinator to enforce the federal provisions while also incorporating the Title IX definitions and prohibitions in a Discriminatory Harassment Policy in the Handbook.
Punishment of North Dakota High School Sexual Misconduct
For all of the above reasons, you and your student can expect North Dakota high school officials to take swift action to investigate sexual misconduct allegations and punish any misconduct for which there is credible evidence. School district officials, in particular, may be sensitive to the regulatory, reputational, liability, and safety risks of continuing to permit a student accused of sexual misconduct to be on the high school campus. Emergency and interim campus bans and no-contact orders are common while the school completes its investigation and offers the mandated hearing.
North Dakota High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, Title IX includes relatively substantial procedural protections that our attorneys can strategically invoke on your student's behalf to minimize the risk and disruption. We may be able to arrange an early conciliation conference at which to present your student's exonerating and mitigating evidence, assure school officials of your student's good character for safe and respectful conduct, and obtain a voluntary dismissal of the allegations, perhaps with remedial counseling, training, or other non-disciplinary measures. If your student's matter is not resolved with our early advocacy and negotiation, we can invoke your student's formal hearing rights under Title IX to present your student's best evidence while cross-examining adverse witnesses and challenging the school's other physical or documentary evidence of wrongdoing. Appeals and special alternative relief through a general counsel's office may alternatively be available if your student has already lost the formal hearing.
North Dakota High School Academic Misconduct
Behavioral misconduct and sexual misconduct are obviously serious matters. Academic misconduct, though generally a less serious matter, can rise to the level of school suspension and expulsion in certain aggravating cases. Any record of academic misconduct, even minor or moderate, can also leave a stain on your student's school record that could affect your student's ability to gain entry into competitive, preferred programs. Thus, take academic misconduct charges seriously, retaining our attorneys to challenge the charges and negotiate for remedial measures over punitive sanctions that spoil your student's clean school record.
Definitions of North Dakota High School Academic Misconduct
North Dakota high school student codes of conduct may define academic misconduct differently. Some student codes of conduct, like the code included in the Davies High School Student Handbook, define academic misconduct with substantial detail. The Davies handbook includes copying another's assignment, test, or homework without teacher consent, using unauthorized materials during a test, sharing homework, tests, or assignments with another student without teacher approval, copying another's research, misuse of artificial intelligence, claiming another's work as one's own, and several other forms of cheating or plagiarism. Other student codes leave the details to the teacher's syllabus or instructions. The Ashley Public School Handbook is an example, simply prohibiting cheating, copying, or plagiarism without detail or definition.
Factors Aggravating Academic Misconduct Charges
While a first offense of cheating may bring little sanction, depending on the circumstances, other factors can aggravate the wrong and lead to severe sanctions up to suspension and expulsion. Factors aggravating academic misconduct charges can include if the accused student was a ringleader involving other students in the cheating, disclosed confidential academic materials destroying their substantial value, or repeatedly cheating after prior offenses, warnings, and instruction. In the worst cases, North Dakota high school officials may treat academic misconduct as insubordination, disobedience, and disruption to seek suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement.
Punishing North Dakota High School Academic Misconduct
North Dakota high school student codes of conduct tend to limit the sanctions for a first cheating offense without aggravating circumstances to a teacher remedy such as repeating the academic work. A second offense may warrant further in-school discipline, such as a loss of privileges and detention. Subsequent offenses or offenses under aggravating circumstances may warrant more serious sanctions up to suspension and expulsion, especially when treated as disruptive of school operations. The Davies High School Student Handbook is an example, defining cheating offenses at three successive levels with progressively more severe discipline at each higher level.
North Dakota High School Academic Misconduct Defense
As in the case of behavioral misconduct and sexual misconduct charges, an academic misconduct charge is not the same as a finding of academic misconduct. We may be able to use forensic computer or handwriting experts to show that your student did not commit the alleged cheating. We may instead be able to show that the student accusing your student of cheating did so to cover up that student's own cheating wrong or in retaliation for other matters. Or we may be able to show that your student followed the teacher's conflicting instructions, followed the instructions of an aide or other trusted advisor, or was absent when the teacher imposed the conditions that your student allegedly violated. If, instead, your student must admit the charges for having committed the alleged acts, then we may be able to show the school that remedial training, education, and service will accomplish the school's educational, reputational, and integrity goals while preserving your student's clean school record for deserved advancement. In short, defense may be possible even if your student is responsible for the alleged academic misconduct.
North Dakota High School Academic Progress Issues
The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction publishes content standards that the state's high school students must generally meet to advance from grade to grade and to graduate with a high school diploma. Your student's North Dakota high school may hold your student back from meeting the content standards while threatening to hold your student back a grade, deny your student graduation, and even transfer your student to an alternative disciplinary program for disobedience and insubordination. Beware of academic progress issues. They could be your North Dakota high school student's undoing. Let us help your student address academic progress issues that threaten your student's steady advancement to high school graduation.
The Context for Academic Progress Issues
In these cases, our attorneys can often give appropriate context for the struggling student's issues to earn the student appropriate remedial relief and the worst academic disruptions. The general context includes that your student's North Dakota high school has education as its primary mission. Your student's high school teachers are not simply credentialing agents certifying your student's skills and knowledge. Instead, they are educators, responsible in large part for designing and implementing effective instruction for your students. We can often turn unfair and unproductive school accusations of student lack of motivation around to show the school that the student's struggles are due to poor instructional designs and support rather than to student misbehavior.
Addressing North Dakota High School Academic Progress Issues
Our attorneys can also wield additional legal tools, authorized under federal and state education laws, to help you and your student get North Dakota high school officials to properly address your student's academic progress issues. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), for instance, requires your student's North Dakota high school to refer students suspected of having educational disabilities for testing to qualify them for special education accommodation and services. We may alternatively be able to show that your student's academic progress issues were due to the bullying, intimidation, or harassment of other students or other unlawful, unsafe, or discriminatory conditions at the school. Let us help address your student's academic progress issues to keep your student on track toward timely graduation.
Premier North Dakota High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, Minot, West Fargo, Williston, Dickinson, Mandan, Jamestown, Wahpeton, Devils Lake, and across the rest of North Dakota for your student's high school defense. Our attorneys have successfully represented hundreds of students nationwide, resolving all manner of school disciplinary and academic progress issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain us for your North Dakota high school student's best possible outcome.
