Robert Morgan Educational Center Dismissal Lawyer — Miami

Robert Morgan Educational Center and Technical College is operated by Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Its practical-nursing program finished 2025 well below the statutory floor, on a cohort of fifty-three.

71.70% of 53 first-time candidates

The program passed 71.70% of 53 first-time candidates against a 77.17% floor — thirty-eight passes and fifteen failures, a shortfall of about five and a half percentage points.

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. Robert Morgan finished under it. 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 — but the Department of Health’s licensing portal does publish a current status for each approved program. Full tables are on the Florida nursing program pass-rate page.

The internal comparison is worth having. Miami-Dade County Public Schools also runs Lindsey Hopkins Technical College, which passed 100% of 24 first-time candidates in 2025, and Miami Lakes Educational Center, which passed 84.78% of 46. Same school board, same adopted policies, same county, same clinical market — and results ranging from 71.70% to 100%. That gap is evidence about program-level practice rather than about the students who happened to enroll.

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 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 Robert Morgan case is filed

Miami-Dade County is in the Southern District of Florida under 28 U.S.C. section 89(c), 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.

What Robert Morgan offers in health care, and what it has not published

Robert Morgan Educational Center and Technical College, at 18180 SW 122nd Avenue in Miami, trains adults in three health fields: practical nursing, dental assisting, and medical assisting. Its program list names 23 career programs; its 2026 Annual Campus Security Report (September 2026) reports twenty-six programs and 1,597 students.

• Practical Nursing: 1,350 hours, at least half of them clinical. Applicants need a high school diploma or GED and a passing TEAS score. Day classes meet weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; evening classes meet Monday through Thursday from 4:00 to 9:30 p.m. and Friday from 3:00 to 8:30 p.m.
• Dental Assisting: 1,230 hours, weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., with practice in dental clinics and offices.
• Medical Assisting: the college’s page still describes a 1,300-hour program ending in a 200-hour practicum, but the Florida Department of Education’s 2026-2027 framework replaced that program with a 900-hour one. Ask which version you are in.

The nursing page lists five occupational completion points, says a certificate can be earned at each, and gives hours that add up to 1,500, not 1,350. The 2025-2026 state framework it links shows only two, with the last course at 150 hours.

The college publishes no nursing handbook, minimum passing grade, clinical-removal rule, or limit on repeated courses. Its website shows an “Institutional Handbook” menu item and a “Student Handbook” button, but on September 17, 2026, neither opened a document. The district’s OPCTE Handbook (2026-2027, revised September 11, 2026, p. 27) expects each technical college to write one. The Toyota T-TEN automotive program on this campus belongs to Miami Lakes Educational Center.

Robert Morgan’s attendance, withdrawal, and re-entry rules

Six consecutive absences drop a Robert Morgan student from class automatically, and a new student who misses the first three days is withdrawn as a no-show, according to the college’s Attendance Policy page. Absences that hurt progress “may be grounds for disciplinary action.” The withdrawal paragraph tells students to notify the registrar, then breaks off mid-sentence before saying where.

The college publishes no readmission rule. Other documents fill part of the gap:

• A student dropped for absences pays adjusted fees to re-enter, and a waiting list, where one exists, fills open seats (OPCTE Handbook, p. 19).
• The district’s VA Catalog 2025-2026 (p. 13) says the School Board requires written notice whenever a student may fail, then a conference of teacher, student, counselor, and administrator to write a contract aimed at avoiding dismissal.
• Robert Morgan’s Student Services Plan 2025-2026 has instructors refer attendance, behavior, and progress problems to a counselor. By appointment, a student may review course work and classroom tests with the instructor and official records with an administrator. TEAS results are released only as a score report, requested through the program’s counselor.

Who decides a Robert Morgan dismissal, and how long you have to respond

The district, not the college, makes the final decision on dismissing an adult student, and a hearing must be requested within 10 business days. Robert Morgan’s own Grievance Procedures page sets no deadlines. It runs from the instructor to an administrator, then the Director, then a written appeal to the district’s Office of Post-Secondary Career and Technical Education at 1450 NE Second Avenue, and finally to the Council on Occupational Education, the accreditor.

Discipline comes from the district’s Postsecondary Code of Student Conduct 2025-2026 (pp. 2-5), which Board Policy 5500 (revised September 10, 2025) incorporates by reference:

• A written suspension notice (form FM-5342) is due within 24 hours, and an appeal goes in writing to the principal before the suspension ends.
• To dismiss, the principal sends form FM 7458 to the district. The hearing request goes to the Director, Adult and Community Education, within 10 business days of receiving form FM-5341, and that office decides the appeal.
• While dismissal is pending, a suspended student may not enroll in or visit any district school without the principal’s permission.
• Cheating is a Level Two offense, and the penalties listed for that level stop at a one-to-five-day suspension or removal from class.
• The code says nothing about advisors or attorneys.

Dual-enrolled high school students follow the secondary Code of Student Conduct instead.

Title IX reports and disability accommodations at Robert Morgan

Formal sexual harassment complaints go to the district’s Title IX Coordinator at the Office of Civil Rights Compliance, 155 NE 15th Street, Suite P104E (crc@dadeschools.net). The district’s Title IX Sexual Harassment Manual (undated; created October 2020) gives adult and career technical students a live hearing with cross-examination by advisors, supplies an advisor at the hearing to a party who has none, and allows three business days to appeal (pp. 12, 34-35).

Robert Morgan’s 2026 security report says the college offers no rape-awareness programs. It also sets a 90-school-day limit for reporting dating violence to the Director, a limit that current Board Policy 5517.03 (revised September 11, 2023) does not contain.

To get accommodations, a student speaks with an adult/vocational counselor, self-identifies, and brings documentation, according to the college’s Students page. Supports come through a “Section 504 Accommodation Plan for Post-Secondary Adult Vocational Education Students.” The OPCTE Handbook (pp. 9, 22) keeps the documentation on file, allows case-by-case waivers and course substitutions, and says a student with a disability may be excused from the basic-skills exit requirement. The VA Catalog (p. 4) adds that applicants with special needs are referred to Vocational Rehabilitation or similar agencies, which help decide when they are ready for admission. Robert Morgan’s TOPS program places students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in regular career programs with 504 supports.

Neither the college nor Board Policy 2260.01 (revised March 15, 2017), which is written for K-12 students, sets a deadline to contest a denied accommodation. The policy allows an appeal to the District Section 504 Compliance Officer, mediation, or a hearing. The 2026 security report prints two different district 504 offices side by side.

Other Florida colleges

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 colleges:

• Rollins College
• SABER College
• Santa Fe College
• Santa Fe College Andrews Center
• Santa Fe College Watson Center
• Seminole State Altamonte Springs Campus

Common questions about Robert Morgan Educational Center cases

What was Robert Morgan’s nursing pass rate?

71.70% of 53 first-time candidates in 2025 — thirty-eight passes and fifteen failures — against a practical-nursing floor of 77.17%.

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

Lindsey Hopkins Technical College passed 100% of 24 first-time candidates in 2025 and Miami Lakes Educational Center 84.78% of 46. All are Miami-Dade County Public Schools institutions under the same board policies.

Does Florida’s student discipline statute apply?

No. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60 applies to Florida College System institutions and state universities. Robert Morgan is run by Miami-Dade County Public Schools, so the Fourteenth Amendment and the board’s own rules govern.

Which court hears a Robert Morgan case?

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.

Robert Morgan’s website has no working student handbook. Which written rules apply to my daughter’s nursing program?

On September 17, 2026, the college’s “Student Handbook” button and “Institutional Handbook” menu item opened no document, so the main published rules are its Attendance Policy and Grievance Procedures web pages plus the district’s Postsecondary Code of Student Conduct 2025-2026 and OPCTE Handbook 2026-2027. The college posts no practical nursing handbook, so ask the program in writing for any nursing handbook, syllabus, or clinical policy it applies, and keep a copy of what you receive.

How long does a Robert Morgan student have to appeal a recommended dismissal?

Under the district’s Postsecondary Code of Student Conduct 2025-2026, the student has 10 business days after receiving the Notice of Suspension and Recommendation for Dismissal (form FM-5341) to ask the Director, Adult and Community Education, for a hearing. The college’s own grievance page sets no deadlines, so the district’s 10-business-day window is the one to track.