Pinellas Technical College Dismissal Lawyer — St Petersburg

Pinellas Technical College is operated by Pinellas County Schools across two campuses and a St. Petersburg instructional service center, and in 2025 those two campuses produced results at opposite ends of the range. That contrast is the single most useful fact for a St Petersburg student.

St Petersburg 74.55%, Clearwater 93.75%

The St Petersburg practical-nursing program passed 74.55% of 55 first-time candidates in 2025 against a 77.17% floor — forty-one passes and fourteen failures. The Clearwater campus, under the same school board and the same board policies, passed 93.75% of 80 first-time candidates — though each campus writes its own catalog, and the two do not match.

A nineteen-point gap between two campuses of one college is very hard to attribute to the applicant pool, the board’s rules or the regional clinical market, because both campuses draw on the same ones. It points instead at campus-level admission, instruction, progression and remediation practice. For a student dismissed at St Petersburg on progression grounds, that is the comparison worth putting in front of the district — and the district produced both numbers itself.

Under Fla. Stat. section 464.019(5)(a)1 a Florida nursing program’s first-time NCLEX passage rate must stay within 10 percentage points of the national average for comparable programs — a 77.17% floor for practical nursing in 2025. The St Petersburg campus finished under it; Clearwater did not. Section 464.019(5)(a)2 puts a program two consecutive years below the floor at risk of probation and loss of approval, and section 464.019(5)(c) then requires it to disclose that status in writing to students and applicants. A single year below is not probation, and the Board of Nursing publishes no probation roster, though the Department of Health’s licensing portal does show a current status for each approved program. Full tables are on the Florida nursing program pass-rate page.

The statute that protects state college students does not cover you

Fla. Stat. section 1006.60 — five business days’ advance written notice of the charges, access to inculpatory and exculpatory information, an impartial hearing officer — applies by its own terms to Florida College System institutions and state universities. A district technical college is neither: it is a public school operated by a district school board under sections 1001.44 and 1003.02. Sections 1006.61, 1006.62 and 1002.21 are limited the same way. So a practical-nursing student here gets none of the statutory protections a nursing student at the state college down the road gets.

What you have instead is constitutional, and the Eleventh Circuit has addressed this exact setting. Castle v. Appalachian Technical College, 631 F.3d 1194 (11th Cir. 2011) — a nursing student at a public technical college — proceeded on the footing that the student held a property interest in continued enrollment that could not be taken without due process, and recorded that denying a pre-suspension hearing is itself a violation. Wells v. Columbus Technical College, 510 F. App’x 893 (11th Cir. 2013), applied Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), to a technical college suspension. Goss requires notice and an opportunity to respond before the sanction takes effect.

If the college calls the dismissal academic, Board of Curators v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), removes the hearing requirement — but only where the institution evaluated the student carefully and deliberately and kept them informed of the deficiency and of the risk of dismissal. A clinical-competency dismissal is usually labeled academic for that reason, which is why the label is worth contesting.

The board has to decide, and often has not

Because no statute writes a conduct code for adult career-center students — section 1006.07(2) is written for elementary and middle and high schools — the governing document is the district school board’s own rules, adopted under section 1001.41(2) and section 1003.02(1)(c), which expressly covers adult and career education programs. Get the board policy, not only the campus catalog and the campus code of conduct.

And the decisive procedural point: per Fla. Att’y Gen. Op. 2001-05, a board may delegate the evidentiary hearing to a qualified hearing officer, but the final expulsion decision must be made by the board itself and cannot be delegated. In practice these removals are frequently handled inside the college by a director or a program committee and the board never votes. Where that happened there is a structural defect to raise that does not require relitigating the facts.

A school board’s final expulsion order is reviewed by appeal to a Florida District Court of Appeal under Fla. Stat. section 120.68. The notice of appeal is due to the board’s clerk within 30 days of rendition, and rendition happens only when the written order is filed with that clerk. The appellate court asks whether the board’s findings rest on competent substantial evidence in the hearing record, whether a material procedural error impaired the fairness of the proceeding, and whether the board misread the law — it does not reweigh evidence, so the record has to be built inside the board process.

Where a Pinellas Technical College case is filed

Pinellas County is in the Middle District of Florida, assigned by Local Rule 1.04(a) to the Tampa Division. Review of a final expulsion order goes to the Florida District Court of Appeal for the appellate district where the school board has its headquarters, or where a party lives.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

• Obtain the district school board policy as well as the campus catalog and the campus code of conduct, and hold the college to whichever is more demanding.
• Establish whether the school board itself decided the expulsion, or whether the college did it alone.
• Contest the academic-versus-disciplinary characterization, because it sets how much process was owed.
• Test the Horowitz minimum: was the deficiency identified in writing, and was the student warned that dismissal was possible?
• Preserve the 30-day appeal window, which opens when the board’s written order is filed with its clerk.

The full framework, and every Florida district technical college nursing program with its 2025 result, is on the Florida district technical college page.

Which health programs actually run at the St. Petersburg campus

The campus at 901 34th Street South teaches Practical Nursing (1,350 hours), Dental Assisting (1,230 hours), Surgical Technology (1,440 hours), Emergency Medical Technician (300 hours) and Medical Coder/Biller, plus one-year practical nursing and surgical technology apprenticeships pairing 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training with classroom work. All are in the 2026-2027 Catalog, St. Petersburg Campus, pages 37 to 60. Phlebotomy is Clearwater’s program, not this campus’s.

It also teaches at a second address, the Clearview Adult Education Center at 3815 43rd Street North, where only the computer systems program runs. Student services and financial aid are handled at the main campus only.

Before you rely on a course number in a college letter, check it. Three current St. Petersburg documents disagree:

• The catalog calls Surgical Technology “Program H170211” (page 51). The campus program page calls the same program H700200.
• The catalog says surgical technology students may sit for the sterile processing exam “after completion of course HSC003 and course STS0015.” Neither course appears in that program’s own course list; the program page says STS0016.
• The Emergency Medical Technician supply list, updated September 16, 2026, bills the program as course TRA0080; the catalog calls it EMS0110 (page 40).

Deadlines close early: applications for the surgical technology class starting June 21, 2027 close on May 14, 2027.

The grade and attendance rules that end a program here

Two unsatisfactory progress reports in a row, or three in total, and the campus withdraws you and bars re-enrollment in the same program “for a minimum of 6 months” (2026-2027 Catalog, pages 25-26). Good standing needs both a qualitative score, usually 70 percent or better, and 67 percent of required competencies inside 150 percent of the program’s scheduled clock hours. A single unsatisfactory report puts you on probation for the following fee period.

• Arrive more than 15 minutes late and you are turned away and marked absent for the day (page 23).
• Six consecutive school days absent and you are withdrawn on the seventh.
• The catalog prints program attendance minimums in one place only, the veterans’ section on page 21: Practical Nursing 90 percent, Emergency Medical Technician 94 percent. For the rest it points to your program syllabus, which the college does not publish.
• Hours are recorded on an automated time clock, and Policy 5501.03 says failing to use it can cost grade points or aid, or bring discipline.

To contest an unsatisfactory-progress finding, the catalog sends you to the grievance procedure in the code of conduct. That matters: the catalog’s own chain — instructor, department chair, guidance, program administrator, school director — carries no deadline at any step.

Who decides a suspension or dismissal at St. Petersburg

The Campus Director does, at both ends. This campus publishes its own 22-page Code of Student Conduct for Pinellas Technical College St. Petersburg 2026-2027, made up of Policies 5501 through 5501.13, and under Policy 5501.12 the Director hears the case and makes the final decision.

• Suspension runs up to ten school days for one offense, after an informal interview at which you are told the charges orally and in writing. Written notice follows within 24 hours.
• Appeal a suspension in writing to the Director before the suspension ends. The answer comes in writing within five days, and nothing is paused while you appeal.
• You then have five school days to appeal in writing to the Chief Operating Officer of PTC or the Director of Career, Technical, and Adult Education. That step reviews only whether you received due process; the code states there will be no reinvestigation of the incident.
• Dismissal begins with a letter from an instructor, department chairperson or administrator to the Campus Director. To get a hearing you must ask in writing within five days of the notice letter, addressed to the Chief Operating Officer or the Director of Career, Technical, and Adult Education. An attorney or other representative is allowed.
• Complaints not tied to a suspension or dismissal go to the Director in writing within three days of the incident, with a written decision within five days and one further written appeal within five days.

The code never says whether those “days” are calendar or school days, except at the one step where it writes “school days.” And cheating sits on the serious-misconduct list in Policy 5501.04, which may bring suspension or dismissal “without consideration of alternative punishment.” The catalog’s own link to the code on page 24 points to a district page that no longer exists.

Accommodations, and where a complaint goes

There is no disability services office here. You self-identify to your program counselor and supply documentation, and the counselor establishes eligibility and builds a 504 Accommodation Plan, per the campus’s 2026-2027 Student Retention Plan. Neither that plan nor the catalog publishes any appeal if a request is refused.

The campus’s 2026-2027 School Improvement Plan records 19 self-reported students against an enrollment of 1,343, says the gap exists “because students are not aware of the self-reporting process,” and assigns a 504 Liaison, an annual review of plans, and an icon in the student record system to alert instructors. The same plan puts program completion at 81 percent and reports that 55 percent of surveyed students would recommend the school.

For discrimination or harassment, the catalog (page 27) takes a signed written complaint to an administrator, the district Director of School Operations, or the Office of Equal Opportunity, and to the Executive Director of Career, Technical and Adult Education if it is about a campus director. District Policy 5517, last revised March 15, 2011, supplies the deadlines the catalog leaves out: 30 calendar days from the incident to file with the Compliance Officer in the Office of Equal Opportunity, five working days to ask the Superintendent for review, and a written decision within fifteen working days. The district names one Office of Equal Opportunity officer as its Title IX and ADA contact and a separate District 504 Coordinator.

Other Florida technical and career institutions

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida technical and career institutions:

• Praxis Institute
• Ridge Technical College Dismissal
• RiverOak Technical College Dismissal
• Sheridan Technical College Dismissal
• South Dade Technical College Dismissal
• Southern Technical College

Common questions about Pinellas Technical College St Petersburg cases

What was Pinellas Technical College St Petersburg’s pass rate?

74.55% of 55 first-time candidates in 2025 — forty-one passes and fourteen failures — against a practical-nursing floor of 77.17%.

How did the Clearwater campus do?

93.75% of 80 first-time candidates, well above the floor. The nineteen-point gap between two campuses of the same college under the same board policies is difficult to explain by anything other than campus-level practice.

Does the state college discipline statute apply here?

No. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60 reaches Florida College System institutions and state universities. Pinellas Technical College is run by Pinellas County Schools, so your protections come from the Fourteenth Amendment and the board’s own adopted rules.

Which court hears a Pinellas Technical College case?

The Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, for a federal claim; review of a final expulsion order goes to the Florida District Court of Appeal for the appellate district where the school board has its headquarters, or where a party lives.

My daughter was withdrawn from a St. Petersburg program for unsatisfactory progress. How long before she can come back?

The 2026-2027 St. Petersburg catalog, pages 25-26, says a student withdrawn after two consecutive unsatisfactory progress reports, or three in total, may not re-enroll in the same program “for a minimum of 6 months,” and then only after counseling and on a space-available basis. The Clearwater catalog states the same rule as “up to 6 months,” so ask the campus in writing which version it is applying to her. To contest the underlying finding, the catalog points to the grievance procedure in the code of conduct, which runs on a three-day clock from the incident.

Who actually signs off on a dismissal at Pinellas Technical College St. Petersburg?

The Campus Director. Under Policy 5501.12 in the campus’s 2026-2027 Code of Student Conduct, an instructor, department chairperson or administrator writes to the Director recommending dismissal, and the Director makes the decision and “retains the final decision authority.” A hearing is not automatic: the student must request one in writing within five days of the notice letter, addressed to the Chief Operating Officer of PTC or the Director of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, and may bring an attorney or other representative to it.