Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology Student Defense Lawyer

Students reach me about Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology at three points: when the Dean of Academic Affairs raises absences that have crossed the attendance threshold, when a safety or conduct write-up turns into a suspension letter, and after a term ends and satisfactory academic progress is not met. Each carries a short clock, and each is decided on paperwork made in the first days.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology?

The Broomfield campus is private and for-profit, operated by Spartan Education Group, accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges and regulated by the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools. Because it is private it is not a state actor, so the constitutional due process cases that govern public campuses do not apply. Your protections come from what the College published, read as a contract, plus Title IX, Title VI and Section 504 and the ADA, and from the accreditor and state licensing rules it must satisfy.

Colorado’s controlling case is University of Denver v. Doe, 2024 CO 27 (Colo. May 6, 2024). The Colorado Supreme Court held that a private institution’s promise of a thorough, impartial and fair investigation, read with the specific requirements in its own procedures, is definite enough to be an enforceable contract, and reversed summary judgment on contract and on good faith and fair dealing. It also rejected an extra-contractual tort duty: a university “does not owe its students an extra-contractual duty to exercise reasonable care in adopting and implementing fair procedures.” So the claim here is breach of contract, not negligence, and the catalog is the document it is built on.

Colorado adds little by statute. There is no general campus due process statute, no right to counsel and no statutory hearing right or evidentiary standard for conduct or academic cases. The one exception is sexual misconduct, C.R.S. § 23-5-146, and whether it reaches this campus is a threshold question rather than an assumption: the section covers state institutions, local district colleges, area technical colleges and participating private institutions, so its application here turns on whether the College is one of the latter. Where it applies, it fixes preponderance of the evidence when a student is the respondent and bars an advisor from speaking.

Where do Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology cases come from?

The Broomfield campus enrolls roughly 397 students. It opened in 1965 as Colorado Aero Tech, became Redstone College, and took the Spartan name in 2017. It awards Associate of Applied Science degrees in Aviation Maintenance Technology and Aviation Electronics Technology, and the maintenance program is approved under FAA Part 147.

That is a lab-and-shop school, and its cases look like it. Most separations here begin not with a hearing but with attendance, a safety or proficiency write-up, or a progress calculation. The catalog requires a minimum of 90 percent attendance in each course, allows up to 10 percent of absences to be excused with documentation, caps total absences at 20 percent, and states that excess absences may lead to withdrawal from a course, probation, suspension or withdrawal from the program. A separate section allows suspension for repeated rule violations, unsafe practices or lack of proficiency.

The financial consequences land immediately. A withdrawal or termination sets a date of determination, triggers a Return to Title IV calculation, and can leave a balance owed. Credits earned at a career college often do not transfer, so a dismissal can end the credential rather than delay it. Two catalog terms matter at the end: a student who exceeds the maximum timeframe in credits does not receive a diploma or degree, and a graduate’s diploma and official transcript are released only after career services placement forms and federal exit counseling are complete. Those conditions are a practical hold on your record; see transcript holds.

Which process are you in, and why does that matter?

The heading on the letter picks the office and the clock. A disciplinary action for dishonesty, unprofessional conduct, drugs, alcohol, weapons or a safety violation runs through the conduct route to warning, probation, suspension of one day to two terms, or permanent dismissal. Academic termination for failing satisfactory academic progress runs through the Dean of Academic Affairs and the financial aid office instead, on its own form and its own deadline. A grievance about how you were treated is a third route. They are not interchangeable.

Answering in the wrong track spends the one response you get. Read your letter against the right process: conduct code charges, academic misconduct, academic dismissal and suspension, or a satisfactory academic progress appeal. If you were removed from campus before any decision, the catalog’s immediate-removal provision is the one to read first; see interim suspension.

What should you do first?

Download the Broomfield campus catalog in the version in force on your incident date and read the appeal section before the conduct section. Then gather the syllabus, which the catalog says carries the specific attendance expectations, any lab or shop policy, your attendance record and every write-up in your file. In an attendance case the dispute is almost always arithmetic, so ask for the recorded figures in writing and check them.

Put the dates in writing. Email the Campus President’s office and the Dean of Academic Affairs, ask for your appeal deadline and for the material the committee will see, and keep the reply. Preserve email, learning management timestamps, photographs of your work, and messages with instructors before they are gone. Note also that the catalog requires you to comply with the original decision while the appeal is pending, including staying off school property, so do not treat filing an appeal as permission to return.

What does Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology’s own policy actually say?

Spartan publishes conduct rules and academic policy in a single document, the Broomfield campus catalog, which is why both citations below point to the same PDF. That is deliberate, not an error, and it is common at for-profit career colleges. Here is what the catalog states, and where it is silent.

• Conduct office: the Campus President receives conduct appeals and the Dean of Student Services is the contact for student complaints, both under the Broomfield campus catalog.
• Governing policy: the catalog’s Student Conduct section, which lists sixteen categories of violation, with the Disciplinary Actions, Interim Suspension, Appeal Process and Grievance sections. No system-wide procedure sits above the campus.
• Academic integrity: not a separate track. Dishonesty, including cheating, plagiarism, giving false information to staff or faculty and soliciting test or quiz information, is the first listed conduct violation, and a short Academic Integrity section names unapproved aids, alteration of records, bribery, copying, lying and plagiarism, leaving faculty free to set further standards by course.
• Appeal window: a written request for a hearing to the Campus President within five working days of the original decision, stating the specific reasons the process, the finding or the sanction should be reviewed. If no request is made, the decision is final. A hearing before the College Conduct and Grievance Committee is set no less than two and no more than fifteen calendar days after notice of the decision, and the Campus President communicates the committee’s final written decision within thirty calendar days of receiving the appeal.
• Standard of proof: the catalog publishes none for discipline. No campus-specific standard of proof located; ask the Campus President in writing which standard the committee will apply. The catalog does set one for grievances, placing the burden on the person filing to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they were wronged — a different proceeding that should not be assumed to govern a disciplinary hearing.
• Advisor: the catalog is explicit and restrictive. At an appeal hearing the student “may be accompanied by one person (family member, friend, etc.) as an observer,” and “may not be accompanied by an attorney.” The committee may remove anyone who disrupts the proceeding. That sentence changes what a lawyer does here: the work moves to the written request and the documents, not the room.
• Academic standing: published in the same campus catalog. Satisfactory academic progress requires a cumulative 2.0 GPA, completion of more than 66.6 percent of credits attempted, and completion within 150 percent of the program’s credits. Once a student cannot finish with a 2.0 inside 150 percent, the catalog states the education is terminated and the student withdrawn. A financial aid appeal goes on the SAP Appeal Form with documentation to the Director of Student Finance within fourteen days, evaluated within ten days.
• Reinstatement: a letter of appeal to the Student Records Office at least three weeks before the term you want to return for, stating whether the suspension was academic or disciplinary and what has changed. The Conduct/Appeals Committee decides.
• Title IX: reports go to the Deputy Title IX Coordinator for the campus or to the Title IX Coordinator, with the policy under the campus consumer information pages.
• Disability accommodations: the ADA Compliance Coordinator, also called the Student Accessibility Resources Coordinator, is the only office that can receive a request, and a disclosure made to anyone else is not treated as a request.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, where I am admitted to the bar. No pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring local attorney is needed. The College is private and not a state actor, so there is no constitutional claim, and the contract claim built on the catalog is a state-law claim. Few of these matters reach a courtroom. What decides them is the campus record:

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Preparing your account, your documents and your questions
• Testing whether the school followed its own published procedure
• Scrutinising software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
• Helping with the written response and the appeal, where policy allows
• Serving as your advisor where the process permits one
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations and disclosure language

Here the policy settles it: the catalog bars an attorney from the appeal hearing, so the value is in the five-day written request, the documents that go with it, and whether the College kept to its own published steps and deadlines. That last question also survives after the committee’s decision becomes final, and it is the subject of appeals and court review.

Other Colorado 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 Colorado technical and career institutions:

• United States Air Force Academy
• Bel-Rea Institute of Animal Technology
• Colorado Technical University
• Concorde Career College Denver
• Lincoln College of Technology Denver

Common questions about Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology student cases

Can I bring a lawyer to a Spartan College appeal hearing?

No. The catalog states that a student may be accompanied by one person, such as a family member or friend, as an observer, and may not be accompanied by an attorney. The committee can also remove anyone who disrupts the proceeding. That does not leave a lawyer with nothing to do; it moves the work earlier. The five-working-day written request, the exhibits attached to it and the check on whether the College followed its own steps are where a case is won or lost.

How long do I have to appeal a Spartan College decision?

Five working days from the original decision, in writing, to the Campus President, with the specific reasons the process, the finding or the sanction should be reviewed. If no request is made the decision is final. A hearing before the College Conduct and Grievance Committee is then scheduled no less than two and no more than fifteen calendar days after notice of the original decision, and the Campus President communicates the final written decision within thirty calendar days of receiving the appeal.

Why do the conduct policy and the academic policy point to the same document?

Because at Spartan they are the same document. The Broomfield campus catalog carries the Student Conduct section, the disciplinary sanctions, the appeal process, the attendance rules and the satisfactory academic progress standards in one PDF. Most for-profit career colleges publish this way. There is a practical benefit: one file governs your case. Download the version in force on your incident date and keep it, because catalogs are reissued and the operative text is the one that applied to you.

This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order. Other campuses are covered on the Colorado student defense page.

This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.

Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is licensed to practice law in Florida and is admitted to the bars of the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, the United States District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Illinois, the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico, and the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. Federal court admission is not a license to practice the law of the state in which the court sits; he is not licensed in Colorado and does not advise on Colorado state law.