You made a substantial commitment when you entrusted your student's education to a Virginia high school. Virginia generally provides strong support for public education. However, the experience of individual high school students can vary widely, depending in large part on the particular school and its teachers, principal, and other staff. If your student faces academic failure or disciplinary charges at their Virginia high school, then you need help to keep your student in the regular classroom with your student's grade peers, and on track toward timely graduation with a clean school record. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for your student's best outcome. We are available in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Arlington, Richmond, Newport News, Alexandria, Hampton, Roanoke, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Lynchburg, and other Virginia locations. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now for strategic and effective high school student defense services.
A Virginia High School Parent's Interests
As the parent of a Virginia high school student, you know what you want and expect for your student out of high school education. You and your student may be planning for your student to attend one of Virginia's several outstanding college or university programs, or a similar program in another state. You and your student may also have a fine vocational training program or other opportunity in mind. You and your student likely also expect your student to graduate, having developed not only academically but also socially, emotionally, physically, and in other ways, to your student's maximum capacity. Those are all highly laudable goals and interests. They should also be achievable, if you can help your student overcome the academic failure or disciplinary issues your student currently faces. Let us help you and your student achieve those goals and preserve those fine ambitions.
Virginia High School Discipline Impacts
Parents of Virginia high school students who face disciplinary charges or academic progress issues need to know the potential adverse impacts of misconduct findings and school discipline. For you to devote the right time, attention, and resources to your student's school issues, you need to know what your student has at stake. Keep in mind that your student's school officials may suspend and expel your student, and send your student to an alternative disciplinary high school, otherwise known as a reform school or boot camp. Your student's school officials may detain your student after school and on Saturdays, deny your student participation on high school athletic teams or in clubs or social activities, and deprive your student of class rank, awards, and honors. These and other forms of school discipline can not only interrupt your student's education and development, while causing mental and emotional distress and other psychological trauma, but also affect your student's admission to preferred college and university programs or vocational training programs. Your student can lose a wide range of important opportunities simply because of high school discipline. Don't let that happen. Retain us to represent and defend your student against high school disciplinary or academic progress issues.
Virginia's Education Discipline System
Virginia, like other states, has an elaborate set of laws, rules, and regulations governing high school student discipline. Your Virginia high school student's matter depends in part on the authority those laws confer and the procedures those laws require. We can help you and your student navigate and deploy those laws to your student's best outcome. For example, Virginia Code Section 22.1-277 authorizes the state's high schools and other elementary and secondary schools to suspend and expel students, but only when the school has sufficient cause to do so. For another example, Virginia Code Section 22.1-16.6 requires the state's Board of Education to establish alternatives to school suspensions. While these and other laws generally empower school officials to pursue discipline against your student, the laws also limit those powers and provide for protective procedures. Let us help you and your student put the law to its best effect.
Virginia Board of Education Authority
Virginia's education laws create the state's Board of Education under Virginia Code Section 22.1-2, vesting the Board with the authority to establish and administer the state's public elementary and secondary schools, including your student's high school. The Virginia Board of Education has the primary authority over your Virginia high school student's education. The Board of Education, for instance, may mandate high school graduation requirements, including the benchmarks that your student must meet to move through the high school grades. The Board of Education may also mandate school safety rules having to do with weapons, explosives, drugs, alcohol, gang activity, bullying, hazing, and other state law prohibitions. Your Virginia high school student's disciplinary or academic progress matter thus depends in part on the powers and enactments of the state's Board of Education, including its administrative regulations. We can help you navigate, challenge, and deploy these Board of Education powers for your student's best disciplinary or academic progress outcome.
Virginia School District Authority
Other Virginia education laws authorize the Board of Education to establish local school districts and empower district superintendents to administer those local school districts. Virginia Code Section 22.1-79 specifically empowers the local school district board, through its district superintendent, to enforce the state's school laws, including those having to do with student discipline. Virginia Code Section 22.1-277.06 further specifically empowers the local district board to expel students who violate state education laws on subjects like weapons or drugs in school, bullying or hazing, or who violate the district's student conduct code. Virginia Code Section 22.1-279.6 expressly authorizes and requires the local district to adopt a student code of conduct consistent with the state Board of Education's model conduct code. Once again, our attorneys can help you and your student navigate, challenge, and deploy these powers for your student's best disciplinary outcome.
Virginia Local High School Authority
Ultimately, though, you and your student are most likely to deal at least initially with your Virginia high school student's building principal, teachers, and other local high school officials. Your student's school principal has substantial disciplinary authority. For instance, Virginia Code Section 22.1-277.04 empowers the principal to suspend your student for up to ten days without higher administrative review. Other provisions give the principal the responsibility to notify you, the parent, of your student's suspension and empower the principal to readmit your student to the school after suspension. The principal will also generally be the first administrative official to enforce the high school's or school district's student code of conduct, after any action the teacher imposes. Look to the district or high school student code of conduct for detailed rules and expectations, like those the following codes impose:
- the Roanoke City Public Schools Standards & Expectations for Student Behavior;
- the Virginia Beach City Public Schools Code of Conduct;
- the Richmond County Public Schools Code of Student Conduct; and
- the Arlington Public Schools Student Code of Conduct.
Virginia High School Academic Misconduct
Virginia high school students can face several different kinds of misconduct charges. Academic misconduct, also known as cheating or academic dishonesty, is one type of disciplinary charge that your Virginia high school student may face. Don't be surprised if your student faces cheating charges. High schools are preparing students for higher education, vocational education, and other positions of responsibility, where dishonesty can lead to public harm. Cheating may not only violate school academic standards and annoy or anger teachers and other school officials but also disrupt and degrade the school culture and reputation. Beware of cheating charges. The Richmond County Public Schools Code of Student Conduct, for example, expressly prohibits several forms of academic dishonesty, including cheating. The Virginia Beach City Public Schools Code of Conduct, for another example, prohibits scholastic dishonesty, including cheating. Your student's cheating charge may involve one or more of these common forms of cheating prohibitions:
- unauthorized materials or student assistance on exams;
- unauthorized help on homework or other assignments;
- asking for or using another student's answers to assignments;
- offering or providing answers for another student's assignment;
- copying without credit, otherwise known as plagiarism; or
- faking citations, research, data, or other information.
Punishing Virginia High School Academic Misconduct
Virginia state high school officials may give your student a relative pass on a first cheating offense, especially if the involved teacher believes that your student misunderstood instructions, customs, and conventions. High school students may, after all, still be learning what it means to give proper attribution in a research paper. The Roanoke City Public Schools Standards & Expectations for Student Behavior, for instance, thus regards a first cheating violation as punishable only as a first or second-level offense, typically involving remedial correction rather than punitive discipline, not a third or fourth-level offense reserved for more serious misconduct. But if school officials charge your student with a flagrant violation, a second or subsequent violation, or violations that disrupt the instruction, then your student could face discipline right up to suspension or expulsion.
Virginia High School Academic Misconduct Impacts
Beware the adverse impact on your Virginia high school student of any level of academic misconduct discipline. Of course, school suspension and expulsion can disrupt your student's learning and damage your student's confidence and motivation. But even lesser sanctions can discourage your student and leave a mark on your student's otherwise clean record, interfering with college admissions or other future opportunities. Loss of academic honors, awards, and class standing, as well as loss of athletic privileges and club and social activities, can embarrass and isolate your student, impacting social and emotional development. Beware the impact of academic misconduct discipline.
Virginia High School Academic Misconduct Defense
Your student's Virginia high school and school district should provide protective procedures in the event that school officials insist on pursuing formal discipline, especially out-of-school suspension or expulsion, for academic misconduct. We can help you invoke those protective procedures. We may be able to propose alternative remedial relief that keeps your student from losing school standing or privileges and keeps your student's record clear of damaging discipline. We may also be able to take administrative appeals to the district or a state agency, negotiate special relief from oversight officials, and pursue court relief if necessary.
Virginia High School Behavioral Misconduct
Virginia high schools also have the state and district authority to punish behavioral misconduct. Behavioral misconduct does not involve cheating or other academic dishonesty but instead involves conduct that disrupts school operations, endangers students or staff, damages school property, or affects student health, welfare, and morals. Your student's high school code of conduct likely includes many rules and prohibitions relating to common or uncommon student behavioral misconduct. See, for example, the Richmond County Public Schools Code of Student Conduct, which prohibits arson, bullying, gangs, gambling, drugs, stalking, theft, intimidation, vandalism, and many other wrongs. Your student's high school code of conduct will have similar provisions. Virginia school district and high school conduct codes commonly prohibit:
- student conduct that intimidates, bullies, hazes, or otherwise annoys, harasses, or offends other students, and other coercive behavior;
- student conduct like fighting, other physical assaults, and violence or threats of violence;
- student conduct that harasses or discriminates based on sex, race, religion, disability, or other protected characteristics;
- student possession on school premises or at school off-campus events of weapons, fireworks, explosives, or other dangerous materials or devices;
- student misuse of or interference with fire alarms or fire suppression equipment;
- student protests blocking entrances, exits, sidewalks, roadways, hallways, offices, classrooms, and other facilities;
- student possession of alcohol, drugs, tobacco, or pornography affecting student morals and welfare;
- student conduct involving theft, damage or destruction of property, or other vandalism;
- student unauthorized access or trespass on school facilities;
- computer misuse, sexting, cyberbullying, or unauthorized access to electronic files or records;
- student disobedience of school authorities or student insubordination or disrespect toward teachers or other staff; and
- student tardiness, chronic absenteeism, or truancy.
Virginia High School Behavioral Misconduct Impacts
Depending on the nature, severity, frequency, and reprehensibility of the involved conduct, behavioral misconduct discipline can have serious adverse effects on your Virginia state high school student's education and future prospects. Colleges, universities, and vocational programs may regard injurious, disruptive, or endangering high school misbehavior as grounds to refuse admission to protect the program's students and staff. Behavioral misconduct in high school may also convince vocational or professional licensing boards to deny privileges for the same reason. And, of course, high school behavioral misconduct discipline that removes your student from the regular classroom, expels your student from the school, and sends your student to a disciplinary boot camp or reform school can cripple your student's education and destroy your student's self-image and confidence. Even a simple loss of athletic and social privileges in high school can adversely affect students' social and emotional development.
Virginia High School Behavioral Misconduct Defense
Don't let your student suffer those behavioral discipline harms. We can help you and your student arrange informal conciliation conferences or mediation at which we may be able to negotiate remedial relief rather than disciplinary punishment. We can alternatively invoke the school district's formal hearing procedures, to be sure your student gets the chance to give your student's account of events to an independent panel of decision-makers who won't hold biases and conflicts of interest against your student. If you have already lost your student's formal hearing, we can help you and your student take available appeals to higher district or state authorities. Your student may also have disability, non-discrimination, anti-bullying, and other statutory rights that we can enforce through administrative proceedings and even in the civil courts, to keep your student from suffering damaging behavioral discipline. Let us fight for your student's rights, reputation, and future. Don't let high school behavioral discipline ruin your student's education and prospects, and harm your student's development. Get our help.
Virginia High School Sexual Misconduct
If your Virginia high school student instead faces sexual misconduct charges, then you and your student face a different set of concerns and procedures. Federal Title IX regulations require Virginia state schools receiving federal funding to prohibit, prevent, and punish sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. The same Title IX regulations further require your student's high school to prevent and punish sexual harassment, which involves sexually offensive advances, communication, or conduct that interferes with another student's education. Your student's high school will very likely have a Title IX policy like the policy included in the Virginia Beach City Public Schools Code of Conduct. Virginia high school officials take sexual misconduct allegations seriously, not only because they want to protect student safety but also because schools can lose their federal funding and suffer regulatory penalties and civil liability if they do not respond to complaints appropriately. Your student thus faces an uphill battle in disputing sexual misconduct allegations and avoiding Title IX discipline. Let our skilled and experienced attorneys help you and your student fight the difficult battle against sexual misconduct charges.
Virginia High School Sexual Misconduct Impacts
Of all the suspicions, allegations, and charges to which you don't want your student to succumb, sexual misconduct should be at the top of the list. Sexual misconduct allegations can carry a taint not only of disobedience and danger but also of bad character. College and university admissions committees, vocational training programs, and even certification boards and employers can all hold high school sexual misconduct discipline against your student, denying your student access to education, training, and employment. Those are potential long-term effects. Your student's high school may also promptly kick your student out of school, banishing your student to an alternative boot camp or to home studies. Your student could lose all the supportive peer, teacher, advisor, and mentor relationships that generally make a difference in a student's opportunities and development. The associated mental and emotional distress can further damage your student.
Virginia High School Sexual Misconduct Defense
Under these circumstances, and with these potential impacts, your student needs skilled and experienced attorney representation in your student's corner to strategically and effectively defend Virginia high school Title IX sexual misconduct charges. Your student's school disciplinary officials may otherwise jump to conclusions, denying your student the protective procedures through which your student could otherwise challenge false, exaggerated, and unfair allegations, and unduly harsh punishment. We may be able to arrange informal resolution conferences, proposing remedial relief that meets the school's safety interests while preserving your student's enrollment. Alternatively, we can pursue your student's defense through formal hearings and appeals, and with civil court review if necessary. If you have already lost all hearings and appeals, let us pursue special alternative relief through the district's general counsel's office or outside retained counsel.
Virginia High School Academic Progress Issues
Your Virginia high school student may not face any such academic, behavioral, or sexual misconduct charges. Your student's high school issue may instead involve your student's academic failure, academic struggles, and school threats to hold your student back or expel your student to an alternative disciplinary high school. High school officials can not only hold back a student who fails to meet the state's academic benchmarks, and even deny graduation. School officials may also label a student's academic struggles as disruptive, using those grounds to suspend and expel the student, and banish the student to an alternative high school. Virginia Code Section 22.1-258, for instance, authorizes high school officials to determine a student's truancy, when chronic absences contribute to the student's failure to meet academic benchmarks. Beware of academic progress issues. Don't minimize or ignore them, especially when school officials threaten to hold your student back or expel your student. Let us help your student avoid academic progress discipline.
Virginia High School Academic Failure Causes
Academic failure or unsatisfactory progress issues are often not simply learning problems. The school's failure to provide mandated disability accommodations, prevent unlawful bullying or hazing, or enforce anti-discrimination and harassment laws can also contribute to student academic issues. Virginia high schools have federal and state law duties to find, diagnose, and accommodate student learning disabilities. They also have duties to protect your student against bullying, hazing, harassment, and intimidation, all of which may be the cause of your student's academic struggles. Your student's illness or injury, or even the illness, injury, or death of a family member or friend, can also impact your student's studies. Get our help enforcing your student's rights to avoid academic progress discipline.
Addressing Virginia High School Academic Progress Issues
As in the case of academic or behavioral misconduct matters, your student's Virginia high school should provide your student with protective procedures against school suspension or expulsion, and other severe discipline, over academic failure or other academic progress issues. The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), for instance, requires school officials to conduct a special review before changing any placement, accommodations, or services your student enjoys under an individualized education program (IEP). Thus, if your student has a disability, the school may not be able to change your student's placement without giving us a chance to present evidence at a review hearing that your student's struggles are due to the school's failure to accommodate the disability. We may be able to invoke other district procedures and state or federal laws, rules, and regulations, to protect your student from discipline for academic progress issues.
Virginia High School Disciplinary Sanctions
Your Virginia high school student may face a range of potential disciplinary sanctions all the way up to suspension, expulsion, and alternative disciplinary placement. With our attorneys' skilled advocacy, though, your student's high school disciplinary officials may remember their commitment to the school's educational mission and thus instead consider restorative practices. The Arlington Public Schools Student Code of Conduct, for instance, urges administrators to begin with collaborative, constructive resolutions before considering punitive measures. Remedial relief may include education, training, school service, mentoring, coaching, and support services. Yet the same code then goes on to authorize discipline in the form of in-school suspension, after school and Saturday detention, loss of privileges, out-of-school suspension, and expulsion. The Virginia Beach City Public Schools Code of Conduct likewise first urges the use of positive behavioral supports before authorizing outright discipline. Your student's high school or district code of conduct will authorize similar measures.
Virginia High School Disciplinary Sanction Issues
While any discipline should be a cause for concern, your Virginia high school student may face special disciplinary sanction issues. Given the wide range of available sanctions, you might think and hope that your student's school disciplinary officials would craft the outcome to fit your student's needs and the nature of any misconduct. But disciplinary officials are human. They can exhibit human biases, prejudices, and conflicts of interest, imposing overly harsh or even unwarranted discipline, in cases without merit or involving only nominal wrongs. They can, at times, overlook the accused student's unaccommodated disability or discrimination, harassment, and bullying that triggered the misconduct as a reaction. Or they may simply make bad judgments, ignoring the injustice of imposing damaging discipline when remedial relief would better serve the school and your student. Let us help you ensure that any discipline the school imposes is the least discipline necessary to accomplish legitimate objectives. Let us help you present your student's mitigating evidence and constructive alternatives to discipline.
Virginia High School Discipline Limitations
Education laws limit the discipline that Virginia high school officials can impose in certain cases. For instance, Virginia Code Section 22.1-279.1 prohibits any form of corporal punishment, such as spanking or paddling. For another example, Virginia Code Section 22.1-279:1:1 limits the use of student seclusion or restraint as discipline, prohibiting any discipline that creates a significant risk of danger to the student. Similarly, the federal IDEA law prohibits the school from altering your student's placement under an individualized education plan (IEP) without first conducting a review to ensure that your student's disability did not trigger the misconduct for which the school intends to punish with the placement change. Our attorneys know how to identify and enforce these and other limitations to protect your student against inappropriate or unlawful sanctions.
Virginia High School Student Defense Rights
Fortunately, your student has certain constitutional rights against school removal without due process of law. Due process generally includes the right to fair notice and a hearing before an independent and unbiased decision maker. Virginia Code Section 22.1-279.6 and other laws and regulations confirm those due process rights in the course of any disciplinary proceeding involving your student's school suspension or expulsion. Your student should have notice of the charges and a hearing before a district official or panel. We can invoke these protective procedures to ensure that independent officials hear your student's side of the story and that your student has the best possible disciplinary outcome.
Virginia High School Student Defense Services
You would do well, though, to keep in mind that protective procedures are not usually self-executing. Instead, you and your student must generally step up and step forward, requesting, invoking, and demanding the benefit of those procedural protections. If you do not do so, the school may effectively default your student on the charges, imposing discipline without hearing your student's exonerating and mitigating evidence. That's why you need to retain our skilled and experienced attorneys, who can ensure that your student gets the benefit of all due procedures. We can not only invoke hearings but also challenge the school's allegations. If you have already lost the hearing, we may be able to take an administrative appeal to reverse the discipline. If you have already lost all appeals, we may be able to negotiate alternative special relief through the district's general counsel office. Court review may also be available and appropriate.
Premier Virginia High School Student Defense
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Arlington, Richmond, Newport News, Alexandria, Hampton, Roanoke, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Lynchburg, and other Virginia locations to defend your student against Virginia high school disciplinary charges. Hundreds of students nationwide have trusted our attorneys for successful defense of school charges. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your Virginia high school student's case.
