Sheridan Technical College Dismissal Lawyer | Hollywood

Sheridan Technical College in Hollywood is operated by Broward County Public Schools, and it ran the largest practical-nursing cohort of any Florida district technical college in 2025.

81 candidates at 79.01%, just above the floor

The practical-nursing programme passed 79.01% of 81 first-time candidates against a 77.17% floor — clearing it by under two percentage points on the biggest district cohort in the state. A margin that fine on a cohort that large is worth naming precisely: the programme is not failing, but it sits close enough to the statutory line that a single cohort’s results decide whether it stays above.

That is exactly the circumstance in which the incentive to remove a student whose examination result is predicted to be a failure is sharpest. If a dismissal here rested on predicted performance rather than on a rule the handbook actually states, that distinction is the case.

The Broward comparison the district generated itself

Broward County Public Schools runs three technical colleges with practical-nursing programmes, and in 2025 they diverged: Atlantic Technical College passed 87.50% of 56, Sheridan 79.01% of 81, and McFatter Technical College 75.00% of 56 — McFatter below the floor. Same school board, same adopted policies, same county, same clinical market. A twelve-point spread across three colleges of one district locates the variable at programme level rather than anywhere the district can disclaim.

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 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 competency-based 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 case is filed

Hollywood is in Broward County, which puts a federal claim in the Southern District of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Division. Certiorari review of the school board’s decision lies in the circuit court for the Seventeenth 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. Programme-level pass rates are tabulated on the Florida nursing programme pass-rate page.

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:

Common questions about Sheridan Technical College cases

What was Sheridan’s nursing pass rate?

79.01% of 81 first-time candidates in 2025 — the largest district technical college cohort in Florida — against a practical-nursing floor of 77.17%. It cleared by under two points.

How do Broward’s other technical colleges compare?

Atlantic Technical College passed 87.50% of 56 and McFatter Technical College 75.00% of 56, the last below the floor. All three are Broward County Public Schools institutions under the same board policies.

Does Fla. Stat. 1006.60 apply to Sheridan?

No. It applies to Florida College System institutions and state universities. Sheridan is operated by Broward County Public Schools, so the Fourteenth Amendment and the board’s own rules govern — with Castle v. Appalachian Technical College the Eleventh Circuit authority on a nursing student at a public technical college.

Who must decide my expulsion?

The district school board itself. Per Fla. Att’y Gen. Op. 2001-05 the evidentiary hearing may be delegated but the final expulsion decision may not be.