A Texas disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP) placement, or boot camp, is not generally where you’d like your student to end up or remain. An emergency ten-day DAEP placement without a hearing may be tolerable until you get things worked out with school officials and get your student back in the regular classroom where your student belongs. But a long term DAEP placement, followed by extensions of that placement, can cripple your student’s academic, social, and other development, and permanently stain your student’s record. Don’t let your student’s Texas K-12 school officials shunt your student off to DAEP and then extend your student’s DAEP placement indefinitely, to your student’s lasting detriment. Retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team for your student’s Texas DAEP defense now by calling 888.535.3686 or using our contact form. Our skilled and experienced attorneys stand ready to help rescue your student from DAEP and return your student to the regular classroom.
Texas DAEP Removal Authority
Don’t underestimate your student’s risk of Texas DAEP removal. Texas Education Code Chapter 37, Subchapter A, requires Texas school districts to maintain DAEP placement as a disciplinary option. While DAEP houses students with weapons, gangs, drugs, alcohol, violence, and other serious behavioral issues, Texas Education Code Section 37.008 authorizes DAEP removal of any unruly, dangerous, or disruptive student. Texas Education Code Sections 37.006, 37.007, and 37.008 further authorize both mandatory and discretionary grounds for DAEP removal. Don’t look now, but school officials could conceivably concoct almost any argument to remove a student who shows the least bit of arguably disruptive or unruly conduct. Texas Education Code Sections 37.006 and 37.007 require DAEP removal for some wrongs, giving school officials the added argument that the statutes remove their discretion, despite the fact that Texas Education Code Section 37.001 requires school officials to consider mitigating factors before imposing DAEP. Those factors include no wrongful intent, no prior record of discipline, acting in self-defense, or suffering a mental disability.
Texas DAEP Removal Duration
Several Texas statutory provisions determine the potential duration of your student’s DAEP placement. These provisions can be relatively complex to locate, interpret, apply, and advocate, especially under any particular factual circumstances. Let our attorneys raise your student’s defenses to a long-term DAEP placement. Do not consent to your student’s DAEP placement without the benefit of our attorneys’ sound advice. Instead, let us evaluate your student’s rights and interests, and help you and your student defend and defeat the DAEP charges as necessary and appropriate for your student’s best interests. The following paragraphs address the terms and conditions your student’s school officials must meet for progressively longer DAEP placements.
Texas Short Term DAEP Three-Day Removal
Initially, Texas Education Code Section 37.005(b) authorizes an out-of-school suspension, including a removal to DAEP, for up to three days for any violation of the school’s student code of conduct that authorizes out-of-school suspension. Generally, Texas school or district student codes of conduct give school officials broad discretion for short-term out-of-school suspensions up to three days. The Dallas Independent School District’s Student Code of Conduct, for instance, authorizes a short-term three-day out-of-school suspension, either in the district’s Reset Center or DAEP, for a wide range of Level II offenses, including non-violent offenses like false accusations and a first fighting offense. Three days may not be a significant school removal in the grand picture of things. But any disciplinary removal can embarrass, distract, burden, and adversely impact your student. Get our help contesting disciplinary charges before school removal if possible.
Texas Emergency DAEP Ten-Day Removal
Texas Education Code Section 37.019 next authorizes emergency removal for up to ten days, without any hearing. Your student’s school principal or other disciplinary official should not remove your student to DAEP without first notifying you and giving you and your student the opportunity for a hearing, unless your student’s conduct meets Section 37.019’s conditions for emergency removal. Those conditions include that your student’s behavior “is so unruly, disruptive, or abusive” as to “seriously interfere[] with a teacher’s ability to communicate effectively with the students in a class, with the ability of the student’s classmates to learn, or with the operation of school or a school-sponsored activity.” Let us help you head off even a short DAEP stay under ten days, if your student’s conduct does not meet one or more of these emergency conditions.
Texas DAEP Removal for the Grading Period
If your student’s school determines to remove your student to DAEP beyond the three-day short-term out-of-school suspension period, and beyond any ten-day emergency period, then Texas Education Code Section 37.009(a) authorizes a suspension “for a period consistent with the student code of conduct.” As you will see in the next section, that period of more than three or ten days must not extend beyond the end of the current grading period. Depending on when during the grading period your student’s DAEP placement begins, that duration could be relatively short or long, but generally not more than the alternative six-week or nine-week grading periods the Texas public schools use. We can help you refer to your student’s school or district code of conduct to see the maximum period that it provides. The Dallas Independent School District Student Code of Conduct, for example, provides for a maximum thirty-day DAEP placement for Level III serious offenses but mandatory expulsion to the district’s special DAEP program for Level IV offenses involving more severe endangerment. Your student has a right to a hearing under Texas Education Code Section 37.0081, though, for any DAEP placement beyond ten days. Let us help you invoke your student’s hearing rights to defend and defeat the DAEP charge.
Texas DAEP Removal Beyond the Grading Period
If your student’s school determines to impose DAEP placement beyond the school’s current grading period in which it first imposed DAEP on your student, or for longer than sixty days if the grading period is unusually long, then Texas Education Code Section 37.009(b) requires the school to notify you and permit you to invoke a formal hearing before the district board. Extending DAEP beyond the grading period or for longer than sixty days, whichever is shorter, requires another formal hearing. You shouldn’t expect such a long DAEP unless your student’s alleged misconduct is especially severe, such as the Level IV offenses listed in the Dallas Independent School District’s Student Code of Conduct. Those offenses include aggravated assault, sexual assault, manslaughter, murder, arson, and felony drug offenses, among other serious offenses. As suggested above, the Dallas Independent School District maintains a special Juvenile Justice DAEP, or JJAEP, for Level IV offenders. Other districts might likewise segregate the most-violent offenders into juvenile justice DAEP placements.
Texas DAEP Removal Beyond School Year End
The next potential period that your student may have to endure DAEP is beyond the end of the school year, into the following school year. Texas Education Code Section 37.009(c) authorizes the school district board to extend a DAEP placement beyond the end of the school year only if “the student’s presence in the regular classroom program or at the student’s regular campus presents a danger of physical harm” or “the student has engaged in serious or persistent misbehavior that violates the district’s student code of conduct.” While the first of these two alternative conditions elevates the DAEP placement standard somewhat to a danger of physical harm, the second of those two alternative conditions permits DAEP placement extending beyond the end of the school year for any student conduct code violation. That’s not much of a safeguard, if any, against an extended DAEP stay. Your student’s school or district code of conduct may place greater limitations on the authority of the school to extend DAEP beyond the end of the school year. As shown above, the Dallas Independent School District Student Code of Conduct limits longer DAEP stays to Level III and Level IV offenses. We can help you defend your student’s DAEP charges or extensions seeking removal beyond the end of the school year.
Texas DAEP Removal Beyond One Year
The next limitation that Texas education laws place on the duration of DAEP is to require further board review and determination, meeting statutory conditions, if the board intends to extend DAEP beyond one full year, not just the end of the school year, but a full calendar year. In this instance of a DAEP placement longer than one year, Texas Education Code Section 37.009(d) provides that the district board must find that “the student is a threat to the safety of other students or to district employees” or simply that “extended placement is in the best interest of the student.” Once again, these statutory conditions elevate the DAEP removal standard barely at all, if at all. For instance, virtually anything the board maintains could arguably be “in the student’s best interest,” as the statutory phrase goes. And for the other instance, any endangering conduct, even so little as a single instance of fighting, could be “a threat to the safety of other students,” as the statutory phrase goes. Yet don’t give in to your student’s extended DAEP placement. Instead, let us contest the DAEP charges and any proceeding to extend the DAEP stay.
The Potential Adverse Impact of DAEP Extensions
When considering how to respond to your student’s Texas K-12 school DAEP charges, do not underestimate the potential adverse impact of an extended DAEP placement. A Texas Education Review study confirmed significantly higher rates of student depression, suicidal ideation, attrition, and dismissal when in DAEP placement. And no wonder. DAEP may have teachers with committed hearts for helping troubled students. But DAEP cannot replicate the structured curriculum, updated facilities, higher expectations and standards, more stable student population, enhanced peer support, long-term teacher relationships, and co-curricular and extracurricular programs of the regular school program. Let us help your student avoid those potential impacts of an extended DAEP stay.
Strategies for Contesting Texas DAEP Extensions
Our attorneys may be able to pursue several strategic and effective strategies to reduce the duration of, or entirely eliminate, your student’s Texas DAEP placement. Those strategies may include:
- Factually contest the DAEP charges through the formal hearing process that Texas Education Code Section 37.0081 mandates;
- Invoke the hearing procedures that Texas Education Code Section 37.009 requires to present defense evidence and challenge the school’s incriminating evidence;
- Advocate for the several potential mitigating factors that Texas Education Code Section 37.001 expressly requires school officials to consider before imposing DAEP;
- Invoke the above hearing procedures for each proposed extension of your student’s DAEP beyond the initial period, until school and district officials relent to terminate your student’s DAEP placement;
- Appeal your student’s adverse DAEP decision under Texas Education Code Section 37.009, if you and your student have already lost hearing decisions;
- Seek state or federal administrative agency review and relief if the school and district have rejected all appeals;
- Seek civil court review and reversal of any adverse DAEP placement remaining after your student has exhausted hearings and appeals, and avenues for administrative agency relief;
- Advocate and negotiate for alternative special relief with the district’s general counsel, drawing on our reputation and relationships, if your student has exhausted all other avenues.
Premier Texas DAEP Student Defense Available
Retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team if your student faces Texas DAEP charges or the school’s effort to extend your student’s DAEP placement. Our attorneys help hundreds of students defend DAEP charges and other disciplinary proceedings both in Texas and nationwide. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain us to address your student’s Texas DAEP charges and efforts to extend DAEP placement.