Legal Question in Education Law in Missouri

Re: Preventing student from involvment of school event

This is one of those troubling areas where individual rights bump up against the rights of the many.

Try to look at this from the school's position. If the school lets your nephew participate and he subsequently conducts himself badly, he has not ruined HIS graduation, he's ruined everyone's graduation.

If my child is in that class, and I knew that the school knew or suspected a problem before, but bowed to pressure to admit a child it knew to be unruly and disruptive, I would be upset.

Essentially the school system has a choice to make: does it make your nephew's family mad, or everyone's family mad. That's a pretty easy choice for a school system to make.

If indeed your nephew has had some excessive issues with ISS and OSS during his tenure at school, perhaps this is a lesson -- one of those "hard lessons" -- that he should be made to learn from. The real world is not like school, and you don't get ISS for robbing a convenience store. Yet, by protecting children from the natural consequences of their behavior, parents sometimes wind up placing their child on the path toward crime.

If you seek legal advice from an attorney and pay him to do so, there is probably a remedy available to you for injunctive relief. You could probably get a court to enjoin the school and force them to permit your nephew to march in graduation. If he has a recognized disability, denial may be a violation of the Rehabilitation Act.

The issue is not so much whether a legal remedy is available, in my view, as whether it is a good thing to teach this child that his parents will come to the rescue when his behavior gets him in trouble.

I realize this is not what you want to hear. But think about it before you call a lawyer.