Suspended in Arkansas: the 10-day line, the appeal, and the bullying clock

Under the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education's discipline rules, a teacher or administrator can suspend a student for at most 10 school days for breaking the district's written discipline policy. That suspension can be appealed to the superintendent. Anything longer than 10 days is an expulsion (removal from school for an extended period), and only the superintendent can recommend it. An expulsion is appealed to the school board, which must hear the testimony and then vote in public session. A parent can ask that the hearing itself be held in private, in what the rule calls executive session.

The U.S. Supreme Court set the floor under all of this in Goss v. Lopez (1975): before a suspension of 10 days or less, a public school must tell the student what they are accused of and, if they deny it, explain the evidence and let them give their side. Arkansas adds its own steps. The school must contact a parent or guardian immediately when a student is suspended, by call, voicemail, text, email, or mail, and keep a log of every attempt.

Two Arkansas limits are worth knowing by heart. A district cannot use out-of-school suspension to punish truancy (skipping school). And a student in kindergarten through fifth grade cannot be suspended out of school or expelled unless their behavior poses a physical risk or causes a serious disruption that nothing else can address.

Arkansas's anti-bullying law, Arkansas Code 6-18-514, requires every public school district and open-enrollment charter school to adopt a policy that defines bullying, covers cyberbullying that disrupts school, and protects anyone who reports in good faith from retaliation. The notice must be posted in every classroom, cafeteria, restroom, gym, auditorium, and school bus.

The part that matters most on a hard day is the clock. When a principal gets a credible report of bullying during school hours, the rule says the principal must tell the victim's parent, write up the report, and finish the investigation as soon as possible and no later than 5 school days from the date of the written report. Within 5 school days after that, the parents of both the student who was bullied and the student accused are entitled to learn whether the report was found to be true and whether the school took action. Every district policy must also explain how to make an anonymous report to the state's school safety and crisis line.

In Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988), the Supreme Court let a Missouri principal cut articles from a school newspaper, so federal law gives school-sponsored student media only thin protection. Arkansas went further. The Arkansas Student Publications Act, first passed in 1995 and updated in 2019, says school officials may not censor student media except in narrow cases: material that is libelous or obscene, or that incites students to break the law or seriously disrupt school. Every district must have a written student media policy, and the law requires that it be developed with input from the student media advisers. If your school paper or podcast is being held back for reasons other than those, the Student Press Law Center runs a free legal hotline for exactly this question.