Editorial: Include due process in school discipline

As sure as the sun rises in the east, some kids will get in trouble in school. Just ask high school assistant principals who spend their days dealing with incidents ranging from name calling in the hallways to weapons in backpacks.

But no matter what students do -- or are accused of doing -- they deserve the right to tell their side of the story.

A Minneapolis family's recent challenge to the discipline their son received highlights that point.

Since 2006, an average of 277 Minneapolis students a year were sent to different schools under the district's administrative-transfer policy. School principals can move students out of one school and into another one for any reason -- with or without the student's consent.

Donald Kaplan and Thea Nelson didn't just accept their child's forced transfer. In a suit filed earlier this year, they said their son JK (as he was identified in court papers to protect his privacy) was suspended, then shipped off to another school, without due process.

They asked the court to allow him to stay at Southwest High because changing schools would disrupt plans to play sports and continue in the International Baccalaureate program and would affect his ability to get into a top-notch college.

JK was disciplined because of an incident at a school-sponsored baseball training trip to Florida last March. The teenager was wrestling with a friend and had him pinned down. Another student exposed his genitals in the friend's face, a demeaning act known as "tea bagging."

But according to court documents, school staff interviewed the victim, the other boy involved (who was also suspended and transferred) and others on the trip. Based on that information, the decision was made to transfer, not expel, JK.

Attorneys from the School Law Center in St. Paul who represented JK said that the district uses administrative transfers to avoid the procedures, including written notices, that must be followed in suspension and expulsion cases under Minnesota's Pupil Fair Dismissal Act.

Those rules don't apply to transfers.

Last summer, a judge denied JK's request to stay at Southwest, ruling that there is no constitutional basis to reverse the principal's decision to move him. The court expressed no opinion on whether JK received adequate due process, calling that an issue "that remained to be litigated."

Minneapolis school district officials deny any wrongdoing, but they settled the lawsuit late last month by agreeing to pay $20,000 of JK's attorney's fees, erasing the record of his transfer and suspension, and helping him get reinstated for varsity athletics at his new school.

According to school district officials, students are indeed heard before they are suspended -- and suspension almost always precedes an administrative transfer.

They point out that transfers are used for a variety of reasons and that many of the moves are either requested by students or done with their consent. Still, as a result of the legal action, the district has rightly reviewed and clarified its transfer policies.

It's understandable that the principal took the situation seriously and didn't treat it as a harmless prank. There should be consequences for students who bully, harass or otherwise intimidate their classmates.

This situation was described by school officials as "an incident of sexual harassment/assault while on a school trip" -- so some form of discipline was merited.

At the same time, teenagers, like adults, are innocent until proven guilty and deserve the opportunity to defend themselves.