Ruling Favors Appeal of Suspension to the School Board

Eileen Murdock’s daughter, now a senior at Dominion High School, was suspended last April, along with several other classmates, for supposedly possessing or consuming alcohol during a school trip to France over spring break. While administrators say that the students were suspended for 10 days, which constitutes a short-term suspension, parents argue that because their children were prohibited from participating in some activities abroad, the actual suspensions were longer.

This would make the suspensions long-term, which would give Murdock the right to appeal the suspension to the Loudoun County School Board. With short-term suspensions, the superintendent has final say.

The superintendent’s designee, Harry Bibb, met with Murdock on May 13 to discuss the suspension. He sent Murdock a letter on May 28, informing her that he decided not to overturn the suspension. By law, only principals have the authority to issue suspensions up to 10 days. Parents may also choose not to appeal, which is most often the case, according to Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman Wayde Byard.

When Murdock felt that her voice was not being heard, she took her case to the Loudoun County Circuit Court. School administrators argued that Murdock did not file an appeal to the suspension in a timely manner, so her daughter’s suspension should stand on her record. Murdock, however, claimed that she was never given an official written notification of her daughter’s suspension, so her 30-day statute of limitations should never started, she said.

 “The difference between 10 days and 11 days is not a long period of time [but it determines], whether the School Board hears the case,” said Judge Thomas Horne of the Loudoun County Circuit Court.

Horne ruled that the suspension was longer than 10 days, so Murdock should have the right to be heard by the School Board. To be clear, this does not remove the suspension from her daughter’s record, but allows the School Board to hear the case on its merits. He said that in the event that the case comes back to the circuit court after being heard by the School Board, at least he would have a record of notifications and administrative processes.

Horne told defense attorney Elizabeth Dillon, who represented Superintendent Edgar Hatrick, to give a written order of the suspension to Murdock so that she may restart her appeal as an administrative matter.

Murdock said she was very satisfied with Horne’s ruling and that this is how the matter should have been handled from the start. She hoped that all parents would take this as an opportunity to appeal their children’s allegedly unjust suspensions.

“It would be nice if Dr. (John )Brewer (Principal of Dominion High School) extended (this decision) to all students without us having to ask,” said Linda Hollingsworth, the mother of another student suspended on the trip.

Administrators have not decided if that would be the case. “Right now, we are still discussing with counsel what the next step will be,” said Byard. Because of education privacy laws, Byard could not share many details. “We have offered the parents involved the right to waive confidentiality, which would open all of the records. We made the offer on June 18; the offer stands.”

“We have felt some things were misrepresented, so opening the files would clear some things up [about what happened in France]. [The offer] has been refused,” Byard continued.

Murdock, who represented herself during the case, questioned parents of other suspended students, as well as school administrators about how the case and details were handled. Murdock said that for a case that came down to strict policy and dates, she was astonished that the administrators did not know the policies and made several “typographical errors” of dates on letters regarding the suspensions.

“What School Board policy allows you to detain my daughter for 10 hours in a lobby?” Murdock asked Carol McDonald, an assistant principal at Dominion High School, and one of the chaperones of the France trip.

“I don’t memorize the policies,” McDonald said. “Because students were not trustworthy, they were detained.” McDonald said that she did not notify Murdock, which she is required to do in advance if students are restricted in school, as stated in policy, because McDonald was not the student’s immediate assistant principal So, it was not her responsibility.

The immediate assistant principal, Jamie Braxton, only sent a letter after Murdock requested one several times, and the letter was rife with errors, Murdock said.

The students in question were suspended beginning April 16, the day after they returned from France. Principal Brewer admitted to Murdock that he asked her daughter questions about the incident on June 1 as part of his investigation – more than a month after the student had been suspended.

Other parents complained that they received letters informing them of their children’s suspensions that were dated before the administrators sat down with the students to discuss what happened.

Byard said that he does not have a sense of the time frame for readdressing the concerns.