Rhode Island is a fine state in which to send your children through public schools as a foundation for a flourishing future life. The state's friendly population and stable economy support a strong educational system with dedicated teachers. But high school misconduct charges or unsatisfactory academic progress can upset the apple cart, spoiling the best laid plans. The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available across Rhode Island for your student's defense of disciplinary charges, whether your student attends high school in Providence, East Providence, North Providence, Warwick, West Warwick, Cranston, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Cumberland, Coventry, South Kingstown, North Kingstown, Johnston, Newport, or any other Rhode Island city or town. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys for your Rhode Island high school student's best outcome to misconduct charges or academic progress issues.
Your Rhode Island High School Student's Future
Think first of your Rhode Island high school student's hopes, dreams, and plans for a rewarding future. Already at the high school level, your student likely has a college or university in mind or perhaps a professional or vocational program leading to a rewarding job and career. Your student may also have ambitions for leadership, volunteer service, recreational opportunities, travel, and other adventures, as well as hopes for strong peer, friend, and family relationships. All of those laudable ambitions, though, can depend to some degree, and in certain instances to a critical degree, on a favorable outcome to Rhode Island high school misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Your student needs to avoid a disciplinary record, gain program admissions, qualify for licenses and certifications, and maintain the reputation and relationships necessary for steady advancement in life. We can help your student do so. Don't let your student go it alone. Get our effective representation for your student's best disciplinary outcome.
Rhode Island High School Parent Commitments
Just as your student has hopes and dreams, you also have hopes and dreams for your student's future. You may expect your student to enroll at your college alma mater, pursue your field and career, or pursue another field and career that you know most suits your student's interests and personality. You may also expect rewarding relationships and a fruitful family life for your student. But you also know your student's inexperience and immaturity. High school students are still developing mentally, emotionally, and physically. They generally lack the skill, experience, and judgment to navigate complex adult affairs, including school disciplinary matters. Your student needs your support and guidance through your student's school matter. The best step you can take is to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys to help you and your student manage those school matters for the best outcome. We can help you fulfill your proper parental role.
Rhode Island High School Discipline Impacts
Short Term Disciplinary Impacts
Rhode Island high school discipline can have immediate impacts. Don't overlook those potential impacts. They can derail your student's progress toward high school graduation and beyond. Rhode Island high school officials generally have the authority to immediately suspend a student for certain misconduct that endangers students or disrupts school operations. A short term suspension can set your student back academically. It can also embarrass your student, affecting peer and teacher support and relationships. Even if the school does not suspend or remove your student for any period, it may prohibit your student from continuing on a sports team, leading or participating in a school club or co-curricular activity, or attending school social events. It could also remove your student from the honor roll and honor society, as well as remove class standing and academic awards. Beware the mental, emotional, and physical impacts of any school discipline, even discipline that falls short of school removal.
Long Term Disciplinary Impacts
School discipline can also have long term impacts, especially when it leaves a record of discipline for colleges, universities, vocational programs, and employers to consider in the future. School discipline that results in school suspension or expulsion will likely appear on your student's school record. School removal may set your student back a semester or school year, delaying or frustrating high school graduation. Your student could end up in an alternative disciplinary high school, otherwise called a boot camp or reform school. Your student could lose the college or university admission or admission to the vocational program that your student always desired. Your student may also lose out on internships and job opportunities that are essential for your student's vocational growth. These impacts can accumulate, setting your student off course on a trajectory that you hadn't imagined. Beware these surprising impacts of high school discipline. Get our defense help.
Rhode Island's High School Discipline System
Rhode Island's legislature has equipped officials in the state's public schools with the authority to discipline high school students for misconduct. Rhode Island General Law Section 16-2-9 vests in the local school board the authority to establish standards for conduct in the schools and for disciplinary actions. Rhode Island General Law Section 16-21-21 specifically requires the local school district committee to adopt and enforce a student code of conduct “to foster a positive environment that promotes learning” in the school. The state legislature further specifically prohibits hazing, weapons possession on school grounds, drug and alcohol possession on school grounds, and threats of physical harm by disruptive students, among the many other rules and prohibitions that the local school district and high school may impose. Your student's Rhode Island high school is a highly regulated environment. Local school officials can do pretty much as they wish when it comes to setting and enforcing standards as long as they comply with the state legislature's specific provisions and any correlating state administrative agency regulations. Beware the power and authority of your student's school principal and district officials.
The Rhode Island Board and Department of Education
Rhode Island's General Assembly created the state's Board of Education in 2014 to replace an earlier administrative board governing the state's public schools. The Board of Education works closely with the state's Department of Education on disciplinary issues such as school bullying and violence prevention. The Department of Education also publishes academic content standards, defining what Rhode Island high school students must be able to show that they know and can do to move from grade level to grade level and for high school graduation. Your student's academic progress matter or disciplinary issue may thus involve state agency rules, regulations, standards, and procedures. While you may initially deal with the high school teacher and principal, as well as with local school district officials, our attorneys can help you invoke state-level rules, resources, and procedures to ensure that local officials do as they should in your student's disciplinary matter. State provisions may limit the authority of local officials to remove your student from the school.
Rhode Island Local School District Authority
As indicated above, Rhode Island General Law Section 16-21-21 requires your student's local school district committee to adopt and enforce a student code of conduct fostering a positive school environment. That mandate means that the authority to discipline your student lies primarily at the local district level. While you may initially deal with the high school teacher and principal, district disciplinary officials may soon play a more prominent role in your student's resolution of misconduct charges. Our attorneys can help you and your student communicate, advocate, and negotiate with district officials. We are available across Rhode Island, including in the following largest school districts: the Providence Public Schools, Cranston Public Schools, Pawtucket Public Schools, Warwick Public Schools, Woonsocket Public Schools, East Providence Public Schools, Coventry Public Schools, Cumberland School Department, North Kingstown Public Schools, North Providence School Department, West Warwick Public Schools, Barrington Public Schools, Johnston Public Schools, and Lincoln Public Schools.
Rhode Island Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
Your Rhode Island high school student attends school under the rules of a student handbook of some kind, constituting the district's student code of conduct. That high school code must comply with the state's statutes against bullying, hazing, weapons possession, and the like. But the student code of conduct likely adds a host of other potential offenses, requiring your student to comply with things like appropriate school dress, appropriate demeanor toward teachers and other school officials, and all kinds of other academic and non-academic behaviors. Your student's high school likely had a student code of conduct like one of the following codes:
- the Providence Public Schools Student Code of Conduct Policy establishes three offense levels for student discipline, each with its own list of violations and penalties;
- the Pawtucket School Department maintains a Student-Parent Handbook that includes a long section on student discipline and safety, with related policies detailing the prohibitions and
- the Cranston Public Schools maintain a Student & Family Handbook that includes a disciplinary policy and related policies on a wide range of prohibitions.
While these student conduct codes can include broad language authorizing school officials to take a wide range of disciplinary actions against your student for many different vague forms of misconduct, the codes can provide a basis for our attorneys to challenge unduly harsh, excessive, or unfair actions, while offering certain procedural protections. Let us help your student avoid unnecessary discipline.
Rhode Island High School Academic Progress Issues
Your Rhode Island high school student's first challenge is to make the grades necessary to move on from level to level toward graduation. Keep in mind the Rhode Island Department of Education's academic content standards to which your student's teachers must instruct students. The state keeps records of high school performance, holding school teachers and principals accountable to the standards. That should mean that your student receives remedial instruction if not meeting standards. Unfortunately, the school may, at times, instead respond with accusations that your student is not motivated, is not following teacher instructions, and may even be chronically tardy or absent and insubordinate or disrespectful toward teachers. Academic progress issues can, in other words, quickly morph into disciplinary issues when a parent would instead reasonably hope that the school addresses student academic deficiencies with more and better instruction.
Addressing Rhode Island High School Academic Progress Issues
Our attorneys can, in appropriate cases, have several legal tools available to them to spur the school toward its duties of instruction over discipline when the issue is poor student academic performance. Rhode Island high schools must comply with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) if your student has a qualifying disability. The IDEA law requires the school to adopt an individualized education plan (IEP) for students with qualifying disabilities. We may be able to seek a referral for testing or, if your student already has an IEP, to advocate its implementation or alteration. The IDEA law prohibits your student's high school from changing the IEP due to alleged disciplinary violations without first conducting a manifestation determination review to see if your student's unaccommodated disability was the reason for the alleged violation.
We may have other grounds on which to advocate for your student's relief from unsatisfactory academic progress issues. Your student may have faced an illness or injury or circumstances at home or at school that unreasonably interfered with your student's schoolwork. For instance, bullying, hazing, or other intimidation at school can discourage student motivation. We may be able to show that your student's high school owes you these or other obligations to intervene on your student's behalf and to provide appropriate protections and services.
Rhode Island High School Academic Misconduct
Your Rhode Island high school student may instead face academic misconduct charges. Academic misconduct differs from academic progress issues. Academic misconduct involves the violation of an academic rule or norm for an undue academic advantage, in other words, some form of cheating. Cheating charges can be a serious charge to the extent that they implicate your student's good character, suggesting dishonesty. Your student's discipline for academic misconduct could potentially affect your student's college or university admissions or admissions to vocational or certification programs. Beware of cheating charges and their potential harmful impact. Let us help your student keep a clean academic record.
Definitions of Rhode Island High School Academic Misconduct
Rhode Island high school student codes of conduct define academic misconduct in different ways. The Providence Public Schools Code of Conduct Policy, for example, lists cheating on tests or other assignments, appropriating another's work as if one's own, and other acts of academic dishonesty or rule-breaking for undue advantage under a heading of “Academic Integrity.” High school student codes of conduct may also include unauthorized assistance from another on a homework assignment, bringing unauthorized materials or devices into an exam room, obtaining answers from another student on a test, or using an electronic service to complete a homework assignment or aid in a quiz or test when prohibited. Altering an already-graded work or disclosing confidential exam or assignment materials to other students against instructor rules are other cheating examples.
Punishing Rhode Island High School Academic Misconduct
Rhode Island high schools, like high schools elsewhere, may treat cheating charges as more of a minor than a major offense, depending on the circumstances. High school officials may be willing to impose remedial measures like repeating the work or doing extra work, or even some school service, over punitive sanctions that leave a record of discipline. The Providence Public Schools Code of Conduct Policy, for instance, treats academic dishonesty as a Level One infraction while stating expressly, “This infraction should include an intervention as an alternative to a suspension.” But again, beware of any school action, such as a loss of class standing, grade reduction, or loss of academic honors or awards, that may show up on a transcript or may require your student to disclose on a college application as a form of high school discipline.
Punishment for Rhode Island high school academic misconduct, though, may be more severe in certain cases. Teachers are much more likely to complain and refer the matter to the school principal if the cheating involves the disclosure of confidential exam materials, requiring the teacher to create new materials with considerable effort. Cheating may further bring a more severe penalty if the student involved other students in the cheating or had already cheated and was a repeat offender flagrantly violating known rules. Watch out for these and other aggravating circumstances.
Rhode Island High School Academic Misconduct Defense
When you retain our skilled and experienced attorneys, we can investigate to determine the full circumstances of the charges. We may be able to show that your student did not cheat at all or simply misunderstood conflicting or vague instructions. High school officials are generally reluctant to punish inadvertent or unintentional violations. Even if your Rhode Island high school student was involved in academic misconduct of some form, we may be able to reduce or eliminate sanctions so that they do not appear on your student's disciplinary record, with appropriate offers of remedial measures that aid rather than interfere with your student's high school education.
Rhode Island High School Behavioral Misconduct
Behavioral misconduct is a different form of wrong, one that does not directly involve academic rules but instead affects school safety, student welfare, or orderly school operations. Rhode Island high school officials may be much more willing to pursue behavioral misconduct charges and punish students harshly for behavioral misconduct, especially when the misconduct endangers or harms students or damages or destroys school property. Discipline for behavioral misconduct can either have a greater or lesser impact on a student's future. The greater impact may come if colleges, universities, or other programs and employers regard the discipline as an indication that the student is unstable, of bad character, or unsafe. The lesser impact maybe if, instead, the wrong suggests a degree of immaturity, as in horseplay or innocent school shenanigans. Nonetheless, beware of behavioral misconduct charges for the severe potential impact of behavioral discipline and a permanent misconduct record.
Definitions of Rhode Island High School Behavioral Misconduct
Rhode Island high school student codes of conduct can vary widely in the specific forms of behavioral misconduct that they list. Some codes, like the Cranston Public Schools Student & Family Handbook, will include not only the standard prohibitions against weapons, drugs, or alcohol in the school, and bullying and hazing prohibitions, but also dress codes, internet use policies, and policies on electronic devices in school. For another example, the Pawtucket School Department Student-Parent Handbook includes a tobacco prohibition and dress code. Yet whether or not your student's specific misbehavior is a part of your student's high school code, the high school codes will routinely include catch-all provisions, enabling school officials to charge behavioral misconduct any time the student endangers or threatens other students, damages school property, or disrupts school order and operations. The codes are, in other words, generally very broad and may be especially vague, making our effective advocacy on your student's behalf all the more important.
Punishments for Rhode Island High School Behavioral Misconduct
Rhode Island high school student codes of conduct, like student codes in other states, routinely provide for progressive levels of discipline, depending on the seriousness of the behavioral wrong. Some codes expressly divide the behavioral wrongs into offense levels. The Providence Schools Student Code of Conduct Policy is an example, providing for three offense levels. Punishment at the first level, for things that may disrupt instruction but not endanger students, is generally by the teacher or school principal and restricted to in-school sanctions rather than suspensions or expulsions. Punishment at the second and third offense levels, though, for dangerous offenses like arson and violence, may involve out-of-school suspension, expulsion, referral to an alternative disciplinary high school, and referral to local law enforcement for investigation and prosecution. Where behavioral punishment does not involve suspension or expulsion, it may involve restitution, school or community service, and loss of sports, club, and social privileges.
Rhode Island High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
As in the case of academic misconduct charges, behavioral misconduct charges are only allegations of wrong, not findings of wrong. If your student faces school removal for more than ten days, your student generally has the procedural right to notice of the charges and a fair hearing before an impartial decision maker, as a matter of constitutional due process and under state laws like Rhode Island General Laws Section 16-2-17. Due process protections are there for your student to ensure that your student gets to tell the other side of the story. Our attorneys can help you and your student put the best defense case forward. We may be able to invoke a preliminary informal conference at which to advocate for early voluntary dismissal. If your student's matter instead proceeds, we can invoke the formal hearing to present your student's defense and challenge the adverse evidence. If your student has already lost the hearing, we can take the available appeals, and if your student has already the appeals, we may be able to obtain alternative special relief through the district's general counsel's office.
Rhode Island High School Sexual Misconduct Charges
Sexual misconduct charges are another significant risk that Rhode Island high school students can face, with potentially severe long-term impacts. Federal Title IX legislation and regulations require Rhode Island high schools to prohibit sexual harassment. Rhode Island high schools can lose their federal funding if they do not live up to this federal mandate. They can also face significant civil liability. Expect your student's school officials to respond aggressively to sexual misconduct allegations. Ensure that your student has our skilled and experienced defense of any such charges. Sexual misconduct discipline on your student's record can suggest to colleges, universities, programs, and employers that your student is a bad risk for sexual violence and civil liability.
Definitions of Rhode Island High School Sexual Misconduct
Title IX regulations begin by prohibiting sexual assault, dating or domestic violence, and stalking. But they also prohibit sexual harassment, which, in the student high school setting, can mean an educational environment made hostile by sexual jokes, slurs, epithets, advances, and other words and actions. Rhode Island high school student codes of conduct may expand those federal definitions to include other sexual conduct. The Providence Schools Student Code of Conduct Policy, for instance, adds indecent exposure and displaying pornographic imagery to its definition of sexual misconduct. Voyeurism, sexting, and other similar wrongs may also fall within your student's high school code of conduct. Beware of any allegation of misconduct that involves any form of sexual communication or behavior. Those allegations raise your student's disciplinary stakes.
Punishment of Rhode Island High School Sexual Misconduct
Punishment of sexual misconduct in Rhode Island high schools can be swift and sure. Title IX regulations authorize school officials to remove the accused student on an emergency basis in the face of credible allegations, even before any hearing on the charges. The Cranston Public Schools Student Handbook incorporates those federal regulations while further granting its disciplinary officials the authority to impose a full range of punishments right up to and including expulsion and transfer to a disciplinary high school. Beware a rush to judgment against your student.
Rhode Island High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, the higher stakes for punishment of sexual misconduct warrant greater procedural protections. The same Title IX regulations that authorize emergency measures to protect the putative victim also offer procedural protections to the accused student. While you have the due process, statutory, and regulatory right to a formal hearing at which we can help you challenge adverse witnesses while presenting your own testimony and exonerating witnesses, we may also be able to invoke conciliation conferences, take appeals if you have already lost your hearing, and even obtain alternative special relief through a general counsel or outside counsel. Don't give up the fight when your student has so much at stake. Let us help defend against these most serious charges.
Rhode Island High School Disciplinary Sanction Defense
No matter where your Rhode Island high school student stands with respect to responsibility for the school's disciplinary charges, your student may have a good case to make to avoid disciplinary sanctions. Yes, it can matter whether your student actually committed the wrong that school officials allege. We may be able to prove your student's innocence in the face of false, retaliatory, or otherwise unfair or exaggerated charges. But even if your student did what the school alleges, punishment may not be necessary or appropriate. Our attorneys may be able to show that your student can readily assure the school of your student's safety and suitability to continue the educational program without endangerment or other risk to the school or its students. We may further be able to negotiate remedial measures that your student would readily accept as beneficial, such as additional education or training.
Your student's Rhode Island high school student codes of conduct may aid our attorneys in that regard. Restorative practices are a popular approach in some school districts. The Cranston Public Schools are an example of a school where the Student-Parent Handbook expressly encourages the resort to restorative practices. Those practices can include peer mediation, peer or adult mentoring, school service, and other measures that avoid any adverse findings and negative records. Let us help you pursue restorative practices for your student to avoid the impact of school discipline.
Premier Rhode Island High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available for your student's defense whether your student attends high school in Providence, East Providence, North Providence, Warwick, West Warwick, Cranston, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Cumberland, Coventry, South Kingstown, North Kingstown, Johnston, Newport, or another Rhode Island location. Our skilled and experienced attorneys are available statewide to defend against any form of Rhode Island high school misconduct charges or academic progress issues. Hundreds of students and parents nationwide have relied on us to achieve the best possible outcomes for all kinds of school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain us for your Rhode Island high school student's defense.
