Lindsey Hopkins Technical College Dismissal Lawyer — Miami

Lindsey Hopkins Technical College in Miami is operated by Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and in 2025 it passed every practical-nursing candidate it entered.

100% of 24 first-time candidates

The practical-nursing program passed 24 of 24 first-time candidates against a 77.17% floor. Twenty-four is a modest cohort and a perfect rate on that number should not be over-read — but it does remove a whole category of argument. This college cannot say a cohort was unprepared, cannot say the examination is unreasonably hard, and is under no statutory pressure to protect a marginal pass rate.

There is a sharper implication too. A program that passes everyone it enters may be achieving that partly by being selective about who it enters. Where a student was removed shortly before the examination, or steered into withdrawing, the perfect pass rate is a fact worth putting alongside that decision rather than treating as a credit to the college.

The Miami-Dade comparison

Miami-Dade County Public Schools runs several technical colleges with practical-nursing programs, and the 2025 spread is wide: Lindsey Hopkins 100% of 24, Miami Lakes Educational Center 84.78% of 46, and Robert Morgan Educational Center 71.70% of 53 — Robert Morgan below the floor. Same board, same policies, same county, and a gap of nearly thirty points. That locates the variable at program level.

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 student here gets none of the statutory protections a 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 competency-based 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 college handbook.

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 case is filed

Miami is in Miami-Dade County, which puts a federal claim in the Southern District of Florida, Miami 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 college handbook, 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. Program-level pass rates are tabulated on the Florida nursing program pass-rate page.

What Lindsey Hopkins teaches, and which rulebooks apply

Lindsey Hopkins teaches practical nursing and five other health programs at 750 NW 20th Street, under two 2026-2027 documents: the Institutional Catalog and a shorter Student Handbook. The handbook adds one outside site: Automotive Service Technology 1 and 2 meet at the Braman Automotive Training Center and admit only students aged 17 to 25.

The health programs, with the catalog’s hours (pp. 47-54):

• Practical Nursing, 1,350 hours over about 14½ months. Entry requires a passing TEAS score, a Level 2 background check, a physical assessment, and orientation; clinical work is at least half the program.
• Surgical Technology, 1,440 hours, plus a 1,330-hour teach-out version.
• Dental Assisting, 1,230 hours; Central Sterile Processing Technology, 650 evening hours; Phlebotomy, 165 hours; Patient Care Assistant, 235 hours (290 in its teach-out).

No nursing or allied health program handbook is posted, only brochures and state frameworks. The web pages drift from the catalog: the Practical Nursing page lists its last course at 300 hours yet totals 1,350, the Patient Care Assistant page still says 290 hours, and the Surgical Technology page says the Board of Nursing approves that program, while the student handbook credits the Florida Department of Education.

Absences, grades, and warnings at Lindsey Hopkins

Six consecutive absences drop a student from class automatically, and missing the first three days after registering means withdrawal as a no-show (catalog, pp. 15-16; Student Handbook, p. 6). Selected programs, mainly in health science, use the district’s A-to-F scale, where 70 to 79 percent is a C, and graduation requires an overall 2.0 GPA (catalog, pp. 18, 27).

Once failure looks likely, the catalog (p. 27) requires written notice, an acknowledgment from the student, and a conference of teacher, student, counselor, and administrator to write a contract meant to “avert an action leading to dismissal or failure.” Ask for copies of both. Adults with two referrals in one trimester, or three across trimesters, go on probation.

Neither document addresses readmission after a withdrawal. Financial aid runs separately: a committee decides a Form FM 6863 appeal in writing within 48 hours of its hearing, its ruling is final, and each student gets one appeal per program (catalog, p. 20).

How grievances and conduct cases move through the district

Lindsey Hopkins publishes grievance steps but no deadlines: the instructor, an administrator, the Director, a written appeal to the district’s Office of Post-Secondary Career and Technical Education, and then the Council on Occupational Education (catalog, p. 31).

Discipline comes from the district’s Postsecondary Code of Student Conduct Handbook 2025-2026, which School Board Policy 5500 (revised September 10, 2025) incorporates by reference, although the college’s documents point only to its home page. Key terms:

• Levels Three and Four allow suspensions of 1 to 10 days and recommendations for dismissal; weapons and false reports or threats against a school bring a mandatory one-year dismissal.
• Written notice of a suspension (FM-5342) must be handed over or mailed within 24 hours, yet the code says non-receipt does not affect the suspension.
• A suspension appeal goes in writing to the principal before the suspension ends, with a written decision within five days of the conference.
• For dismissal, the college files form FM 7458 and “the district will make the final decision.” Meanwhile the student may not enroll in any Miami-Dade public school or visit a campus without permission.
• An appeal hearing must be requested from the Director, Adult and Community Education, within 10 business days of receiving the dismissal-recommendation notice (FM-5341). That director or a designee decides.

The code says nothing about advisors or attorneys and never mentions a School Board vote. A student withdrawn for disciplinary reasons gets no refund of tuition or fees (catalog, p. 17).

Title IX and other discrimination complaints

Sexual harassment goes to the District Title IX Coordinator in the Office of Civil Rights Compliance (CRC), (305) 995-1580, under the Title IX Sexual Harassment Manual, a file created in October 2020. For adult and career technical students it requires a live hearing (p. 34) at which each party’s advisor, who may be an attorney, questions the other side, and the district supplies a free advisor to a party who has none there. Either side may appeal to the Coordinator within three business days of the final determination (p. 35) on the Appeal Request Form, and the district aims to finish within 90 calendar days. The district’s September 2025 overview flyer, by contrast, describes only written questions.

Other discrimination falls under Policy 5517.02 (technical change May 19, 2026): a signed, written complaint within 180 calendar days of the last incident, an appeal to the Region Office within 15 workdays of the principal’s decision, and an appeal of a CRC decision to the Superintendent within 15 workdays. The college’s papers lag: its Student Handbook (p. 8) gives the CRC a Biscayne Boulevard address that current policy does not use, and the college’s 2026 Annual Campus Security Report (September 2026) sets a 90-school-day limit for dating violence reports that current Policy 5517.03 lacks.

Getting accommodations at Lindsey Hopkins

Start with a guidance counselor in Room C-109; the catalog (p. 32) says the school develops a 504 Accommodation Plan once it determines the student is a qualified person with a disability. Testing accommodations require written documentation (Student Handbook, p. 6). The district’s OPCTE Handbook (revised September 11, 2026) requires postsecondary students to disclose and document the disability, and the district’s Adults With Disabilities page mentions accommodations such as finishing without the TABE and extra testing time.

Neither college document offers an appeal for a denial. Policy 2260.01 (revised March 15, 2017), written around K-12 students, allows an appeal to the District Section 504 Compliance Officer, mediation, or a hearing requested through the Clerk of the Board. Even the contact varies: the catalog lists a 504 Coordinator in Suite 409, the handbook lists Exceptional Student Education in Suite 407, and the policy gives a third phone number. Put requests in writing.

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:

• Lively Technical College Dismissal
• Lorenzo Walker Technical College Dismissal
• Manatee Technical College Dismissal
• Marion Technical College Dismissal
• McFatter Technical College Dismissal
• Merryfield Academy

Common questions about Lindsey Hopkins Technical College cases

What was Lindsey Hopkins’ pass rate?

100% — all 24 first-time practical-nursing candidates passed in 2025, against a 77.17% floor.

Does a perfect pass rate help or hurt me?

It removes the college’s excuses, and it raises a question. A program that passes everyone it enters may be selective about who it enters — so if you were removed shortly before the examination, that rate is a fact to place alongside the decision.

How do Miami-Dade’s other technical colleges compare?

Miami Lakes Educational Center passed 84.78% of 46 and Robert Morgan Educational Center 71.70% of 53, the last below the floor. All are Miami-Dade County Public Schools institutions.

Which court covers Lindsey Hopkins?

The Southern District of Florida, Miami 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.

Lindsey Hopkins suspended my daughter and recommended dismissal. How long does she have to appeal?

Under the district’s Postsecondary Code of Student Conduct Handbook 2025-2026, she has 10 business days from receiving the Notice of Suspension and Recommendation for Dismissal (form FM-5341) to request an appeal hearing from the Director, Adult and Community Education; that director or a designee decides. A separate written appeal of the suspension itself must reach the principal before the suspension ends.

Does a Lindsey Hopkins student get a hearing in a sexual harassment case?

If a formal complaint goes to a decision, the district’s Title IX Sexual Harassment Manual requires a live hearing for adult and career technical programs, where each party’s advisor, who may be an attorney, questions the other party and witnesses. The district provides an advisor at no charge to a party who has none at the hearing, and either side may appeal to the Title IX Coordinator within three business days of the final determination.