Educational due process and adjudicated youth: A legal analysis of school district policy, procedures, and practices in Florida

The study was a legal analysis of educational due process and adjudicated youth in the state of Florida. Using a survey and the Internet, the researcher gathered the policies, procedures, and practices from the sixty-seven school districts that summarized the educational placement process for adjudicated youth following the completion of Department of Juvenile Justice programs. The responses were categorized into districts with written policies, unwritten procedures, and no practices and analyzed according to the identified questions.; The study had two goals. The first was to determine whether adjudicated youth in the state of Florida have a right to educational services in the public schools. The second was to identify the educational due process required to ensure that adjudicated students received the services to which they were entitled. In order to achieve these goals, the information in the study, including educational literature, legal reviews, case law, Florida statutes, Florida Board of Education regulations, and the Attorney's General Opinions, were examined to formulate four questions of analysis. These questions were then applied to each the sixty-seven district policies, procedures, and practices and depicted in four charts.; The analysis showed that of the sixty-seven districts, twenty-one had written policies, twenty-eight had unwritten procedures, and eighteen had no policies or procedures. Examination of the policies and procedures also revealed that thirty-one of the forty-nine districts with policies or procedures had some type of individualized decision-making process in place regarding adjudicated youth. Twenty-nine of the forty-nine districts required attendance at an alternative program at least temporarily. Nineteen of the forty-nine districts provided regular educational placement as an option for returning adjudicated students. Twenty-four of the forty-nine districts had specific procedures for Special Education students.; Based on these results, a model policy was developed to provide guidance for all the Florida districts to best address the needs of adjudicated youth, maintain the integrity of the educational environment, and meet educational due process requirements. This model policy addresses Florida statutes and regulations as well as current case law and literary recommendations.