Students attending Vermont high schools can have one of the great formative experiences of a young life. Vermont's beautiful natural scenery, small-town charms, and commitment to families and education, including the right of parents to send their student to any public high school in the state with available openings, all combine to increase the value of a Vermont high school education and diploma. But Vermont high school disciplinary charges or academic progress issues can throw a proverbial wrench in those best-laid plans, destroying your student's educational, vocational, and social ambitions. Retain the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team for your student's defense if your student faces high school disciplinary charges in Burlington, Essex, Essex Junction, South Burlington, Colchester, Rutland City, Bennington, Brattleboro, Randolph, Morrisville, Hartford, Milton, Williston, Middlebury, Springfield, or any other Vermont location. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form to retain the academic and administrative attorneys your student needs for the best possible outcome to Vermont high school misconduct or academic progress issues. Don't let Vermont high school discipline interfere with your student's future.
Vermont High School Opportunities
Vermont can indeed offer special high school education opportunities, especially given its public high school choice law. You and your student may have chosen your student's high school because of its special academic, athletic, and other programs, rich arts, music, drama, and other cultural programs, or for its outstanding facility and special student body, teachers, and other staff. Or you may have moved to your current residence to have your student attend the high school within your district, whether the Essex Westford School District, Burlington School District, South Burlington School District, Mount Mansfield Unified School District, Colchester School District, Windham Southeast Unified School District, Barre Unified Union School District, Rutland City School District, Missisquoi Valley School District, Kingdon East Unified School District, Taconic & Green Regional School District, Lamoille South Unified School District, Milton School District, Hartford School District, or another fine Vermont school district. A high school education and diploma remain the basic credentials for your student's full participation in American society, polity, and economy. Don't let that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity go to waste. Let us help you preserve and protect your student's Vermont high school education.
Vermont High School Parent Commitments
As the parent of a Vermont high school student, you know your student's need for support in a situation as critical, challenging, and important as a school discipline or academic progress matter. You know that your student may look and largely act mature but nonetheless lacks the wisdom, judgment, skills, and experience of an adult. You know that your student needs you involved in your student's Vermont high school disciplinary matter, whether your student has adequately expressed so. The question is, isn't your high level of commitment to your student's educational, social, and vocational welfare in this school discipline situation? The question may instead be what you are ready, willing, and able to do about it. You want to bring your best adult parental judgment, wisdom, skills, and resources to bear for the benefit of your student. You know that your student has hopes, dreams, and ambitions. You also have hopes, dreams, and ambitions for your student. The best way that you can preserve your students' future opportunities and prospects is to retain our highly qualified academic and administrative attorneys. Do the right thing. Your student needs you, and your student needs us.
Vermont High School Discipline Impacts
Short Term Discipline Impacts
Appreciate the short term impacts that your Vermont high school student may face from school disciplinary charges or academic progress issues. Misconduct allegations often lead to prompt or even immediate short-term school removal or other interruption of the accused student's structured education. Educators are generally well aware of the strong negative impacts of school discipline from even a short term interruption of education. Your student may fall behind on assignments and miss instruction, quizzes, and exams. If your student is already struggling, then your student's struggles may quickly turn into failures that your student is unable to readily make up. An in-school or out-of-school suspension can also remove important peer and teacher support, and the structure of a regular school day on which your student may depend. Your student may also suffer embarrassment, isolation, and withdrawal, losing not only peer but also teacher, advisor, and mentor support. Discipline can interfere with your student's academic, mental, emotional, and physical development. Don't let that happen. Get our help.
Long Term Disciplinary Impacts
Vermont high school discipline may also impact your student's longer term goals and ambitions. Your student may hope and expect to attend your own college or university alma mater, another fine Vermont college or university like the University of Vermont, Middlebury College, Bennington College, Saint Michael's College, Sterling College, Champlain College, Norwich University, Castleton University, Vermont State University, Landmark College, or another fine out-of-state school. Alternatively, your student may wish to pursue a military academy or service, vocational training program, or professional license or vocational certification. Many or all of these opportunities may be competitive, where even a small disciplinary mark on your student's Vermont high school record could cause your student to lose the opportunity for admission. Your student's goal in the present situation should be to avoid a disciplinary record that could interfere with your student's substantial future opportunities. Yes, the present issue is upsetting, distracting, and concerning. But keep a sharp eye on the long term impacts, too. Let us help you and your student minimize those impacts.
Vermont's High School Discipline System
Vermont, like other states, has an elaborate system of laws, rules, regulations, and procedures for public school student discipline. The law codified in 7 Vermont Statutes Section 1161a authorizes Vermont high schools to adopt and enforce codes and policies for student discipline. Similarly, 7 Vermont Statutes Section 1162 expressly authorizes district superintendents and school principals to suspend and expel students for misconduct. Again, 7 Vermont Statutes Section 1165 authorizes school officials to suspend and expel for alcohol and drug possession in school or at school activities, while Section 1166 authorizes suspension and expulsion for firearm possession. Other Vermont school discipline laws address tobacco possession, bullying, harassment, truancy, and other common misbehaviors. Don't question your student's Vermont high school officials' authority to discipline your student for specified wrongs. Instead, get our help in defending the charges to minimize or eliminate any punitive sanction.
The Vermont Agency of Education
The Vermont Agency of Education may play a high-level role relating to your student's Vermont high school disciplinary matter. Vermont education laws, for instance, require the Vermont Agency of Education to provide resources to local school districts and high schools in restorative justice practices relating to school discipline issues. For another example, 7 Vermont Statutes Section 9503 similarly requires the Vermont Agency of Education to provide local schools with programs relating to student tobacco use. The Vermont Agency of Education has also developed administrative rules on the use of restraints and isolation for school discipline. You and your student will likely deal primarily with local school officials, but our attorneys can help you strategically invoke available state-level laws, rules, regulations, and procedures for your student's best advantage.
Vermont Local School District Authority
The outcome of your student's disciplinary matter, although potentially affected by state laws, rules, and regulations, will likely be in the hands of your student's Vermont local school district and high school officials. Those officials have the state legislature's authority, under 7 Vermont Statutes Section 1161a, to impose discipline up to suspension or expulsion on your student if school officials find qualifying grounds to do so. That statute requires that “[e]ach public and each approved independent school shall adopt and implement a comprehensive plan for responding to student misbehavior.” Under the same statute, the plan that your student's Vermont high school adopts must include the specific grounds on which the school will discipline students, how the school will notify parents of disciplinary charges, how the school will prevent disruptive student conduct, including by referral to an alternative disciplinary school, how the school will respond to bomb threats and other significant disruptions, and the procedures under which the school will impose discipline. Our attorneys can help you and your student communicate, advocate, and negotiate with local high school officials applying the high school's discipline plan.
Vermont Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
The plans that Vermont high schools adopt under the above authority of 7 Vermont Statutes Section 1161a generally take the form of a student code of conduct or set of behavior standards in the school district or high school handbook. Examples of Vermont high school student codes of conduct, like the code that is probably in place in your student's Vermont high school, include:
- the Hartford Public Schools Student Code of Conduct defines three progressively more severe levels of student infraction, described as Level I, Level II, and Level III, each with their own recommended range of sanctions;
- the Burlington School District Restorative Code of Conduct defines six parts of progressively more serious offenses, with the last two parts describing offenses warranting in-school and out-of-school suspensions and expulsions;
- the Rutland High School Student Handbook includes a Code of Conduct detailing the grounds for sanctions up to school suspension and expulsion and
- the Colchester High School Student Handbook includes a student code of conduct with six levels of progressively more severe offenses from Level A to Level F.
The Vermont High School Environment
You might well imagine from the above four examples of Vermont high school student codes of conduct that when your student is on the high school campus or at a high school off-campus event, your student is in a highly regulated academic environment. Vermont high schools have the state authority not just to keep students generally safe and secure, free from physical harm, but also to require students to meet strict behavioral standards, including things like dress codes, demeanor toward teachers and other school staff, and possession of cell phones, other electronic devices, and vaping products or other substances and materials. Don't assume that just because your student can do something at home or in public, with respect to your student's communications, appearance, or conduct, that Vermont high school officials will permit the same activity. Your student's Vermont high school has its own codes, customs, norms, and rules. Let us help you if your student's high school has charged your student with violating those expectations.
Vermont High School Behavioral Misconduct
Vermont high school student codes of conduct certainly regulate a wide range of student behaviors outside of academic norms and rules. Many of the prohibited behaviors have to do with student safety, such as rules prohibiting fighting and other physical assaults, threats of violence, arson, gang activity, and weapons possession or possession of explosives or fireworks. Other behavioral rules, though, have to do with protecting student mental and emotional safety and security, such as rules against bullying, cyberbullying, hazing, intimidation, and harassment. Still, other behavioral rules have to do with protecting school property against vandalism, theft, and trespass. Other behavioral rules simply preserve the orderly operation of the school, such as provisions requiring students to obey and respect teachers and other school staff and not to block hallways or classrooms or otherwise disrupt instruction.
Definitions of Vermont High School Behavioral Misconduct
While some states specify the behaviors that local school districts must regulate and prevent, Vermont instead authorizes the local school districts to adopt their own codes, as long as those codes prohibit bullying, weapons possession, and drug and alcohol possession. The behaviors with which your student must comply thus largely depend on what your student's Vermont high school provides in its student code of conduct. The Hartford Public Schools Student Code of Conduct, Burlington School District Restorative Code of Conduct, Rutland High School Student Handbook, and Colchester High School Student Handbook cited above all include long lists of prohibited behaviors like those mentioned above, from physical violence to mental intimidation and harassment to property damage and disruption of the school environment. Our attorneys can help you and your student interpret and apply your student's Vermont high school code to ensure that school officials do not exceed their authority and that they provide your student with appropriate procedural protections. We can also advocate and negotiate with those school officials toward an early non-disciplinary resolution, depending on your student's circumstances and case.
Punishments for Vermont High School Behavioral Misconduct
The punishment that Vermont high school officials impose for behavioral wrongs generally depends on factors including the danger, disruption, or other reprehensibility of the wrong, whether the wrong harmed any student or damage any school property, whether the wrong was a repeat offense or a first offense, and how the student responds to the allegation, including whether the student engages in any concealment or cover up. Keep in mind, though, that 7 Vermont Statutes Section 1162 expressly authorizes district superintendents and school principals to suspend and expel students for misconduct. Your student's Vermont high school student code of conduct, like the four codes cited and discussed above, surely authorizes school officials to choose from a wide range of potential sanctions. Those sanctions may begin with a simple caution or warning and progress to an oral or written reprimand, probation, in-school suspension, after-school detention, parent contact, counseling, loss of privileges, honors, and awards, and school or community service, all the way up to suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement. Let us help your student avoid the worst sanctions and instead advocate only remedial measures to keep your student's school record clean.
Vermont High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
If your Vermont high school student faces the potential for a school suspension or expulsion, then 7 Vermont Statutes Section 1161a requires school officials to provide your student with constitutional due process. Your student's right to due process enables our attorneys to ensure that school officials notify your student of the details of the charges and offer your student a hearing before an impartial decision maker. We can help you and your student gather and present exonerating evidence and mitigating information both at an early conciliation conference seeking voluntary dismissal of the charges and, if necessary, at a subsequent formal hearing. If your student has already lost the hearing, we may be able to prevail in an appeal showing an erroneous decision. If your student has already lost the appeal, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief with a general counsel's office or to obtain court review and reversal.
Vermont High School Sexual Misconduct
Sexual misconduct charges can be an even more serious form of behavioral misconduct for a Vermont high school student to face. Federal Title IX regulations require Vermont high schools receiving federal funds to prevent and punish several forms of sexual misconduct, including not only sexual assault but also stalking, dating violence, and even sexual harassment. Vermont high school officials who ignore sexual misconduct can face civil liability while ruining the school's reputation, impacting school finances and enrollment. A finding of high school sexual misconduct can also have an especially severe impact on your student's education, vocation, and reputation. Sexual misconduct carries not only the stigma of endangering actions but also of corrupt or immoral character. Colleges, universities, and vocational programs will definitely think twice before admitting a student whose high school record reflects sexual misconduct. Let us help your student defend sexual misconduct allegations to prevent the severe harm that can flow from an adverse finding.
Definitions of Vermont High School Sexual Misconduct
Vermont school districts and high schools often adopt and incorporate the federal Title IX definitions for sexual misconduct. The Burlington School District Restorative Code of Conduct is an example of incorporating Title IX protections. As indicated above, Title IX reaches not only the obvious sexual assault but also any non-consensual sexual touching and even incidents involving no physical contact, characterized instead as sexual harassment. The Title IX definition of sexual harassment includes sexual jokes, slurs, epithets, and other words, unwanted sexual advances, and other sexual displays and actions that create a sufficiently hostile environment so severe and pervasive as to deprive the victim student of educational access. Beware of any allegations involving sexual content. Even so little as a single incident could give rise to exaggerated charges.
Punishment of Vermont High School Sexual Misconduct
Vermont high school officials have the authority under Title IX policies not only to suspend and expel students found to have committed sexual misconduct but also to issue emergency interim suspensions, campus bans, and no-contact orders before a hearing and finding, on credible evidence that the accused student is a threat to another student's safety. You can expect punishment to be swift and severe if you and your student do not timely and appropriately answer serious sexual misconduct charges. School suspension is a common default sanction in the nature of better safe than sorry. School officials can, in these sexual misconduct cases, bend to the victim, parent, and public pressure and rush to judgment against even an innocent accused student.
Vermont High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
We can help you invoke Title IX procedural protections to slow and avoid that rush to judgment. Our assurances and proposed remedial and interim measures may be able to keep your student in school, maintaining student and teacher relationships while preserving your student's education and reputation. We may then be able to show that the allegations are false, retaliatory, and exaggerated or that your student engaged in no non-consensual contact and no sexual contact of any kind, perhaps only horseplay, roughhousing, or other innocent high school activity. We may alternatively be able to show that your student is not a safety threat and that the school can ensure no repeat of the alleged conduct through remedial measures like reconciliation, counseling, training, or school service. If, instead, your student's case moves forward through formal charges and hearing, then we can present the available evidence to challenge the charges and mitigate any penalty. Appeals, court review, and general counsel relief may also be available if you and your student have already lost the formal hearing.
Vermont High School Academic Misconduct
Vermont high school students may alternatively face academic misconduct charges. Academic misconduct involves academic dishonesty, plagiarism, cheating, or some other form of attempting to take undue academic advantage in high school exams and coursework. In that respect, academic misconduct may sound like a less serious form of disciplinary charge than the behavioral misconduct and sexual misconduct charges discussed above. Our attorneys would certainly advocate to keep academic misconduct charges that way, as a non-serious offense warranting at most remedial measures rather than punitive discipline leaving a poor school record. But beware of academic misconduct charges alleging that your student committed a flagrant or repeat cheating violation, involved other students in cheating, or disclosed confidential exam answers, destroying the value of instructional materials. Vermont high school officials may treat such allegations much more seriously, right up to labeling the conduct as disruptive, disobedient, insubordinate, and disrespectful, warranting school suspension or expulsion and transfer to an alternative disciplinary program. Let us help defend academic misconduct charges to keep your student's school record clean.
Definitions of Vermont High School Academic Misconduct
Vermont high schools take different approaches in their student codes of conduct toward cheating charges. The Burlington School District Restorative Code of Conduct, for instance, prohibits only “cheating/plagiarism” without defining either and classifying them as a third-level offense warranting only in-school discipline, if without aggravating factors. By contrast, the Rutland High School Student Handbook includes a relatively elaborate Academic Honesty Policy that lists as violations cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, data alteration, stealing exams, forging grade reports, and selling, loaning, or distributing materials for the purpose of cheating. The Rutland High School policy states that academic dishonesty is a serious offense but implies that teachers should handle the discipline in school. The Colchester High School Student Handbook likewise treats academic misconduct with both definitions and examples. Teacher syllabi and instructions can certainly supplement the definitions of cheating.
Punishing Vermont High School Academic Misconduct
As just indicated, Vermont high school student codes of conduct tend to treat academic misconduct as a lesser offense than behavioral misconduct or sexual misconduct, at least in simpler first offenses. But Vermont high school officials are likely to increase the punishment for second and subsequent offenses or when the accused cheater is a ringleader who involved other students or destroyed the confidentiality of valuable exams or other instructional materials. The Colchester High School Student Handbook is an example, elevating cheating from offense Level B, treated with only in-school measures, to offense Level C, treated with a suspension of up to five days for a second or subsequent offense. Combined with other aggravating factors, the offense could become one of disrupting school operations, leading to longer suspension or expulsion.
Vermont High School Academic Misconduct Defense
Keep in mind, though, that academic misconduct charges are not the same as a finding of academic misconduct. We may be able to use forensic consultants to show that your student did not misuse a computer, cell phone, or other electronic device to access confidential online materials or was not the author of the writing on which the charges depend. By invoking your student's right to a hearing, we may alternatively be able to show that another student falsely accused your student to cover up the other student's own wrong. Charges also don't necessarily mean sanctions, either, even if your student did commit some or all of the academic wrongs that charges allege. We can advocate and negotiate at an early conciliation conference for remedial measures over punitive sanctions. Hearings, appeal review, and even special alternative relief through a general counsel's office may also be available. Let us investigate and pursue your student's best options.
Vermont High School Academic Progress Issues
The Vermont Agency of Education has adopted Common Core State Standards defining the knowledge and skills that your student must acquire to progress through high school to graduation. Those content standards mean that your student could face course failures, holding back a grade, and failure to graduate if unable to meet those standards. Ordinarily, academic struggles deserve the high school's remediation. But if your student's Vermont high school officials perceive that your student is not giving appropriate effort, they may blame your student for academic deficiencies, even to the point of charging your student with behavioral discipline for insubordination, disrespect, disobedience, and disruption. In the worst case, school suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement could result. Beware of academic progress issues. Don't let school officials turn your student's understandable academic challenges and issues into a disciplinary matter. Let us help you hold your student's Vermont high school accountable to instructional standards, just as the school holds your student accountable to state content standards.
Addressing Vermont High School Academic Progress Issues
Federal laws and Vermont state procedures give our attorneys additional legal tools to advocate for your student's persistence in the traditional high school program toward graduation. If, for instance, other students have been bullying or harassing your student, causing the decline in your student's academic performance, we can advocate for immediate relief from the misconduct of those other students and for remedial academic measures to help your student catch back up. If, instead, your student suffers from an undiagnosed educational disability, or the school has already provided your student with the individualized education plan (IEP) that the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires, we can help you and your student enforce those disability rights for special education services and accommodations. Let us deploy these and other tools to keep your student's academic progress on track in the face of serious progression issues.
Premier Vermont High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team is available for your student's defense in Burlington, Essex, Essex Junction, South Burlington, Colchester, Rutland City, Bennington, Brattleboro, Randolph, Morrisville, Hartford, Milton, Williston, Middlebury, Springfield, and across the rest of Vermont. Our attorneys have successfully represented hundreds of students nationwide in all kinds of school disciplinary and academic progress issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our highly qualified attorneys for your Vermont high school student's best possible outcome.
