We fully understand your very just concerns if your K-12 student faces Texas disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP) charges. Everyone knows that DAEP is a fancy euphemism disguising what we all used to call reform school or boot camp. The trouble is that Texas K-12 school officials have broad state and district authority to impose DAEP for virtually any student code of conduct violation. Our preferred approach in these cases, where the school has substantial evidence of a student’s disciplinary violation, is to recognize the school’s natural interest in addressing, rather than ignoring and potentially exacerbating, student behavioral problems. We can often advocate and negotiate, though, for remedial measures in place of DAEP. Retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team for your student’s Texas DAEP remedial defense. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now. Let our highly qualified attorneys help keep your student out of DAEP reform school or boot camp.
Texas DAEP Removal Risk
Texas K-12 students allegedly engaging in endangering or disruptive misconduct face a significant risk of DAEP removal. Texas school districts across the state don’t maintain DAEP facilities and staff for nothing. Texas Education Code Chapter 37, Subchapter A, requires districts to discipline with DAEP placement, and not just for students with weapons violations, gang activity, drug or alcohol possession, and serious incidents of violence. Texas Education Code Section 37.008 authorizes school officials to send any unruly, dangerous, or disruptive student to DAEP. Texas Education Code Sections 37.006, 37.007, and 37.008 articulate mandatory and discretionary grounds for DAEP placement. For example, Texas Education Code Sections 37.006 and 37.007 require DAEP removal for drug or alcohol possession at school, felony crimes at school, assaults causing injury, and public lewdness or indecent exposure, among other grounds. If your student faces Texas K-12 DAEP charges, take those charges seriously. Retain us to mount an effective defense, including one that offers remedial measures in lieu of DAEP placement.
Defending Texas DAEP Removal Charges
While this article addresses remedial measures as an alternative to DAEP placement, we first want to show that we stand ready to defend and defeat your student’s Texas K-12 DAEP charges. In the case of Texas K-12 DAEP charges, effective defenses may include challenging the district’s factual assertions, attacking the credibility of adverse witnesses through their cross-examination, and presenting exonerating witness testimony, all to undermine the school’s factual allegations. We may also be able to build a strong case in mitigation of any charges for which the school has substantial incriminating evidence. Texas Education Code Section 37.001 requires your student’s school officials to consider the statutory mitigating factors before imposing DAEP. The statutory factors include that your student did not have the required wrongful intent, your student had no prior record of discipline, your student acted in self-defense, or your student suffered a mental disability, keeping your student from appreciating the alleged wrong. We are fully ready to pursue any of these available defenses, depending on your student’s unique circumstances.
Remedial Measures as Texas DAEP Removal Defense
Yet in some DAEP cases, the schools have substantial incriminating evidence of the wrong they allege. Simply attacking incriminating witnesses can also make it appear that the accused student takes no responsibility for whatever wrongs the student may actually have committed. And your student may not have had a mental disability or other statutory factor around which to build a case mitigating the DAEP charges. In that case, the best defense can be a good offense. By good offense, we mean offering the school and district remedial measures that meet their disciplinary interests. Instead of sitting back to defend the charges by poking holes in allegations, we may be able to help you and your student arrange positive measures that your student can readily complete and will benefit from, that will simultaneously show the school and district that your student presents no safety or disruption risks.
The School’s Interest in Texas DAEP Removal
To present an effective defense based on alternative remedial measures, you and your student must first recognize the school and district’s interests in pursuing DAEP removal. As the above statutory authority clearly indicates, DAEP removal accomplishes one primary objective that your student’s school has in a DAEP proceeding: it removes your student as a safety or disruption risk. DAEP charges in essence pursue an out of sight, out of mind strategy, shifting the safety or disruption risk from the regular classroom to the DAEP facility, which the district peculiarly sets up to control those risks. DAEP generally provides closer supervision, stricter dress codes and behavioral rules, greater accountability and punitive measures for minor infractions, zero tolerance policies, and an altered, informal, and individualized structure that is harder for students to disrupt. DAEP classrooms can look like study halls, except with an oppressive air of zero tolerance. What we need to show is that your student does not need any of those measures and instead can conform in the regular classroom, with appropriate behavioral support mandated under federal special education laws.
The School’s Obligation in Texas DAEP Cases
At the same time that your student’s Texas K-12 school officials have substantial school safety and operational interests to protect, they also have an overriding interest in the education of K-12 students. And those students include your student. Texas K-12 schools are not penal colonies. They are not courts or other institutions of justice. The mission of Texas K-12 schools is not to judge, pass sentence, and incarcerate. The mission of Texas K-12 schools is instead to educate every student as far as the school is able. Our presentation of your student’s remedial measures as an alternative to DAEP must highlight the school’s educational mission. That highlighting means that we must show that the measures enable other students in the regular classroom to learn, just as the measures enable your student to learn. We know that DAEP presents substantial learning challenges for your student and other students. We just need to show that the regular classroom, with appropriate remedial measures involving your student, is not only a better site for your student but also a sound learning environment for other students with your student present.
Remedial Measures: Avoiding Texas DAEP Removal
Our attorneys can often propose, advocate, and negotiate for a relatively wide range of potential remedial measures, depending on the accused student’s unique circumstances. Those measures tend to fall into the following categories. Let us help you advocate for the most appropriate of these measures in your student’s own case.
Remedial In-School Suspension and Privilege Limitation
School suspension is the default sanction in many schools when a student misbehaves. Suspension is the first tool that busy principals turn to temporarily remove the misbehaving student and relieve school teachers and other staff members of managing the misbehavior. DAEP is a form of out-of-school suspension. We may be able to advocate as an alternative remedial measure for a short in-school suspension. In-school suspensions can take the form of a special study hall in connection with a temporary suspension of privileges. For instance, when other students go outside for exercise or to the lunchroom, where your student’s alleged misconduct may have occurred, your student’s remedial measure might be to remain in a study hall working on academics. In-school suspensions have the double benefit of preserving your student’s regular classroom attendance and relationships while augmenting your student’s academic studies during the suspension period.
Remedial Counseling, Modeling, and Mentoring
Counseling, modeling, and mentoring represent a second category of remedial measures that school officials may accept, especially when your student has strong relationships with one or more students, teachers, or staff members willing to serve in those roles. Your student may need professional counseling, especially if suffering from a mental or emotional disability and needing compensating mechanisms. Your student may qualify under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for that counseling from school consultants at school expense, or you may prefer to arrange for it from your choice of counselors at your own expense. Counseling can provide great resources for a struggling student, not just when negotiated as an alternative relief. The same is true with a student peer modeling positive behaviors for your student. That modeling already doubtless goes on all around your student, including your student modeling behavior for other students. Formalizing that arrangement can help. Mentoring from an adult or student at a higher grade level than your student can also provide great resources. These measures generally involve nothing but potential gains and are often not at all embarrassing, burdensome, or disruptive.
Remedial Manifestation Determination Reviews
Remedial behavior plans can be another positive intervention that you and your student can offer to avoid DAEP placement risks. If your student has a mental, emotional, or cognitive learning disability protected under the IDEA law, then CFR Section 300.530(e) requires your student’s school officials to conduct a manifestation determination review (MDR) to decide if your student’s alleged DAEP misconduct “had a direct and substantial relationship” to your student’s disability. If so, then the school owes your student prompt special education services under an existing, revised, or newly adopted IEP or Section 504 plan. Texas Education Code Section 29.048 requires school districts to form an Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD) committee to resolve special education disputes. We may be able to invoke your student’s ARD committee rights to a hearing to address and resolve the behavioral issue, not as discipline, but in the disability context.
Remedial Functional Behavior Assessments and Intervention Plans
If your student has a qualifying disability, the federal IDEA law’s CFR Section 300.530(f) offers a related provision that requires the manifestation determination review to conduct a functional behavior assessment(FBA) of your student’s disability. In Texas, the school’s ARD committee would likely authorize the FBA. If the FBA finds that your student’s disability had a substantial relationship to the alleged DAEP misconduct, then the ARD committee must, under the federal regulation, adopt a behavior intervention plan (BIP). The FBA and BIP are perfect remedial measures to offer your student’s school disciplinary officials in a DAEP proceeding, again, if your student has a qualifying disability. Let us pursue these avenues if available to your student.
Remedial School Service
Another remedial measure that your student’s school disciplinary officials may be willing to consider is your student’s offer of remedial school services. Your student’s willingness to provide voluntary school service can show your student’s commitment to the school community and respect for school values and norms. School service need not be embarrassing or burdensome. To the contrary, certain forms of school service can place your student in positions of responsibility and respect, where your student can build supportive teacher, staff, and student relationships, which is the deeper objective of school service. School service may include timing, refereeing, or scorekeeping at school athletic events, acting as a judge or other role player at school debate or speech club events, and any academic activity, such as tutoring or mentoring students at lower grade levels, for which teachers judge your student’s fit. Let us investigate these options and pursue them as remedial measures, an alternative to DAEP placement.
The Potential Adverse Impact of DAEP Placement
In considering whether to accept and pursue these or other remedial measures, as an alternative to DAEP placement, keep in mind how your student’s academic and other development may suffer if the school goes through with DAEP placement. The University of Texas at Austin, Texas Education Review, published a study showing vastly higher rates of depression, suicidal ideation, attrition, and dismissal among DAEP students, when compared to the regular classroom. But you don’t need statistics. The troubled student population and other peculiar features of Texas DAEP should make it obvious that your student will do far better in the regular classroom with appropriate support.
Premier Texas DAEP Student Defense Available
The LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team can effectively and strategically advocate multiple alternatives to Texas DAEP placement if your K-12 student faces serious disciplinary charges. Our attorneys help hundreds of students defend and defeat DAEP charges and other disciplinary proceedings across Texas and nationwide. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for our skilled and experienced defense of your student’s Texas DAEP charges.