Parents whose minor student faces Texas K-12 disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP) charges have due concerns over the prospect of their student having to attend DAEP boot camp or reform school. However, parents of female students facing Texas DAEP charges have due cause for much greater concerns. Female students represent a distinct minority in Texas DAEP facilities, the overwhelming population of which involves male students. Those male students in Texas DAEP may have committed offenses including sexual assault or harassment, indecent exposure, and public lewdness, not to mention other violence, gangs, guns, drugs, alcohol, or other offenses. In the Texas DAEP environment, female students can face special risks of physical, mental, and emotional harm, greater cause for isolation and withdrawal, and greater suicide and attrition risks. If you have a female K-12 student facing Texas DAEP charges, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team for your student’s most effective defense. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now. Our skilled and experienced attorneys stand ready to help keep your female student out of Texas DAEP boot camp.
Texas DAEP Female Student Removal Risks
Female students enrolled in Texas K-12 schools may not constitute the vast majority of students transferred to DAEP boot camp, but their risk of DAEP placement is still substantial. Texas Education Code Chapter 37, Subchapter A, authorizes districts to establish DAEP facilities for students committing school weapons offenses, engaging in school gang activity, possessing alcohol or drugs at school, and similarly serious incidents of violence. However, your female K-12 student doesn’t have to commit one of those serious offenses to end up in DAEP. Texas Education Code Section 37.008 further authorizes K-12 school officials to place any unruly, dangerous, or disruptive student in DAEP. Texas Education Code Sections 37.006 and 37.007 even mandate DAEP for certain drug, alcohol, felony crime, assault, and public lewdness or indecent exposure events at school. If your female K-12 student faces DAEP charges, don’t mess around. Retain us to pursue your student’s strongest defenses. You don’t want your female student in Texas DAEP. For a girl or young woman, DAEP placement can mean starting out adult life very much on the wrong foot.
Special DAEP Removal Risks for Female Students
Ordinarily, one might think that male students face greater Texas DAEP removal risks than female students, especially given the vastly greater male student population in DAEP facilities. But don’t misunderstand the statistics. Male students are generally far more likely, whether out of social and environmental cues or physiological causes, or a combination of nature and nurture, to engage in the risk-taking behaviors that can lead to DAEP charges. A Texas Education Review study shows that male students outnumber female students in Texas K-12 DAEP by margins between two to one for a first DAEP placement and three to one for a second or subsequent DAEP placement.
The reason for the disproportionate male DAEP rates may be that male students, like males in the general population outside of the school setting, are generally much more likely than female students to be involved in gang activity, gun or other weapons possession, physical violence, property destruction, and even drug and alcohol possession and distribution, when these are the primary mandatory DAEP grounds for removal. Yet when a female student gets involved in the same activity, she may stand out among the male students, thus marked by school officials as a leader and target for discipline. Don’t be surprised to find that the DAEP charge rate for female students may be greater than the charge rate for male students involved in the same misconduct. Boys get excused, girls get punished. Don’t let that happen to your female student. Let us help defend and defeat your student’s Texas K-12 DAEP charges.
Special DAEP Facility Risks for Female Students
Texas K-12 DAEP boot camp placement can also present significant special risks for female students. Those special risks fall into the following categories. Our attorneys can raise these concerns as additional grounds on which to advocate against your female student’s DAEP placement. Let us help you minimize and eliminate the risk of your student’s DAEP placement.
Physical Safety Issues for Female Students in Texas DAEP
The first concern that female students can especially face in Texas DAEP placement has to do with their physical safety against student violence. The DAEP student population can include students who committed significant physical violence in the regular classroom, not just simple assaults involving fights but also aggravated assaults causing injury and even assaults with a deadly weapon. The DAEP student population can also include students with severe behavioral issues that can lead to violent outbursts. Female students may, in general, not only lack the physical strength and physical safety skills of the general male student population, but also because of their different sex and greater physical vulnerability can become the deliberate targets of student aggression. Beware of the physical safety risks for female students in Texas DAEP facilities.
Sexual Assault Risks for Female Students in Texas DAEP
A second concern that female students removed to Texas DAEP facilities can face involves the sexual assault risk. The Texas DAEP student population can include students who committed sexual assaults and sexual harassment in the regular school program. That population of prior sexual offenders increases the risk of repeat offenses. Because of their generally weaker physical strength and defensive skills, and their opposite sex attraction, female students in the DAEP facility can face significantly greater risks of sexual assault and harassment than female students in the regular school program, where those risks can already be significant. Beware the sexual assault and harassment risks for Texas DAEP female students.
Mental Health Issues for Female Students in Texas DAEP
Another concern that female students in Texas DAEP facilities can face involves significantly greater mental and emotional health risks. A University of Texas at Austin study of Texas DAEP students, published in the Texas Education Review, has shown significantly greater depression, suicidal ideation, attrition, and dismissal rates among DAEP students generally, including both male and female DAEP students, when compared to the regular classroom. A National Library of Medicine study reports that female students in the regular school program population have significantly higher rates of mental health issues than male students. Female students are more prone to mental health issues even when not stressed by the DAEP environment, often around eating, anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Imagine the challenges that your female student could face in DAEP, without supportive long-term peer and teacher relationships. But don’t let that happen. Get our defense help.
Academic Progress Issues for Female Students in Texas DAEP
Another special concern that your female student may face if placed in Texas K-12 DAEP involves academic progress issues. The Texas Education Review study just cited above already shows the poor retention and graduation rates for Texas DAEP students in general, both male and female. The causes are well known, involving the lack of a structured classroom curriculum, absent peer support or even negative peer influences, short-term teacher relationships with lower expectations, no co-curricular and extracurricular programs, outdated facilities, and inadequate resources. A National Library of Medicine study reports that female students can especially depend on social and emotional engagement, peer support, and teacher relationships, all of which are negatively affected in DAEP. Your female student could suffer greater academic losses and negative impacts from DAEP placement, which is exactly why you should retain our attorneys to defend DAEP charges.
Moral Issues for Female Students in Texas DAEP
Another special concern that your female student may face if removed to Texas K-12 DAEP involves the moral concerns. You’ve already seen above that Texas Education Code Sections 37.006 and 37.007 mandate DAEP for public lewdness and indecent exposure, among other moral, health, and welfare issues such as gang activity, drug and alcohol possession, and weapons possession. While both male and female students are subject to similar temptation and corruption, female students may be less physically, mentally, and emotionally prepared to defend themselves against moral persuasion and coercion when targeted by stronger and more aggressive males and larger male groups. Few fathers would want their daughters hanging around DAEP populations, given the disciplinary records of students in that population.
Pregnancy Issues for Female Students in Texas DAEP
Pregnancy, child bearing, and child rearing are other special issues that female students may face in Texas DAEP placements. DAEP is not technically for female students. But Texas K-12 school officials may subtly pressure pregnant students and their parents to accept DAEP removal as an accommodation, because of the greater flexibility, individuality, and informality of the DAEP curriculum and schedules.
Special DAEP Defense Issues for Female Students
Because of the above special DAEP discipline risks and facility risks for female students, female students facing DAEP charges also have special defense issues for our attorneys to skillfully handle. Your female student’s Texas K-12 school disciplinary officials may be so used to managing DAEP proceedings involving male students that bringing DAEP charges against a female student may induce peculiar sexual biases. Working from those biases, school officials may regard your female student as a temptress, instigator, ringleader, bad influence, or bad girl against whom to protect other male and female students by banishment to DAEP. Parents of other students involved in the same alleged misconduct may even target your female student, exhibiting the same biases.
DAEP Defense Opportunities for Female Students
While your female student can face any one or several of the above special issues, when facing Texas DAEP charges, our attorneys know how to advocate the fact that your student is female rather than male for special defense opportunities. Yes, being female presents special DAEP risks. However, in the hands of our skilled attorneys, being female can also present the following special DAEP defense opportunities.
Mitigating Factors as Special Female Student DAEP Defense
Texas Education Code Section 37.001 requires your female student’s school officials to consider statutory mitigating factors before imposing DAEP. The statutory factors include no wrongful intent, no prior record of discipline, acting in self-defense, or suffering a mental disability keeping your student from appreciating the alleged wrong. While both male and female students can raise any of these mitigating factors that may be present in their case, you’ve seen above that female students may be more likely to suffer mental disability, have no prior discipline, or act in self-defense. Our attorneys can not only raise any of these mitigating factors present in your female student’s case but can also raise the special risks of DAEP placement that female students can face. In other words, we know how to give appropriate narrative context to your female student’s DAEP defense.
Manifestation Review as Special Female Student DAEP Defense
If your female student has a mental or emotional disability protected under the IDEA law, as more female students may have than male students especially around anxiety, eating, and obsessive-compulsive disorders, then a related federal regulation requires school officials to conduct a manifestation determination review (MDR) to see whether your student’s alleged misconduct “had a direct and substantial relationship” to the disability. We may be able to invoke your student’s MDR rights to resolve the DAEP charges as a disability issue rather than a disciplinary issue.
Premier Texas DAEP Student Defense Available
If you have a female K-12 student facing Texas DAEP charges, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team to help your student defend and defeat those charges, to remain safe and secure in the regular classroom. Our skilled and experienced attorneys help hundreds of students defend and defeat disciplinary charges of all kinds across Texas and nationwide. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for our strategic and effective defense of your female student’s Texas DAEP charges.