FAQs: When called to the principal’s office

YOUR STUDENTS

Student discipline and violence

Student discipline and violence issues encompass a broad range of conduct, from isolated and minor disruption to violent behavior. Laws governing discipline and violence may alter your responsibilities regarding instruction and identification of students with significant behavioral or mental health issues and may require you to make decisions that impact the health and safety of students and teachers. As always, if a situation arises where you feel concerned about your options and/or legal rights and responsibilities regarding student discipline and classroom safety, call TCTA’s Legal Department at 888-879-8282.

Student code of conduct

School districts and open-enrollment charter schools must develop student codes of conduct in conjunction with districtlevel and site-based decision-making committees. SCCs operate in conjunction with the discretionary and mandatory sanctions outlined in Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code. Teachers can expect administrators and the board to enforce the student code of conduct.

The law requires the student code of conduct to specify that consideration will be given to mitigating factors (self-defense, intent, disciplinary history, etc.) when determining whether a student will be suspended, expelled or removed to a disciplinary alternative education program or juvenile justice alternative education program, regardless of whether the decision relates to a mandatory or discretionary removal. The SCC must also include provisions regarding actions that would result in a student’s removal from a school bus.

State law designates the SCC as the appropriate place for campuses to indicate if the use of progressive sanctions, and what those progressive sanctions will be, are the responsibility of the campus behavior coordinator (see below).

Campus behavior coordinators

A 2015 law initiated by TCTA requires each campus to have a designated campus behavior coordinator. This person may be the principal or other campus administrator selected by the principal, and will be the administrator primarily responsible for maintaining student discipline. Though district or campus policy establishes specific duties, the law states that a teacher may send a student to the CBC’s office to maintain discipline. The CBC must respond by using appropriate discipline management techniques that can reasonably be expected to improve behavior before the student may be returned to class. If the student’s behavior does not improve, alternate techniques must be used. Districts are now required to post on their website the email address and dedicated phone number for the person clearly identified as the campus behavior coordinator. If the district is exempt from the requirement to designate a CBC under a District of Innovation plan, the district must post contact information for the campus administrator designated as being responsible for student discipline.

Discipline professional development

Administrators who oversee student discipline must, at least once every three years, attend training on school discipline laws, including distinctions between a principal’s discretionary discipline management technique and a teacher’s discretionary authority to remove a disruptive student from the classroom.

Teacher removal of students from class

State law gives teachers the means to protect a disciplined environment. Teachers can remove from class students who continuously or seriously disrupt learning. This process is a different, more formal process for addressing student discipline that is separate from sending a student to the CBC. A principal can assign the student to a DAEP, suspend or expel the student, or put the student in another teacher’s class. A teacher can refuse a student’s return to class, subject only to the right of the campus placement review committee to place the student back in the class as the best or only alternative placement. TCTA-initiated legislation ensures that a student may not be returned to a teacher’s class without the teacher’s consent if the student had been removed by the teacher for assault causing bodily injury to the teacher. The teacher may not be coerced to consent, and the decision may not be overturned by a disciplinary review committee as with other removals. A teacher can document any conduct by a student that does not conform to the student code of conduct and submit it to the principal. A district cannot discipline a teacher on the basis of such documentation, per a TCTA-initiated bill. TCTA-initiated legislation provides that a student sent by a teacher to the CBC or other administrator’s office, or via a teacher removal from the classroom, is not considered to have been removed for the purposes of reporting data through PEIMS or other similar reports required by state or federal law. Recent legislation prohibits the use of timeout that precludes a student from progressing appropriately in the curriculum and annual goals in the IEP, including physically isolating the student; or a technique or intervention that deprives a student of one or more senses or results in a denial of supervision of the student; but specifies that these provisions do not prohibit a teacher from removing a student from class under current discipline laws.

Removal of students from school buses

A bus driver can send a student to the principal’s office to maintain effective discipline, and the principal must respond with appropriate discipline management techniques.

DAEP placement

The law identifies crimes for which teachers are required to remove students from class, and teachers can expect districts to enforce the mandatory placement provisions. Sec. 37.006 of the Education Code identifies crimes that require DAEP placement, including assault of a teacher. In some cases, a crime committed wholly apart from school, such as retaliation against a teacher, requires DAEP placement. Districts cannot assign a student younger than age 6 to a DAEP, unless the student brings a firearm to school. Schools cannot place elementary students with nonelementary students in DAEPs. Regardless of whether the disciplinary action is mandatory, the CBC must consider whether the student acted in self-defense, the intent or lack of intent at the time the student engaged in the conduct, the student’s disciplinary history, and whether the student has a disability that substantially impairs the student’s capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the conduct. Students who engage in certain elements of the offense of harassment under the Texas Penal Code must be removed from class and sent to a DAEP, subject to the consideration of mitigating factors. Under the law, the student must be removed if the student: 1. initiates communication and in the course of the communication makes a comment, request, suggestion, or proposal that is obscene; 2. threatens, in a manner reasonably likely to alarm the person receiving the threat, to inflict bodily injury on the person or to commit a felony against the person, a member of the person’s family or household, or the person’s property; 3. conveys, in a manner reasonably likely to alarm the person receiving the report, a false report, which is known by the conveyor to be false, that another person has suffered death or serious bodily injury; or 4. sends repeated electronic communications in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another. Similarly, new legislation provides that a student who is expelled for conduct that contains the elements of terroristic threat must be placed in a JJAEP. A student commits an offense if he/she: • threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to cause a reaction of any type to the threat by an official or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies; • places any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury; • prevents or interrupts the occupation or use of a building, room, place of assembly, place to which the public has

access, place of employment or occupation, aircraft, automobile, or other form of conveyance or other public place; • causes impairment or interruption of public communications, public transportation, public water, gas or power supply or other public service; • places the public or a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury; or • influences the conduct or activities of a branch or agency of the federal government, the state, or a political subdivision of the state.

Evaluation of DAEPs

The law requires DAEPs to provide for students’ educational and behavioral needs, and DAEPs’ educational mission is to enable students to perform at grade level. The commissioner of education, as required by law, adopted rules for the annual evaluation of DAEPs. Districts must administer a pre- and post-assessment of academic growth for students placed in DAEPs for 90 school days or longer. The instrument must be administered on the student’s initial placement and on the date of departure, or as near that date as possible. Procedures for administering the pre- and post-assessments must be developed and implemented in accordance with district policy.

Expulsion for serious criminal conduct

Chapter 37 specifies when districts are required or allowed to expel students who engage in very serious crimes, such as aggravated assault, sexual assault, or drug and alcohol offenses.

Expulsion and continued education

In most counties of more than 125,000 people, districts must educate expelled students in a JJAEP. Education of expelled students younger than age 10 must occur in a DAEP. If a student transfers, the new district may continue the expulsion.

Expulsion from a DAEP

A district can expel a student from a DAEP if he/she is documented to have engaged in serious misbehavior while in the DAEP, as defined by law, despite documented behavioral interventions. “Serious misbehavior” is defined as deliberate, violent behavior that poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others, extortion, conduct that constitutes coercion, public lewdness, indecent exposure, criminal mischief as defined by the Penal Code, personal hazing, or harassment of a student or district employee.

Considerations for out-of-school suspension

Districts and teachers are required to provide alternative means of receiving coursework in foundation courses to a student who has been placed in in-school or out-of-school suspension. The district must provide at least one option that does not require internet access.