Robert Morgan Educational Center Dismissal Lawyer | Miami

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

71.70% of 53 first-time candidates

The programme 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 programme’s first-time NCLEX passage rate must stay within 10 percentage points of the national average for comparable programmes — a 77.17% floor for practical nursing in 2025. Robert Morgan finished under it. Section 464.019(5)(a)2 puts a programme 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. Full tables are on the Florida nursing programme 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 programme-level practice rather than about the students who happened to enrol.

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 enrolment 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 labelled 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-centre 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 programmes. 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 programme committee and the board never votes. Where that happened there is a structural defect to raise that does not require relitigating the facts.

Review is by petition for writ of certiorari in the circuit court under Fla. R. App. P. 9.190(b)(3), within 30 days of rendition under Fla. R. App. P. 9.100(c)(1). The court asks whether due process was afforded, whether the essential requirements of law were observed and whether competent substantial evidence supported the decision — 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. Certiorari review of the school board’s decision lies in the circuit court for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit.

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 characterisation, 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 certiorari window from rendition.

The full framework, and every Florida district technical college nursing programme with its 2025 result, is on the Florida district technical college page.

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:

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; certiorari review of the board’s decision goes to the Eleventh Judicial Circuit.