As the parent of a West Virginia high school student, you know the challenges that high school students can face in making the delicate transition from childhood to adulthood. Your student must not only make terms of academic grades, they must also navigate the school's behavioral expectations in a very highly regulated environment. Academic progress issues and behavioral or academic misconduct charges can easily arise out of the academic and social challenges that a West Virginia high school program presents, especially considering the growth and maturation that your student must still accomplish. Let the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team help your student face, defend, and defeat West Virginia High School disciplinary charges. Our skilled, sensitive, and effective attorneys are available in Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, Parkersburg, Wheeling, Martinsburg, Fairmont, Weirton, Beckley, Clarksburg, and all other West Virginia locations. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for your student's best outcome to West Virginia High School disciplinary charges.
Your West Virginia High School Student's Future
Your student's future is worth skilled and experienced attorney defense of West Virginia high school disciplinary charges. High school is the foundation for higher education, vocational training, and supportive social relationships on which your student may depend long term. Your student may plan on attending West Virginia University, Marshall University, Wheeling University, or another fine institution of higher education in or outside of the state. Your student may alternatively have plans for a vocational program, license, and certification, leading to a great job and career. Your student may also have high hopes for marriage, children, charitable and community involvement, and other achievements that often depend on solid character, record, and reputation. The stakes are high when West Virginia high school disciplinary charges can threaten those expectations. Let us help preserve and protect your student's future.
West Virginia High School Discipline
West Virginia high school discipline is a real thing. West Virginia high school officials discipline many students every year, to the point that the state maintains an elaborate system for alternative disciplinary high schools. Parents and students know those alternative schools as boot camps or reform schools. Discipline can indeed mean long-term suspension and school dismissal or expulsion, along with campus bans and no-contact orders requiring attendance at an alternative school. But even discipline short of school removal can seriously impact your student's growth and maturation. West Virginia high school discipline can include loss of athletics privileges, loss of club leadership and participation opportunities, and loss of academic honors and awards. Discipline can also include restitution, school or community service, and reprimands that cause students to self-isolate and withdraw. Beware West Virginia high school discipline. It's a real and potentially harmful thing.
West Virginia High School Parent Commitments
Your West Virginia high school student needs you when facing school disciplinary charges. For the most part, you may have been able to leave your student's high school experience to your student's own management as your student has matured beyond elementary and middle school. However, facing a school disciplinary proceeding is very different from the usual school schedules and challenges. Your student won't have the regulatory knowledge, procedural skills, mature temperament, long experience, and sound judgment to make good decisions about your student's matter. You, by contrast, have adult reasoning and reckoning skills. You are also not in the middle of the matter, as your student is. You can bring your parental advice, counsel, and judgment to bear on your student's behalf. And we can help you do so. So, don't stand on the sidelines. Don't hesitate to jump in to help your student. Just let us help you do so.
West Virginia High School Defense Representation
West Virginia high school disciplinary proceedings are academic administrative proceedings backed by state law, affected by federal law, and dependent on state administrative regulations and local codes and policies. Your student's matter is, in other words, saturated with legal and administrative issues. Our attorneys know the law, rules, regulations, academic customs, and issues. We have the strategic skill and experience to put your student's matter in the best light and posture for your student's best outcome. Our West Virginia high school defense representation, is worth it when considering the enormous value of your student's future.
West Virginia School Discipline Long-Term Impacts
West Virginia high school discipline can affect your student in the long term. School removal or any other serious disruption of your student's high school experience can delay your student's academic, social, emotional, mental, and physical development. West Virginia high schools offer rich academic, athletic, club, intramural, artistic, and social opportunities for the purpose of providing your student with maximal development. If misconduct charges sideline your student, your student may lose that developmental growth forever. Serious discipline can, more practically, keep your student from gaining college or university admission, admission into a preferred vocational program, or a professional license or vocational certification. Serious discipline can also end peer, teacher, advisor, mentor, and even extended family relationships on which your student would otherwise have depended, perhaps for years or even a lifetime. The adverse impacts of school discipline are well documented. Let us help your student avoid those adverse impacts.
West Virginia School Discipline Short-Term Impacts
Your concern shouldn't only be for West Virginia High School discipline's long-term impacts. High school discipline can also have severe short-term impacts, too. Depending on the nature, credibility, and reprehensibility of the charges, your student could face immediate school removal, campus ban, and no-contact orders, leaving your student entirely isolated from the school community. Even a short-term loss of structure, expectations, and social support can severely disable a student's motivation, leading to substantial learning loss and even depression. Even if the school permits your student to remain in school throughout the proceeding and its aftermath, your student could lose athletics, club, social, and other privileges and face embarrassment and ostracizing, disrupting routines and relationships. Let us help you and your student walk through this perilous period so that your student suffers the least possible adverse impact.
West Virginia High School Disciplinary Authority
The West Virginia state legislature has granted broad authority to high school and district officials to remove students from the school on disciplinary grounds. West Virginia Code Section 18A-5-1a grants local district and high school officials the authority to suspend and expel a student not only for weapons or drug possession on school grounds, fighting, threatening others, or defacing school property but also for any willful disobedience of a teacher or repeated violation of other school rules. You can see that virtually any clear wrong or violation of school rules could subject your student to severe discipline. Don't doubt the state authority of your student's West Virginia high school officials to act swiftly and decisively with respect to the allegations of your student's disciplinary issues. Let us help you and your student respond.
The West Virginia State Board of Education
The West Virginia State Board of Education also plays a high-level role in your student's local high school discipline. West Virginia's state legislature created the State Board of Education and enlisted it to set school disciplinary standards. West Virginia Code Section 18-2-5 authorizes the State Board of Education to promulgate rules and regulations governing student academic standards and conduct. Other laws authorize the State Board of Education to set standards for things like an anti-harassment, intimidation, and bullying policy, compulsory school attendance provision, and school access safety plan. Under this authority, the State Board of Education adopts and distributes a Policy 4373 Guideline for Student Behavior with a Student Code of Conduct and four progressive offense levels. The State Board of Education, though, won't likely have direct involvement in your student's individual matter unless we find it necessary and advisable to involve state agency officials in the supervision of your student's school district and high school conduct of the disciplinary matter.
West Virginia Local School District Authority
West Virginia's state legislature grants primary authority over high school discipline to the classroom teacher and building principal. West Virginia Code Section 18A-5-1 expressly provides that the teacher stands in place of the parent in exercising authority over the student while in school. The same provision authorizes the teacher to seek removal of any student who commits any of the following wrongs:
- disorderly conduct;
- interfering with an orderly educational process;
- obstructing the teaching or learning of other students in the classroom;
- threatening, abusing, or otherwise intimidating a school employee or student;
- willfully disobeying a school employee; or
- using abusive or profane language directed at a school employee.
The same statute authorizes your student's local school district to adopt a code of conduct or conduct policy under which school officials may remove, suspend, or expel your student. It is that district or high school code of conduct that your student's high school officials will enforce when pursuing disciplinary charges against your student. We can help you and your student respond to local district and high school officials in the Kanawha County Schools, Berkeley County Schools, Wood County Schools, Cabell County Schools, Lincoln County Schools, Monongalia County Schools, Raleigh County Schools, Harrison County Schools, Putnam County Schools, Mercer County Schools, Jefferson County Schools, Marion County Schools, Wayne County Schools, or any other West Virginia school district.
West Virginia Local School District Student Codes of Conduct
West Virginia school district and high school student codes of conduct vary substantially in their form, name, and format, although they vary less in their substantive rules. We can help you and your student acquire, interpret, and apply your student's applicable code of conduct. That code is likely to be similar in substance to one of the following other West Virginia school district and high school codes:
- the Lincoln County Schools adopt Policy 5500 on Student Conduct, incorporating the State Board of Education Policy 4373 while adding other disciplinary grounds;
- the Raleigh County Schools adopt a Student Code of Conduct that lists many offenses under each of Policy 4373's four offense levels, carrying out the State Board of Education's disciplinary mandate;
- the Cabell County Schools adopt a High School Student Handbook that likewise lists several offenses at each of Policy 4373's four offense levels and
- the Kanawha County Schools adopt a Board of Education Policy on Student Behavior similarly patterned after Policy 4373's four offense levels.
West Virginia High School Misconduct Types
West Virginia high school students may face four different types of disciplinary charges. They include (1) academic progress charges for failure to advance through the educational program steadily; (2) academic misconduct charges for violating academic rules against cheating; (3) behavioral misconduct charges for activities not involving academic work while on school grounds or at school programs; and (4) sexual misconduct charges for intimate contact or harassing communications and behaviors. In some cases, the charges may overlap two or more categories but are usually relatively separate. Consider each type in turn.
West Virginia High School Academic Progress Issues
Schools everywhere have a role in certifying knowledge and skills, not just teaching knowledge and skills. West Virginia high schools are no exception. Your student's West Virginia high school must generally hold its students accountable to state content standards. Your student's teachers should not be simply waving every student on through to graduation if some of those students haven't proven that they have acquired the requisite knowledge and skills for graduation. You and your student are likely well aware that your student's school issues grades require passing grades in core courses and may hold a student back a grade for repeating if the student hasn't met those advancement requirements. Low grades, failing grades, repeated courses, holding back, and delayed graduation are the usual indicators of academic progress issues.
West Virginia High School Academic Standards
West Virginia's Department of Education has adopted content standards to measure satisfactory academic performance at the high school level. The Department of Education adopts and enforces those standards under West Virginia Code Section 18-2-9, providing for the required course of instruction. The law and related content standards require your student's high school to report on student performance, and the state agency must analyze it to ensure that the school is accountable to the state content standards. Your student's teachers and principal are well aware that they must show that your student and other students are meeting the state standards. They should provide remedial instruction and may have to provide special accommodations and services to ensure equal access to instruction. They may instead, though, blame your student's failure to progress academically on your student's insubordination, disruption, truancy, or lack of effort in ways that turn your student's academic progress issue into a misconduct issue.
Addressing West Virginia High School Academic Progress Issues
Academic progress issues may have several hidden causes with which our attorneys can help you and your student. Your student may, for instance, face school bullying, harassment, and intimidation, interfering with your student's effective studies. In that case, we may be able to force the school to live up to its safety obligations. Alternatively, your student may have an educational disability for which the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) or Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) require special education services and accommodations. If your student already has an IDEA law individualized education program (IEP), we may be able to help you and your student enforce it. We may also be able to invoke other procedures to advocate and negotiate for remedial relief to keep your student in the traditional high school with peers and on schedule for graduation.
West Virginia High School Academic Misconduct
Definitions of West Virginia High School Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct differs from academic progress issues in that academic misconduct involves some form of dishonesty or cheating, whereas academic progress typically involves simple failure to perform. West Virginia high schools generally have some form of academic misconduct prohibition. For instance, the Lincoln County Schools Student Code of Conduct provides, “A student will not plagiarize, cheat, gain unauthorized access to, or tamper with educational materials.” Similarly, the Cabell County High School Student Handbook prohibits “plagiarism, cheating, and academic dishonesty.” The handbook defines plagiarism as “a student using or copying the work of others, submitting another's work as their own, or taking answers from other students,” while leaving cheating and academic dishonesty undefined.
Common forms of academic cheating or dishonesty at the high school level may involve:
- unauthorized materials, devices, or assistance in the exam room;
- unauthorized assistance with homework;
- unauthorized access to answer keys or questions in advance of the exam;
- copying others' work while concealing authorship;
- altering exam or problem answers or papers after grading to gain a higher grade.
Punishing West Virginia High School Academic Misconduct
Generally, for a West Virginia high school teacher or principal to punish a student severely for academic misconduct, they would need evidence that the student knew of the rule or instruction, deliberately violated it to gain an undue advantage, involved other students, destroyed confidential materials, or otherwise disrupted instruction. Simple misunderstandings of academic customs and norms should lead to remedial measures rather than punishment. The Cabell County High School Student Handbook, for example, leaves it to the teacher to determine any punishment for cheating beyond having to redo the classwork. One might expect more severe punishment, up to suspension or even expulsion, though, if your student is a repeat offender on the cheating front, recruits other students into the scheme, and attempts a cover-up once suspected of cheating. Beware discipline for academic misconduct. It can leave a bad mark on your student's record that can affect future educational and vocational opportunities.
West Virginia High School Academic Misconduct Defense
Academic misconduct charges give our attorneys several opportunities to raise valid arguments and defenses. If, for instance, your student has never cheated before in the manner alleged, we may be able to show that your student misunderstood or was unaware of instructions or simply did not know the academic rules or customs. In that instance, we can help your student advocate for remedial measures like training in academic rules rather than discipline. Even if your student deliberately cheated, the right expression of regret and rehabilitation may relieve your student of punishment. If, instead, school officials indicate the intent to suspend, expel, or otherwise discipline your student with a loss of class rank, academic honors, or other awards and privileges, then we may invoke school or district procedures for a hearing to challenge the discipline as unwise and unnecessary. If you and your student have already lost the hearing, we may be able to appeal the sanction to the district or state level.
West Virginia High School Behavioral Misconduct
Academic misconduct is one thing, while behavioral misconduct is another. Academic misconduct may have no victim. It may be a wrong largely without harm or endangerment, making it easier in many cases to address with remedial measures instead of school removal and punishment. Behavioral misconduct generally carries the opposite risk of harm or threat to student safety, damage to school property, or interference with school operations. The Kanawha County Board of Education Policy on Student Behavior is an example, defining most behavioral misconduct forms as Level III or Level IV violations worthy of school removal, suspension, and expulsion. Those behavioral wrongs include weapons, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco possession, physical assaults and threats of violence, bullying, harassment, and intimidation, vandalism or theft of school property, interference with school fire alarms or fire suppression equipment, and the like.
Punishments for West Virginia High School Behavioral Misconduct
The same Kanawha County Board of Education Policy on Student Behavior also fairly represents the typical punishments that a West Virginia high school principal or district official may seek for serious behavioral violations. Weapons, drugs, and alcohol violations can result in especially severe punishment, including zero-tolerance school removal for a year. Long-term suspension, for instance, for the rest of the school year, is another common form of punishment when the offense endangers others or disrupts the school. Out of sight, out of mind, administrators and teachers may believe and prefer.
Even if the school does not suspend your student long-term, other forms of lesser discipline can still have severe short-term impacts. Your student may well lose sports team privileges, for instance, when your student may need to practice and play to hold a spot on next year's team or qualify for a college scholarship. Beware behavioral misconduct punishments. They can be swift and severe. Let us help both contest the charges if they are false or exaggerate the wrong and mitigate the sanction with other explanatory and excusing evidence.
West Virginia High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Fortunately, constitutional rights generally require that your student's West Virginia high school provide your student with due process if intending to deprive your student of your student's substantial liberty interest in a public school education. West Virginia Administrative Code Section 126-99-5 expressly requires that the high school provide due process whenever seeking to expel a student. Your student's school officials should be providing fair notice of the charges and an opportunity for our attorneys to invoke a formal hearing on the charges before an impartial decision-maker. We can generally ensure that a school does so, even when officials initially refuse. We can then help you and your student identify, gather, organize, and present the needed evidence to exonerate your student or mitigate any penalty.
If you have already lost your student's hearing, we may still be able to take an appeal to district officials or, beyond the district, to the state Board of Education. If you have already lost your student's appeal or missed appeal deadlines, we may be able to obtain alternative special relief from the district's general counsel's office or through civil court review. Don't give up. Retain us to exhaust all potential remedies. We have helped many students by doing so.
West Virginia High School Sexual Misconduct
If behavioral misconduct is generally more severe than academic misconduct, the same may be said about sexual misconduct, that it is often more severe than behavioral misconduct and academic misconduct. The reason is that sexual misconduct can endanger the victim while also undermining student morals, health, and welfare. Sexual misconduct can be the proverbial double whammy, both physically and mentally harmful, and morally reprehensible, wrong. Those harms are, in large part, why federal Title IX regulations require West Virginia high schools to prevent and address sexual misconduct. Schools that fail to do so risk their federal funding and subject themselves to civil liability. Your student's West Virginia high school very likely adopts and follows Title IX rules. The Raleigh County Public Schools Student Code of Conduct, for instance, expressly incorporates Title IX prohibitions and procedures.
Punishment of West Virginia High School Sexual Misconduct
The same Title IX regulations that warn West Virginia high school officials to take sexual misconduct allegations seriously encourage those officials to act on any credible evidence of sexual wrongdoing. Schools generally adopt the lowest proof burden of a preponderance of the evidence. That proof burden means that your student's school officials may discipline your student if the accuser's account is even slightly more credible than your student's evidence. Punishment, swift and severe, may include not only school suspension and expulsion but also campus bans and no-contact orders, isolating your student from the school community. Alternative disciplinary placement in boot camp or reform school would likely follow, with all the attendant discouragement, loss of structure, and loss of peer support.
West Virginia High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
The same Title IX regulations that encourage swift investigation and address of credible complaints of sexual misconduct also provide the accused student with some procedural protections. The investigator may interview your student, giving us the opportunity to help your student present your student's side of the story and other evidence before formal charges are issued. School officials may also conduct a conciliation conference, where we can advocate and negotiate for early voluntary dismissal with appropriate remedial measures and without discipline. If the school determines to proceed with formal charges and discipline, then the school must hold a formal hearing, a right that we can invoke on your student's behalf. We can then help your student gather, organize, and present exonerating and mitigating evidence. As in the case of other forms of misconduct, if your student has already lost the hearing, we may be able to appeal. If your student has already lost the appeal, we may be able to gain alternative special relief through the civil courts or a general counsel's office.
West Virginia High School Sanction Defense
Don't take West Virginia high school misconduct charges as if the school will surely discipline your student. That outcome may not be the case at all if we can present your student's best case for remedial relief. Even if your student has committed the acts that school officials allege, we may be able to present a case to mitigate any disciplinary sanction. Our attorneys know the options that West Virginia high school disciplinary officials may be willing to accept, such as avoiding a disciplinary record for your student but still accomplishing the school's goals and meeting the school's interests. Let us help you and your student with sanction defense, even if your student was responsible for the alleged wrong.
Premier West Virginia High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, Parkersburg, Wheeling, Martinsburg, Fairmont, Weirton, Beckley, Clarksburg, and other West Virginia locations to defend your student against West Virginia high school misconduct charges or to address your student's academic progress issues. We have helped hundreds of students in West Virginia and across the nation achieve successful outcomes for all kinds of school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your West Virginia high school student's case.
