HIGH COURT SAYS SCHOOLS MAY DENY CREDITS TO EXPELLED STUDENTS

INDIANAPOLIS- Students who are expelled from school may also be denied
academic credits for coursework they have already completed, the Indiana
Supreme Court ruled Friday.

In an unanimous decision, justices reversed two lower courts, ruling that
school boards may withhold credit from students who have been expelled,
even if those grades were earned before the expulsion.

School districts statewide commonly deny credits to expelled students. But
the Sollman family of Haubstadt in southwestern Indiana sued and won by
arguing that their son should have received first-semester credits for work
he had already completed before he was removed from school.

In December 1998, when Trent Sollman was a junior at Gibson Southern High
School in Fort Branch, he was expelled for having traces of marijuana in
his pickup truck while on school property.

Because the incident occurred three days before the end of the first
semester, he lost all first-semester credits and was barred from attending
school for the second semester and summer school.

Sollman said the drug residue was left by a friend.

School officials, fearing their authority would be undermined, appealed the
case, insisting they needed severe punishments to deter students from
causing trouble. Schools particularly wanted to discourage last-day or
graduation pranks.

Expulsion alone "may not be a deterrent sufficient enough for a student to
avoid being expelled," Justice Robert D. Rucker wrote for the five-member
court.

"If a student knows, for example, that the ultimate consequence of
violating school policy is expulsion only, then the student may assume the
risk of getting expelled where he already has accumulated sufficient grades
to pass the semester," Rucker wrote.

Trent's mother, Marilyn Sollman, a former music teacher at the high school,
said the family went to court to speak out against expulsions and urge
schools to provide alternative punishments.

"To kick a kid out of school to turn his life around, I thought it was very
extreme," she said. "If he was a habitual troublemaker, I could understand it."

After his expulsion, Trent Sollman earned a GED. He is now enrolled at
Vincennes University, his mother said.

Had the Supreme Court ruled against the school, the state's 294 districts
could not deny credits earned up to expulsion.

Without that deterrent, school boards feared losing a valuable discipline
tool, said J. Robert Kinkle, an attorney for the South Gibson School
District about 20 miles north of Evansville.

"It's important for all the schools in Indiana that the basic
decision-making mechanism with regards to discipline be primarily in the
hands of local school officials," Kinkle said.

Groups representing superintendents and school boards both filed briefs
urging the court not to meddle in their affairs.

"It (expulsion and loss of credits) is an incentive not to get into trouble
_ that's kind of the big stick that schools have," said Julie Slavens, an
attorney for the Indiana School Boards Association.

In arguments before the high court in December 2000, Ray Druley, an
attorney who represented the Sollman family, contended Trent Sollman's
punishment was essentially retroactive _ that he did not receive any credit
for the work he completed up until the time of his expulsion.