Big Bend Technical College Dismissal Lawyer

Big Bend Technical College in Perry is operated by the Taylor County School District, and it is one of the few district technical colleges reporting both a practical-nursing program and a diploma RN program, which the college calls Professional Nursing (LPN-RN).

Above the statutory floor in 2025

The practical-nursing program passed 92.86% of 28 first-time candidates in 2025 against a 77.17% floor under Fla. Stat. section 464.019(5)(a)1, clearing it by about 15.7 points. A result above the line removes a set of arguments the college might otherwise make: it cannot attribute a dismissal to an unprepared cohort, and it is under no statutory pressure to protect a marginal pass rate. The question narrows to whether it followed its own published progression and conduct rules — and whether the school board, rather than the college, made the final decision.

Two nursing programs, two statutory floors

Big Bend reports a practical-nursing code that passed 92.86% of 28 in 2025 and a small diploma RN code that passed 100% of 9. That matters procedurally: the two are measured against different floors under Fla. Stat. section 464.019(5)(a)1 — 77.17% for practical nursing and 73.37% for diploma RN programs in 2025 — and the college’s catalog says each program keeps its own handbook, though none is posted online. Establishing which program a student was in comes first.

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

Perry is in Taylor County, which puts a federal claim in the Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee 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 Big Bend Tech requires to finish a nursing program

Big Bend Technical College’s practical nursing page requires an 80 percent average in each major unit, an 85 percent average in clinical rotation, and no more than 30 hours of absence per semester to complete the program. The college, at 3233 South Byron Butler Parkway in Perry and administered by the Taylor County School District, also offers Professional Nursing (LPN-RN), a 900-hour, 52-week hybrid bridge that a student may enter and stay in only while holding a current, unencumbered Florida LPN license.

• The 2025-2026 Student Handbook, still the posted edition, sets a 70 percent floor on theory, clinical, and shop work and requires 85 percent attendance, and it lets programs set higher standards (p. 27). Licensure programs hand students their own written standards at the start (p. 24).
• A student falling behind signs an Academic Improvement Plan with the instructor, then meets the Assistant Director to be placed on Academic Probation. A student who does not meet the standard in the time allowed is withdrawn by the Director and may not return for one academic year (pp. 28, 30).
• The 2026-2027 Course Catalog says those higher standards appear in each program’s handbook (p. 63), but the nursing program pages link no handbook.

Practical Nursing and Patient Care Technician are lockstep programs that start only in the fall, and Practical Nursing accepts 30 students.

Drug tests, arrests, and clinical rules can end a nursing seat

A practical nursing, professional nursing, or patient care technician student who tests positive for drugs is withdrawn and may not re-enter that program or any future health science program (handbook p. 43).

• Every student signs a notarized consent to random testing at registration. After a positive result, the student has five school days from the day after the Positive Test Conference to ask the Director in writing to test the rest of the sample, at the student’s expense (pp. 42-43).
• Any arrest must be reported to the Student Services Director within 48 hours. A formal felony charge, or a misdemeanor charge involving a weapon, brings suspension until the charge ends acceptably, and a student in a lockstep program (PCT, PN, LPN to RN) is withdrawn (p. 37).
• Administrators may withdraw an adult student immediately for, among other things, violating clinical rules or being unable to complete clinicals. A student withdrawn for endangering others or for other disruptive conduct is denied future admission (p. 29).
• The BBTC Discipline Matrix makes withdrawal the first-offense penalty for many violations and the second-offense penalty for cheating (pp. 34-35).

Who decides, and how fast a student must act

A student withdrawn for absences has until the end of the next school day to contact the Student Services Office and ask for an Attendance Appeals Committee meeting (p. 24). The student must bring documentation, gets one such meeting per school year, and is dropped for any later absence that term. A student withdrawn for attendance may not re-enroll the next semester (p. 30).

The Grievance Process Overview (p. 46) runs from the instructor to the Assistant Director and the Director, each answering in writing within three days, then to the district Director of Personnel (five days) and the Superintendent (10 days). It sets no filing deadlines for students and never says what kind of days it means. A discrimination or harassment grievance may start at any level (p. 47).

Taylor County School Board Policy 5610 (revised August 19, 2025) sends expulsion hearings to the Superintendent’s Discipline Committee, one assistant principal from each site, on at least 10 days’ notice that the committee may waive without the parties’ consent. An adult student may be represented by an adult as legal counsel or a qualified representative and may appeal to the full Board for a new hearing within five school days. The handbook mentions neither step. The district’s 2026-2027 Code of Student Conduct says it applies to Big Bend Tech students, but its section on the college addresses only dual-enrolled students. The college’s 2025-2026 Campus Safety and Security Report refers to hearings in sexual misconduct cases, which the handbook never describes.

Title IX complaints and accommodations at Big Bend Tech

Formal Title IX complaints go to the district’s Director of Personnel, 318 N. Clark St., Perry (850-838-2500), whom Policy 2266 (revised July 21, 2026) names as Title IX Coordinator, although the handbook starts harassment grievances with a written form to the college Director (p. 44). That policy counts business days, allows three days to appeal, aims to finish within 60 days, and uses written questions rather than a live hearing. The Board also keeps Policy 2264, written for the 2024 federal rule and conduct on or after August 1, 2024, with a five-day appeal. The 2020 Title IX regulations govern; the 2024 rule was vacated in January 2025. Policy 2266 also cites Policies 5610.01 and 5601.01, which are not in the manual, and the federal campus safety listing the college posts names a college “Director” as lead Title IX coordinator. In September 2026 the Department formally repealed the vacated rule and restored the pre-2024 text in the Code of Federal Regulations (91 Fed. Reg. 61,308).

An adult student requests accommodations through the Student Services Office and must document that the unmet requirement is related to the disability and that the change would not fundamentally alter the program (p. 13). Requests for accessible course materials go to the Student Services Director, “preferably not later than the end of the first week” (p. 10). The district’s Section 504 Coordinator is the Supervisor of ESE and Student Services. Under Policy 2260.01, a written complaint goes to the building compliance officer within 30 calendar days of learning the facts and is investigated within 15 school days. An appeal to the district compliance officer is due within five school days, and a decision follows within 10 school days.

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:

• Brightmed Health Institute
• Cambridge College of Healthcare & Technology
• Cape Coral Technical College Dismissal
• CBT Technology Institute
• Chancellor Institute
• Charlotte Technical College Dismissal

Common questions about Big Bend Technical College cases

What was Big Bend Technical College’s nursing pass rate?

92.86% of 28 first-time practical-nursing candidates in 2025, against a statutory floor of 77.17%.

Does Fla. Stat. 1006.60 apply to Big Bend Technical College?

No. That section applies to Florida College System institutions and state universities. This is a public school operated by the Taylor County School District, so your protections come from the Fourteenth Amendment — see Castle v. Appalachian Technical College, an Eleventh Circuit case about a nursing student at a public technical college — and from the board’s own adopted rules.

Who has to make the final decision to expel me?

The district school board. Per Fla. Att’y Gen. Op. 2001-05 a board may delegate the evidentiary hearing to a hearing officer, but the final expulsion decision must be made by the board and cannot be delegated. These removals are often handled inside the college with no board vote, which is a concrete defect worth raising.

How long do I have to challenge the decision?

Thirty days from rendition, which is when the board’s written final order is filed with its clerk. Review is by appeal to a Florida District Court of Appeal under section 120.68, and the notice of appeal is filed with the board’s clerk. The court checks the hearing record for competent substantial evidence and for procedural or legal error — it does not reweigh the evidence.

What happens if a Big Bend Tech nursing student fails a random drug test?

Under the college’s 2025-2026 Student Handbook, practical nursing, professional nursing, and patient care technician students who test positive are withdrawn and may not re-enter that program or any future health science program at Big Bend Tech. The student has five school days, starting the day after the Positive Test Conference, to ask the Director in writing to have the rest of the sample tested at the student’s own expense.

How quickly must a Big Bend Tech student appeal a withdrawal for absences?

By the end of the next school day after the withdrawal, the student must contact the Student Services Office to schedule a meeting with the Attendance Appeals Committee and bring documentation excusing the absences. The handbook allows only one such meeting per school year, and any absence later in the same term means the student is dropped.