DeSoto area schools, in Dallas County south of Dallas, have challenges managing student behavior to maintain an effective educational program, much like other Texas independent school districts. DeSoto area schools accordingly run a disciplinary alternative education placement (DAEP) boot camp or reform school like other Texas school systems. Yet too often, school officials dump students in need of academic support services into DAEP to relieve themselves of the burden of appropriate accommodations and services, and to improve their school's academic ranking and reputation. Don't let your student end up in DeSoto area DAEP with students expelled there for guns, drugs, gangs, and other endangering offenses. Call 888.535.3686 or use this contact form now to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team attorneys from the Firm's Dallas office. We provide highly qualified and effective defense representation to save students from DAEP.
DeSoto Area Schools Student Defense
Appreciate the risk DAEP poses to your DeSoto area student. Your student's regular DeSoto area schools classroom provides substantial peer support, structured instruction, and high teacher expectations. A referral to DAEP removes all of those advantages of the regular classroom. A referral to DAEP replaces those advantages with the disadvantages inherent in a student population already having significant behavioral issues of the worst sorts. Don't let that happen to your student, costing your student critical academic and social development. Our attorneys are available to defend your student against a DAEP referral in any DeSoto area school, including the following programs:
High Schools (Grades 9-12)
DeSoto High School
DeSoto High School-Freshman Campus (DeSoto)
Middle Schools (Grades 6-8)
DeSoto West Middle School (DeSoto)
Curtistene S. McCowan Middle School (Glenn Heights)
Elementary Schools (Grades K-5)
Cockrell Hill Elementary School (DeSoto)
Frank D. Moates Elementary School (Glenn Heights)
Katherine Johnson Technology Magnet Academy (DeSoto)
Ruby Young Talented and Gifted Academy (DeSoto)
The Meadows Elementary School (DeSoto)
Woodridge Elementary School (DeSoto)
Texas DAEP Law
DAEP programs have an appropriate goal of ensuring the safe and orderly operation of the regular classroom. Yet Texas Education Code Chapter 37, Subchapter A, authorizes disciplinary alternative education programs (DAEP) for disruptive and dangerous students, not for school officials to increase their school's ranking while saving staff time and trouble from providing mandated accommodations and services. Texas Education Code Section 37.008 authorizes DAEP removal only for unruly, dangerous, or disruptive students, not for school convenience. DAEP shouldn't be a dumping ground for struggling, disabled, bullied, or other disaffected or challenged students. Don't let that happen to your student. Get our defense help to fight your student's charges.
DeSoto Area DAEP Program
DeSoto area schools maintain the DeSoto Alternative Education Program at 204 East Belt Line Road in DeSoto, in its own facility. The DeSoto ISD Code of Conduct authorizes removal to that DAEP facility for any “serious or persistent misbehavior,” while defining persistent as any two or more events. The DeSoto ISD Code of Conduct also authorizes DAEP placement for disrupting class. In short, any misbehavior occurring twice or any disruption of class could get your student out of the regular classroom and into DAEP. Under the DeSoto ISD Code of Conduct, children from age six on up can end up in DAEP for the most minor offenses, if school officials choose to send them there. Don't let that happen to your student. We can help you fight your student's DAEP disciplinary charges and placement.
Texas DAEP Program Statistics
Texas DAEP programs, as well-meaning as they are, don't meet nearly the regular classroom's standards. A University of Texas at Austin Education Review study found that only 44% of first-time DAEP enrollees graduate in the usual four years, while one out of four DAEP second-time enrollees graduate. Those figures come nowhere close to the 84% of students graduating from the state's regular classrooms. DeSoto ISD officials will surely laud their Alternative Education Program facility and staff. They have every reason to do so, to gain your consent to DAEP and save themselves the time and trouble of a DAEP challenge. But again, get our attorneys' skilled and experienced defense help to preserve your student's regular classroom enrollment.
DeSoto Area Student Code of Conduct
Texas Education Code Sections 37.006, 37.007, and 37.008 state the permissible grounds for DAEP removal. The DeSoto ISD's Student Code of Conduct likewise states DAEP removal grounds, as well as all manner of detail about your student's rights and the school's responsibilities in a removal proceeding. The DeSoto ISD Student Code of Conduct is thus important to your student's outcome because it governs your student's disciplinary charges and removal proceedings. We can help you review and evaluate your student's disciplinary charges in light of the Student Code of Conduct's terms and provisions, to fight those charges through the district's proceedings. Let us help you hold school officials accountable to the law and the district's own written commitments.
DeSoto Area Excuses for DAEP Removal
DeSoto ISD's Student Code of Conduct states that school officials should determine DAEP referral and the duration of DAEP stays “by severity of offense and grade level appropriateness.” But you've already seen above that the Student Code of Conduct authorizes DAEP for any two-time disruption of class or other repeat offenses, no matter how minor. That broad degree of discretion is intentional. DeSoto area schools maintain a substantial DAEP facility, staff, and program, and it intends to use it. While by statute, DAEP should be only for dangerous and disruptive students, DeSoto area school officials may attempt to use DAEP to avoid accommodating disabled students and providing them with federally mandated and funded special education services. They may also use DAEP to house struggling students who need protection from unlawful bullying and harassment or need instructional support services. We can help your student gain appropriate accommodations and services while avoiding DAEP.
DeSoto Area Grounds for DAEP Removal
DeSoto ISD's Student Code of Conduct does not track closely with the DAEP statutes or the conduct codes in other districts. It instead creates its own categories for discretionary DAEP referral and mandatory DAEP referral. The above Texas statutes supersede the DeSoto ISD Student Code of Conduct in the event of contradictions. The next two sections show how the DeSoto area schools Student Code of Conduct treats DAEP referral.
DeSoto Area Discretionary DAEP
Discretionary DAEP means that DeSoto area school officials have the choice of imposing either DAEP or some other lesser sanction, such as an in-school suspension, loss of school privileges, reprimand, or probation. We can help you advocate for remedial measures like additional education, training, counseling, or mentoring in place of DAEP or lesser punitive sanctions, no matter the nature of your student's disciplinary charges. The DeSoto ISD Student Code of Conduct includes the following discretionary grounds for DAEP removal:
- serious or persistent misbehavior, with persistent defined as at least two misbehaviors;
- disrupting class, with no further definition of what constitutes disruption or requirement that the disruption be persistent;
- reasonable belief that the student committed a felony offense that threatens safety or will be detrimental to education.
DeSoto ISD Mandatory DAEP
Texas Education Code Sections 37.006 and 37.007 authorize mandatory DAEP for certain more-serious forms of misconduct, such as felony offenses or drug possession on school grounds. The DeSoto ISD Student Code of Conduct references some of those statutory grounds but restates them in the Code's own terms. Mandatory DAEP means that DeSoto area school officials have no discretion to impose lesser sanctions but must instead send the student to DAEP. Yet we may be able to show that your student did not commit the alleged mandatory DAEP offense. We may also be able to convince school officials to charge a lesser offense that does not require DAEP referral. The DeSoto ISD Student Code of Conduct lists these mandatory DAEP grounds:
- conduct punishable as a felony or delinquent conduct;
- an assault or terroristic threat as the statute defines them;
- possession or use of marijuana or a controlled substance;
- possession or use of alcohol or an aerosol inhalant;
- public lewdness or indecent exposure as the statute defines them.
DeSoto Area DAEP Defenses
Keep in mind that your student's DeSoto area schools disciplinary charge is not the same as a disciplinary finding. A charge is only an allegation that school officials must prove if you put them to it. Otherwise, without your invoking school protective procedures, school officials may assume that the charge is valid and proceed with DAEP or other sanctions. We can help you and your student invoke DeSoto area school procedures to raise your student's defenses to the DAEP charges. The teacher or student who reported your student may have been mistaken as to your student's identity as the wrongdoer or mistaken as to the innocent acts your student engaged in, assuming instead that they were punishable violations. The teacher or student may alternatively have been retaliating against your student or coercing your student into other behavior that your student knows not to commit. Your student may alternatively have been following another teacher's or staff member's reasonable instructions, or may simply have been reasonably mistaken as to the circumstances. Let us raise these and other available defenses to your student's charges.
DeSoto Area DAEP Mitigating Factors
Texas Education Code Section 37.001 recognizes other defenses to DAEP removal that the statute calls mitigating factors. DeSoto area school officials must consider these factors before imposing DAEP. The DeSoto ISD Student Code of Conduct recognizes the same mitigating factors that we can raise in your student's defense if applicable. The factors include self-defense, acting without intent to commit the alleged wrong, having no disciplinary record, having a mental disability such that the student cannot appreciate the wrong, being under a foster care conservatorship, or being homeless.
DeSoto Area DAEP Placement Hearing
Texas Education Code Section 37.0081 requires an administrative hearing meeting Texas Education Code Section 37.009's hearing requirements, before DeSoto area school officials impose DAEP for more than ten days, unless the parent consents to DAEP removal. To meet the statutory hearing requirement, the DeSoto ISD Student Code of Conduct establishes a District Hearing Committee and refers DAEP removal disputes to that Committee. Our attorneys can invoke your student's hearing to cross-examine adverse witnesses, present the testimony of exonerating witnesses, and present other evidence and arguments on your student's behalf.
DeSoto Area Emergency DAEP Placement
Texas Education Code Section 37.019 authorizes DeSoto area school officials to remove a student to DAEP without a hearing based on emergency circumstances, when necessary to protect teachers or students, or to preserve operations. Let us invoke your student's post-removal hearing if the school has already removed your student to DAEP while expressing the intent to continue DAEP beyond the permitted ten days without a hearing.
DeSoto Area DAEP Appeal
Texas Education Code Section 37.009 authorizes a student and the student's parent to appeal a DAEP decision made after a hearing. The DeSoto ISD's Student Code of Conduct permits an appeal of a DAEP removal for longer than 60 days or beyond the next grading period, with the appeal going to a DAEP Appeal Committee. Let our attorneys pursue your student's appeal if your student has already lost the DAEP hearing.
Alternative Special Relief
Our attorneys may be able to obtain alternative special relief in the form of reinstatement to the regular classroom, from the DeSoto area schools' general counsel's office, outside retained counsel, or other oversight officials, if your student has already lost all hearings and appeals. We can also seek available civil relief to reverse a DAEP removal.
Premier DeSoto Area Schools DAEP Defense
If your student faces school DAEP removal in the DeSoto, Texas schools, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team out of our Dallas office for your student's highly qualified defense. We help students across Texas and nationwide defend and defeat school disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now. Learn more details here about Texas DAEP matters.
