D.A. Dorsey Technical College Dismissal Lawyer

D.A. Dorsey Technical College in Miami is operated by Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

A career program, and a framework nobody explains

This college does not report a nursing program to the Board of Nursing, so the pass-rate analysis that dominates Florida student-defense writing does not apply here. What does apply is the procedural framework below, and it is the part students are never told about — because the statute everyone cites was written for a different kind of institution.

The Miami-Dade picture

Miami-Dade County Public Schools operates a large set of technical colleges. Dorsey does not report a nursing program, so there is no pass-rate figure in play — but the district’s nursing results elsewhere show how much variation one board’s policies accommodate: Lindsey Hopkins 100% of 24, Miami Lakes 84.78% of 46, Robert Morgan 71.70% of 53. What that tells a Dorsey student is that district-wide policy is not what determines outcomes at any particular college, and that the college’s own conduct of the process is the thing to examine.

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.

D.A. Dorsey’s campus, health programs, and two 2026-2027 handbooks

D.A. Dorsey teaches on a 9-acre Liberty City campus at 7100 NW 17th Avenue and at auxiliary sites that include Northwestern High School and Memorial Highway Baptist Church, according to its Institutional Handbook 2026-2027 (p. 7). A separate Student Handbook 2026-2027 also applies. The approved-program list (p. 43) includes four health programs:

• Pharmacy Technician, 1,050 hours;
• Medical Assisting, 900 hours, including a practicum;
• Patient Care Assistant, 235 hours;
• Medical Coding/Billing, 1,110 hours.

Health science applicants may need a transcript, a minimum entrance test score, a physical, a Level 2 background check, and orientation (p. 15), and the Pharmacy Technician web page requires the TEAS. No program handbook is posted. Instead, the pharmacy, medical assisting, and patient care pages link 2026-2027 work-based activity instructional plans. Each describes an unpaid, supervised placement (200 contact hours for medical assisting, 75 for patient care) in which the site’s representative helps write the student’s evaluation. The numbers conflict: the Medical Assisting page calls that program 1,300 hours, not 900, and the handbook’s practicum is 190 hours, not the plan’s 200.

Attendance is where Dorsey students run into trouble first

A Dorsey career student who misses six consecutive class meetings is withdrawn, and one who completes under two-thirds (67 percent) of the clock hours scheduled in a trimester faces discipline. The Institutional Handbook (pp. 27-28) adds that staff check attendance in 30-day cycles, that excessive absences or tardiness bring a counselor referral and possible discipline under the district’s post-secondary conduct code, and that withdrawal cancels financial aid, VA benefits, district aid, and fee waivers. A student who never shows up during the first three days after enrolling is withdrawn as a no-show, and one leaving voluntarily can use Form 7752.

The Student Handbook does not match. It drops adult general education students after four consecutive absences rather than six (p. 17), still prints a 2024-2025 calendar and fee schedule (pp. 14, 21), and its signature page acknowledges the “2024-2025 Student Handbook” (p. 40).

When failure looks likely, the student must be notified in writing, but the Institutional Handbook says only that a conference to write a contract to help the student “may” be called (p. 26). Dorsey publishes no readmission rule; a returning student must meet the Financial Aid Office to have aid recalculated. A financial aid appeal on Form FM 6863 is heard by a committee whose written answer comes within 48 hours of the hearing and cannot be appealed further (pp. 21-22).

Dorsey’s six-step grievance ladder has no deadlines

Dorsey’s grievance procedure (Institutional Handbook, pp. 30-31) climbs six internal rungs without a single time limit: the instructor, a written complaint to the department chairperson, a counselor, the administrator in charge, a “committee for appeals,” and “the next administrative level,” before the Council on Occupational Education. Oddly, it defines a grievance as a problem arising “in the course of the financial aid operation,” and the handbook also prints a complaint notice written for Florida College System colleges (pp. 12, 29-30).

Discrimination complaints go in writing to the Director or straight to the district’s civil rights compliance office, with a final appeal to the Superintendent’s designee within 15 workdays of the civil rights office’s decision. The Institutional Handbook says a complaint “must be filed within 30 days” of the act (p. 32), far shorter than the 180 calendar days in district Policy 5517.02 (May 19, 2026). The safer course is to file inside 30 days.

The district rules, briefly: discipline, Title IX, disability

Discipline at Dorsey runs under the Miami-Dade Postsecondary Code of Student Conduct Handbook 2025-2026. Under it the district, not the college, decides a dismissal, and the student has 10 business days after receiving the dismissal-recommendation notice to seek a hearing before the district’s Director of Adult and Community Education. Dorsey’s handbooks add an off-campus conduct clause, discipline “up to expulsion,” that the district code does not contain. Their two links to the code are dead: one goes to a district address that no longer responds, the other to a former Dorsey web address that now belongs to an unrelated website.

Sexual harassment reports belong with the district’s Title IX Coordinator at (305) 995-1580. The district’s Title IX Sexual Harassment Manual gives adult career students a live hearing where advisors, who may be lawyers, question the other party and witnesses, and it allows three business days to appeal.

For disability services, see a guidance counselor in Room D-1. The Institutional Handbook lists testing accommodations, adapted aids, interpreters for the deaf, and note takers, requires written documentation for testing accommodations, and promises a 504 Accommodation Plan once eligibility is found (pp. 15, 17, 32-33). It also says applicants with “physical or mental disorders” will be referred to outside agencies that help decide when they are ready for admission. Dorsey’s handbooks give no appeal for a denied accommodation; district Policy 2260.01 names a Section 504 compliance officer, mediation, and a hearing.

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:

• Emerald Coast Technical College Dismissal
• Erwin Technical College Dismissal
• Evolution Health Academy
• First Coast Technical College Dismissal
• Florida Public Safety Institute
• Florida Technical College Dismissal

Common questions about D.A. Dorsey Technical College cases

Does the nursing pass-rate analysis apply here?

No — this college does not report a nursing program to the Board of Nursing. What applies is the procedural framework: Fla. Stat. section 1006.60 does not reach district technical colleges, so the Fourteenth Amendment and the school board’s own rules govern.

Does Fla. Stat. 1006.60 apply to D.A. Dorsey Technical College?

No. That section applies to Florida College System institutions and state universities. This is a public school operated by Miami-Dade County Public Schools, 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.

My son keeps missing classes at D.A. Dorsey. When can the college withdraw or discipline him?

Dorsey’s Institutional Handbook 2026-2027 withdraws a career student after six consecutive missed class meetings and makes any career student who completes less than 67 percent of scheduled clock hours in a trimester subject to discipline, with attendance checked every 30 days. The separate Student Handbook drops adult general education students after only four consecutive absences, so ask the college in writing which rule it is applying.

How soon must a D.A. Dorsey student file a discrimination complaint?

Dorsey’s Institutional Handbook says within 30 days of the discriminatory act, while district Policy 5517.02 allows 180 calendar days. Filing in writing within the shorter window, with the Director or directly with the district’s Office of Civil Rights Compliance, avoids any argument that the complaint came too late.