Introduction
The District expects, encourages, and trusts our students to be safe and make healthy decisions regarding their behavior. When students make poor decisions, there may be consequences and interventions for those actions that are age appropriate and consider the student’s developmental level.
The Student Code of Conduct applies to students at all times while they are on Bend-La Pine Schools property or utilizing school district approved devices/technology, at any school-affiliated activity/event (including, but not limited to athletic events, field trips, sporting events, etc.), while traveling to/from school or off school grounds/outside the school day if their behavior(s) are determined to impact the school community. The District recognizes that some incidents that occur off school grounds may seriously impact school safety and school climate. In those instances, the District may implement consequences and interventions based on the impact on school safety and the school community.
The District strives to enforce all policies, administrative regulations, and practices consistently, fairly, and without bias.
Mitigating circumstances may include:
- Age
- Self-defense
- Lack of knowledge of rules
- Language or cultural factors
- Provocation
- Unidentified or temporary factors
- Disability
Per Board Policy (JG-BP), Bend-La Pine Schools supports school interventions and practices that:
- Protect students and school employees from harm
- Provide opportunities for students to learn from their mistakes
- Foster positive learning environments
- Keep students in school and attending class
- Impose disciplinary sanctions without bias against students from a protected class (per ORS 339.351)
- Implement a graduated set of age-appropriate responses to misconduct that are fair, nondiscriminatory, and proportionate in relation to each student’s individual conduct
- Employ a range of strategies for preventions, intervention, and discipline that take into account a student’s developmental capacities and that are proportionate to the degree and severity of the student’s misbehavior
- Propose, prior to a student’s expulsion, alternative programs of instruction or instruction combined with counseling for the student that are appropriate and accessible to the student
- To the extent practicable, use approaches that are shown through research to be effective in reducing student misbehavior and promoting safe and productive social behavior
- Ensure that school conduct and discipline codes comply with all state and federal laws concerning the education of students with disabilities