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Entrust your Tennessee high school student's defense of misconduct charges or academic progression issues to our highly qualified attorneys. Your student's education and future are worth preserving. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your student's Tennessee high school defense in Nashville, Davidson, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Clarksville, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Johnson City, Jackson, Hendersonville, Bartlett, Kingsport, Smyrna, Spring Hill, Collierville, Cleveland, Gallatin, Brentwood, Columbia, Germantown, or any other Tennessee location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for our skilled and experienced Tennessee high school student defense.
Your Tennessee High School Student's Future
Take stock of your Tennessee high school student's future. You have helped your students form valuable and worthy hopes and plans for a good life, family, and career based on a solid education. Your student has formed interests and ambitions that you know you need to help your student preserve through the transitional years of high school into college, the university, or vocational programs, as well as adult relationships and society. Your student may want to attend your own college alma mater or another competitive school in Tennessee or across the country. Your student may alternatively have a career field, profession, trade, or other vocation in mind for which your student will need training and licensure or certification. Your student may also have volunteer, charitable, recreational, and creative interests to pursue now and as an adult. Tennessee high school disciplinary charges or academic progression issues threaten those hopes, plans, and dreams. Your student's Tennessee high school graduation with a clean school record is the foundation for your student's future. Let us help protect that foundation against misconduct charges or academic progress issues.
Tennessee High School Parent Commitments
If your Tennessee high school student faces misconduct charges or academic progress issues, you may wonder what your responsibility is as a parent committed to your student's full development. Making the best of Tennessee high school disciplinary proceedings requires judgment, wisdom, and procedural knowledge, skills, and disciplines that high school students generally don't have. Your student is still learning how academic, professional, and administrative matters work. Your student is still developing evaluation, planning, implementation, and assessment skills and judgment. Don't expect your student to act with the wisdom and judgment you would act. Your student's disciplinary or academic progress matter may scare, intimidate, or confuse your student simply because of your student's relative youth and immaturity. In short, your student needs you. And you surely want to do the best for your student in what may be your student's first significant life challenge that has potentially long-term impacts. To do your best for your student, retain our highly qualified student defense attorneys.
Tennessee High School Discipline Adverse Impacts
Let's spell out what your Tennessee high school student has at stake in misconduct proceedings and academic progress issues. High school suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement, or even minor or moderate discipline such as short-term suspension, loss of school privileges, and reprimands, can embarrass, discourage, depress, and demotivate your student. Your student may not persevere through discipline to complete a high school education on time with grade peers. Discipline can stunt your student's academic, mental, physical, and social development. Discipline can also cost your student admission to preferred colleges, universities, and vocational or professional programs. Discipline can also cause your student to lose peer, teacher, advisor, and mentor relationships, leaving your student without a strong support network. Your student's traditional Tennessee high school program gives your student an obvious route forward, with abundant structure and support. Losing that path can leave your student adrift, damaging or delaying your student's adult development. Discipline can cause your students to lose important opportunities. Those are your student's potential adverse impacts when facing school disciplinary charges or academic progress issues.
Tennessee's High School Discipline System
Don't doubt the authority and responsibility of your student's Tennessee high school officials to discipline your student and hold your student accountable to the school's standards. Tennessee's state legislature has authorized its elementary and secondary school system to discipline students according to school codes and rules. Tennessee Code Section 49-2-203 states expressly that your student's local district board of education has the duty to “suspend, dismiss or alternatively place” your student “when the progress, safety or efficiency of the school makes it necessary....” The district may also impose suspension, expulsion, or alternative placement under the same statute “when disruptive, threatening or violent students endanger the safety of other students or school system employees.” Other Tennessee statutes authorize or require the school to discipline for harassment or hazing, attendance issues, school bus issues, bullying or cyber-bullying, and other acts that your student's school district prohibits under a student code of conduct. Your student's Tennessee high school officials have plenty of authority to discipline your student and the responsibility to do so if they find misconduct.
The Tennessee State Board of Education
The Tennessee State Board of Education carries out the Tennessee legislature's mandate to maintain order, standards, and integrity in Tennessee high schools through the use of student discipline. The Board of Education's rules, policies, and guidance govern all K-12 school operations, including discipline. Board of Education Rules 0520-01-03-.01 et seq. set academic standards that your student must meet for high school advancement and graduation. Board of Education Rules 0520-01-12-.01 et seq. provide for your student's alternative disciplinary education when removed from the school for more than seventy-two hours. The Tennessee Department of Education carries out the Board of Education's rules and policies, helping local districts administer academic standards and enforce conduct rules to ensure student health and safety. The local district and high school officials with whom you and your student deal have the authority, resources, and support of these state-level agencies. We can help you navigate state rules and regulations for your student's best disciplinary and academic progress outcome.
Tennessee Local School District Authority
While you and your Tennessee high school student may not deal directly with state-level officials on your student's matter, you may find local district officials involved. You've seen above that Tennessee Code Section 49-2-203 gives the district the authority to suspend, dismiss, or alternatively place students under its student code of conduct. Your student's matter, although starting with high school teachers and the high school principal, may soon reach district administrators or even the district superintendent. The outcome of your student's matter may also depend on applying and interpreting district codes and rules. Let our attorneys help you and your student deal with district officials in any district across Tennessee including the Shelby County Schools, Metro Nashville Public Schools, Knox County Schools, Rutherford County Schools, Hamilton County School District, Williamson County Schools, Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, Sumner County Schools, Wilson County School District, Robertson County School District, Sevier County School District, Maury County School District, Madison County School District, Putnam County School District, and Tipton County School District.
Tennessee Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
Your student's Tennessee school district has very likely adopted a student code of conduct implemented in your student's high school under the above statutory authority and responsibility. Your student's discipline or academic progress matter will likely require interpretation and application of that student code of conduct, containing provisions similar to the structure and content of these large Tennessee school district codes:
- the Shelby County Board of Education Student Code of Conduct defines five offense categories with progressive discipline;
- the Metro Nashville Public Schools Student-Parent Handbook includes a long list of prohibited behaviors subject to discipline;
- the Knox County Schools Student Handbook lists zero-tolerance behaviors and other sanctionable offenses and
- the Rutherford County School System Student Handbook and Code of Conduct prohibits a long list of behaviors subject to discipline.
Our attorneys can help you and your student advocate for your student's best disciplinary or academic progress outcome under a similar code for your student's Tennessee school district. The codes generally include broad disciplinary discretion and sometimes include assurances that the school will use restorative measures. We can help your student advocate and negotiate for non-disciplinary remedial relief, keeping your student's school record clear of discipline.
Tennessee High School Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct is one concern your Tennessee high school student may face. High school students are still learning adult academic customs and conventions. High school students can easily run afoul of those conventions in ways that teachers and other school officials identify as misconduct or outright cheating. Your student's Tennessee high school teachers and principal must set and enforce some academic conduct standards if they are to prepare your student for college, the university, and vocations where honesty can be critical to safety, security, and other interests. High school teachers and principals may conversely treat academic misconduct as a learning opportunity more so than a discipline situation. Attitudes vary depending on the severity, frequency, and disruptive nature of the cheating. Your student's school district code of conduct, though, may well provide for discipline for academic misconduct. The Rutherford County School System Student Handbook and Code of Conduct, for example, treats “cheating and lying” as Level 1 misconduct. The other student codes of conduct cited above are less clear about academic misconduct but may punish it under other code provisions regarding obeying school authority and rules. Cheating charges may include:
- using an unauthorized electronic service for homework or exam help;
- using unauthorized materials or assistance on exams;
- plagiarizing others' work without permission and attribution;
- changing answers, grades, or scores on work already submitted;
- submitting the same work twice for credit without permission; and
- false or fraudulent data or research on work submitted for credit.
Punishing Tennessee High School Academic Misconduct
Generally, Tennessee district codes define academic misconduct as a lower-level offense, if they address it directly at all. But codes, teachers, and principals can elevate the disciplinary charge for academic misconduct to a higher-level offense when the cheating disrupts instruction, involves other students, accesses or discloses confidential exams or answer keys, or is flagrant, frequent, or repeated. Your student could face school suspension, expulsion, and disciplinary placement for these higher-level forms of cheating. The discretion that high school officials generally have over academic misconduct sanctions also means that the principal or other disciplinarian could decide to make an example of your student to preserve the school's reputation and integrity. Severe punishment is on the table.
Tennessee High School Academic Discipline Impacts
Even if the sanctions for academic misconduct are not usually severe, the impact of any Tennessee high school academic discipline can be significant and long-term. Of course, a school suspension and expulsion for cheating can delay your student's graduation. However any academic discipline can keep your student from gaining college, university, or vocational or professional program admission. Schools and employers can regard cheaters and liars as safety, security, reputation, and liability risks. They prefer honest candidates over candidates whom they regard as having questionable integrity. Your student also faces high school impacts from academic discipline. Your student may lose the support of peers, teachers, advisors, and mentors when your student needs a strong social and academic support network. Your student may be embarrassed and discouraged. Your student could also lose class rank and academic honors and lose school athletics, club, and social privileges. The impacts of Tennessee high school academic discipline can be significant.
Tennessee High School Academic Misconduct Defense
Our skilled and experienced attorneys can help defend your student against academic misconduct charges. Your student may not have cheated. We may be able to use electronic or other evidence to show that your student was not involved, your student had the teacher's permission, or your student followed practices recommended or accepted by others in the school community. We may alternatively be able to show that your student did not disrupt instruction, the school need not discipline, and your student would benefit more from remedial education and relief. We can use the school's informal conferences and the district's formal hearing procedures to advocate for your student's non-disciplinary relief, keeping your student's academic record clear of discipline.
Tennessee High School Behavioral Misconduct
Your student may face greater discipline risks when facing Tennessee High School behavioral misconduct charges. Academic misconduct involves trying to gain an unfair academic advantage. Academic misconduct may thus affect only the student who cheats. By contrast, behavioral misconduct endangers student safety, threatens school security, and disrupts school operations. For those reasons, your student's Tennessee high school principal and other officials may pursue behavioral misconduct charges more aggressively and impose more serious discipline for behavioral misconduct. Indeed, Tennessee Code Section 49-6-4002 requires your student's local school district to treat firearm possession, aggravated assault or assault causing injury to a school official, and drug possession as zero tolerance offenses. Discipline for those offenses can be presumptive, automatic, and severe. The Shelby County Board of Education Student Conduct Code, for instance, treats those zero tolerance offenses as Category A offenses resulting in 180-day school suspension. Your student's school district code will likely do the same, authorizing school removal or other severe discipline for endangering and disruptive misconduct.
Tennessee High School Behavioral Discipline Impacts
Tennessee high school behavioral discipline can have severe short-term and long-term impacts. The short-term impacts of school removal can lead to academic failure and delays in graduation or failure to graduate. Even if your student moves to an alternative disciplinary school, graduation rates from those programs are generally low. Long-term impacts of even moderate to minor discipline, like loss of school privileges, can include failure to gain preferred college or university admission and disqualification from vocational and professional programs. Even employers can have security, safety, and liability concerns over hiring students or graduates with behavioral discipline records. Don't unduly minimize the risks of behavioral discipline's impacts. Take behavioral misconduct charges seriously. Your student could suffer badly if your student's Tennessee high school imposes behavioral discipline.
Tennessee High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
We can help your Tennessee high school student face and defend behavioral misconduct charges for your student's best possible disciplinary outcome. Tennessee Code Section 49-6-2401 guarantees your student protective procedures against unfair, unwarranted, or unnecessary school discipline. You and your student, though, must invoke those protections strategically and effectively. We can help you do so. Our defense of your student's behavioral misconduct charges may include arranging early informal resolution conferences, invoking the formal hearing, presenting your student's testimony and witnesses, and cross-examining adverse witnesses. We can also appeal to adverse results through the district's administrative procedures for higher independent decision-makers to correct the school's disciplinary errors. Get our highly qualified help. Your student's future is worth it.
Tennessee High School Sexual Misconduct Charges
Tennessee high school, sexual misconduct charges, can present your student with even greater reputational and other risks. A school disciplinary record labeling your student as a sexual offender can have severe long-term impacts. Federal Title IX regulations prohibiting sexual misconduct require your student's Tennessee high school to treat sexual misconduct allegations seriously. You can expect your student's high school principal and district officials to aggressively investigate, charge, and discipline sexual misconduct allegations against your student. The Rutherford County School System Student Handbook and Code of Conduct, for one prominent example, expressly adopts the Title IX regulations. Your student's school district will also do so. Tennessee high schools face significant liability, federal funding, regulatory, and reputational risks if they do not demonstrate their willingness to protect students against sexual misconduct. Title IX prohibits not only sexual assault but also dating violence, stalking, and sexual harassment. Your student's high school officials could even charge your student with sexual misconduct based on sexual jokes, slurs, advances, and epithets without any violence or threats of violence.
Tennessee High School Sexual Misconduct Discipline Impacts
Take sexual misconduct allegations seriously. Get our defense help for your student whose future is at risk. Tennessee high school sexual misconduct discipline may result in your student's emergency removal from the school and long-term suspension and expulsion, leading to alternative disciplinary placement and significant academic failure and dropout risks. Even if your student only suffers reprimand, loss of school privileges, school service, and similar lower-level discipline, your student could lose peer, teacher, advisor, and mentor support. Your student may be embarrassed, stigmatized, and isolated, harming your student's academic, mental, emotional, and social development. Your student may also lose college, university, and vocational training program admissions. Sexual misconduct discipline can carry long-term impacts.
Tennessee High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, Title IX regulations include procedural protections for the accused student. Our attorneys can help your student invoke those protections for your student's best disciplinary outcome. Those protective procedures include your student's right to retain us to represent your student throughout the proceedings. We can invoke your student's right to confront and cross-examine accusers and other adverse witnesses. We can also present your student's defense evidence at the formal hearing. Your student's Title IX rights can include specification of the charges, disclosure of incriminating evidence, challenge of biased investigators and decision makers, and appeal of adverse results to higher authorities. Civil court review and reversal of due process violations and legal errors may also be possible. Let us help your student defend Tennessee high school sexual misconduct charges.
Tennessee High School Academic Progress Issues
Academic progress issues present a different challenge for your Tennessee high school student. You have seen above that the Tennessee Board of Education governing the state's elementary and secondary schools sets academic standards by rule and regulation. Tennessee Board of Education Rules 0520-01-12-.01 et seq. authorize alternative disciplinary education if your student fails to meet those standards because of chronic absences, inattention to school work, and other motivational and behavioral issues. You've also seen that the Tennessee Department of Education helps your student's local school district uphold those academic standards. If your student faces academic progress issues, your student's high school officials have the authority to impose damaging discipline. Your student could fail to advance in grades, be unable to graduate and end up struggling in an alternative disciplinary school. Academic progress issues are not the same as behavioral misconduct charges, but academic progress issues can have the same damaging effects.
Addressing Tennessee High School Academic Progress Issues
Fortunately, our attorneys have additional tools to help your Tennessee high school student when facing academic progress charges. For instance, the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires your student's Tennessee high school officials to identify whether your student's academic progress issues may be due to an undiagnosed learning disability or the school's failure to accommodate your student's disability diagnosis. If your student is already under an individualized education plan (IEP), then the school must not change your student's placement for disciplinary purposes without first conducting a manifestation determination review. We can advocate at that review that the school should not discipline your student but instead provide the necessary accommodations and services to get your student's academic progress back on track. Alternatively, your student's academic progress issues may be due to bullying or harassment in the school, in which case we can ensure that the school protects your student against that misconduct and relieves your student of any associated discipline. If, instead, your student's academic progress issues are due to injury, illness, or other innocent circumstances, we can argue that those extenuating circumstances should relieve your student of any academic progress discipline. Get our skilled and experienced help addressing your student's academic progress issues.
Tennessee High School Disciplinary Sanctions
Tennessee high school disciplinary sanctions can run the gamut from a minor reprimand or redirection all the way up to school removal, suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement. Tennessee Code Section 49-6-3401 expressly authorizes your student's Tennessee high school principal to suspend your student “for good and sufficient reasons.” The statute then lists many potential grounds, giving your student's principal the broadest discretion to impose the most severe of school removal sanctions. School removal and referral to reform school or boot camp significantly alters and complicates your student's path while significantly damaging your student's school record and prospects.
Tennessee High School Restorative Measures
Tennessee Code Section 49-6-3401, though, also gives your student's Tennessee high school principal authority to keep your student in school but suspend your student from specific classes, activities, or privileges. In other words, the principal can shape your student's discipline to the circumstances. Some Tennessee school district student codes of conduct expressly commit school disciplinary officials to restorative rather than punitive measures in appropriate cases. The Rutherford County School System Student Handbook and Code of Conduct is an example, touting restorative measures as an alternative to discipline in certain cases. Discipline is not a foregone conclusion when your student faces misconduct charges. Your student's Tennessee high school officials may be willing to approve helpful remedial relief rather than impose crippling disciplinary measures.
Tennessee High School Disciplinary Sanction Issues
The sanctions that your student's Tennessee high school officials impose raise their own issues. Whether the school finds that your student committed misconduct or not is, of course, important. However, the determination of any penalty is also made if the school finds misconduct. Just because the school finds misconduct does not mean that your student must suffer a severe penalty or even any penalty at all. For better or worse, the broad discretion Tennessee Code Section 49-6-3401 and other laws give your student's principal the right to choose the discipline means that your student could have very different sanctions than you might reasonably expect. Principals have bad days and make poor decisions, too, just like the rest of us. Your student's high school principal or other disciplinary official may make an example of your student or may even reflect bias and prejudice against your student, imposing an unduly harsh sanction.
Tennessee High School Disciplinary Sanction Defense
Proper defense of your student's misconduct charges should include addressing the potential sanctions. Our attorneys don't just fight the charges. They also work diligently and effectively to ensure that your student suffers the least sanction possible, at best no sanction at all and only non-disciplinary measures that don't show up on your student's school record. We may do so by presenting your student's mitigating information and evidence. We may also be able to invoke the federal IDEA law prohibiting a change in a disabled student's IEP for disciplinary purposes without a prior review and Tennessee Code Section 49-6-4103 protecting students with disabilities from corporal punishment. Our skilled and experienced attorneys give due attention to eliminating or minimizing disciplinary sanctions. Your student may deserve remedial relief over punitive measures.
Tennessee High School Student Defense Rights
Your student has a constitutional right to due process before long-term school removal, which is another discipline that affects your student's educational liberty, interests, and property rights. If your student's Tennessee high school violates your student's constitutional rights, our attorneys may be able to obtain federal civil court relief. Tennessee school law recognizes your student's due process rights. Tennessee Code Section 49-6-2401 guarantees that your student's rights will be preserved by certain protective procedures. We can help you invoke the statute's notice, hearing, appeal, and other procedural protections. We can gather and present your student's defense evidence while cross-examining adverse witnesses and challenging the school's evidence. If your student has already lost discipline hearings, we can pursue sanction reversal through appeals. If your student has already lost appeals, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief through the district's general counsel's office. Let us help.
Premier Tennessee High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Nashville, Davidson, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Clarksville, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Johnson City, Jackson, Hendersonville, Bartlett, Kingsport, Smyrna, Spring Hill, Collierville, Cleveland, Gallatin, Brentwood, Columbia, Germantown, and other Tennessee locations to defend your student against Tennessee high school disciplinary charges and academic progress issues. We have helped hundreds of high school students in Tennessee and across the country make a successful defense. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Tennessee high school student's case.
