Court Opinion

ID: 9811623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:26:17.218753+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:34.750313
License: Public Domain

KENNETH R. CARR, Justice,
concurring.
Upon successful completion of Challenge Boot Camp, J.T. was placed on intensive supervised probation. One of the conditions of his probation was that J.T. must “Attend school and not be truant, not be suspended or expelled from any public school during his probationary period.” (Emphasis supplied).
J.T. was thereafter given a three-day “in-school suspension” as discipline for an incident at school.1 During the “in-school *322suspension,” he attended his regular school and was given instructional assignments, but not in his regular classroom. His presence was counted toward the school’s average daily attendance, upon which the school district’s state-tax reimbursement is calculated.
Relying upon the dictionary definition, J.T. argues that he was not “suspended ... from” school during this period. Specifically, he cites Merriam-Webster’s definition of the noun, “suspension,” as a “temporary forced withdrawal from the exercise of office, powers, prerogatives, ...,”2 and its definition of the verb form, “suspend,” as “to debar or cause to withdraw temporarily from any privilege, office, or function... ,”3 In both cases, the dictionary cites suspending a student from school as an example of the usage.
In Chapter 37, Subchapter A, of the Texas Education Code, labeled “Alternative Settings for Behavior Management,”4 the legislature has distinguished three types of discipline5 to which a student may be subjected: suspension,6 removal to a disciplinary alternative education program,7 or expulsion.
Since J.T. was not expelled from school, we are faced with the question of whether his “in-school suspension” constituted a “suspension” or a “removal to a disciplinary alternative education program.” We have located only two references in sub-chapter A to “in-school suspension.” The first is in sec. 37.002:
If a teacher removes a student from class ..., the principal may place the student into another appropriate classroom, into in-school suspension, or into a disciplinary alternative education program as provided by Section 37.008.
Tex. Educ.Code Ann. § 37.002(c). The other reference is contained in sec. 37.021:
If a school district removes a student from the regular classroom and places the student in in-school suspension or another setting other than a disciplinary alternative education program, the district shall offer the student the opportunity to complete before the beginning of the next school year each course in which the student was enrolled at the time of the removal.
Tex. Eduo.Code Ann. § 37.021(a).
The Education Code thus distinguishes, in some locations, between a “suspension” and assignment to a disciplinary alternative education program. In these two locations, it draws a similar distinction between an “in-school” suspension and assignment to a disciplinary alternative education program. I therefore conclude that a “suspension,” within the meaning of the Education Code, includes an “in-school suspension” of the sort to which J.T. was assigned.
I therefore concur in the result.

. Nothing in its order sheds any light on the question of whether the trial court intended its order precluding J.T.'s "suspension ... *322from” school to extend to the sort of "in-school suspension” to which he was assigned.

. Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary 2303 (Philip'Babcock Gove, ed. in chief, 1993)(em-phasis supplied in Appellant's Brief).

. Id.

. Tex. Educ.Code Ann. §§ 37.001-022.

. Id. at §§ 37.001(a)(4) and (6).

. See id. at § 37.005.

. See id. at § 37.008.