Court Sends Expelled Teens Back to Foothill

Three Foothill High School seniors will return to campus today until a court hearing is held later this month on whether they were unfairly transferred on suspicions of smoking marijuana off campus during lunch period.

Orange County Superior Court Judge John C. Woolley prodded the Tustin Unified School District to reinstate the teens until holiday break begins Dec. 18. The hearing is set for Dec. 29.

The students deny the drug charges. A lawsuit filed on their behalf Tuesday against the district states that two of the accused students initially admitted to the charges only under the coercion of school officials, who threatened to suspend them, contact police and ban them from playing football and baseball. Administrators also told the teens they were videotaped smoking marijuana off campus, but later admitted the tape contained no such evidence, according to the lawsuit.

School officials said they are contesting the lawsuit, although they would not comment on specific allegations. The district has held several hearings on the case and punished the students based on the outcome, they said.

“Based on the evidence, we think we conducted a fair investigation,” said Mark Eliot, a Tustin Unified spokesman. “We stand by what we decided.”

Students Britton Pierson, Jason Greenberg and Robert Koster, the three who filed the lawsuit, are among five students reprimanded in the incident under Tustin Unified’s 18-month-old zero-tolerance policy. Although they return to campus today, they will be prohibited from participating in extracurricular activities pending the hearing’s outcome.

The policy says that any student who buys, sells, consumes or possesses alcohol, drugs or drug paraphernalia on school grounds and during lunch will be suspended immediately and recommended for expulsion. Last year, 45 high school students were transferred to other campuses for violating the zero-tolerance policy, Eliot said. Twenty students have been punished this year for the same offense. One student has been expelled from the district.

Such policies have brought controversy to several Orange County school districts, including Capistrano Unified and Newport-Mesa Unified, where parents have complained that the punishment is unfairly harsh, especially when students are not on campus when violations occur.

“It does not give parents the right to discipline their own children,” said Britton’s father, Jim Pierson, who said he felt victorious after the 30-minute court hearing. However, he said, he did not need to discipline Britton in this case because the youth had done nothing wrong. “All we want is for the kids to go back to school.”

Under the district policy, students are suspended for five days and then transferred to another high school within Tustin Unified. Greenberg was sent to Tustin High School. Pierson and Koster were transferred to Hillview High School, the district’s continuation school for students with academic and behavior problems. Of the two other students involved, one was sent to Tustin High School and is not fighting the transfer, while the other is still attending Foothill pending an expulsion hearing from the district.

David Shores, an Irvine lawyer representing the three teens who are suing, said the district’s policy is illegal because it automatically expels a student from campus for a first-time offense and prevents them from adequately defending themselves. In addition, the students and their parents asked school administrators to record their transfer hearings--with a court reporter or tape recorder--but district officials refused.

“When the boys were denied the ability to make a record of the hearings, that violates due process,” Shores said.

Spencer E. Covert, the Tustin lawyer representing the school district, said those hearings are not routinely recorded. He agreed Wednesday to have the boys temporarily reinstated after Woolley declared a 10-minute recess in hopes the two lawyers could work out an interim agreement.

The teens’ troubles began on Oct. 27, when a neighbor contacted the school to complain about a large group of students who congregated on a street corner during lunch period. A school official videotaped the scene the next day and interrogated the students individually that afternoon. They were suspended for five days, pending an administrative hearing, and returned to school Nov. 4.

The students appealed their case to the school board, which upheld earlier decisions by administrators to transfer them from Foothill High School. They were expected to begin at their new schools Monday, but Shores advised them to stay home while he turned to the courts for help.