Education Law
Students Challenge Expulsion for Kissing
Posted Jan 30, 2008, 02:27 pm CST
By Molly McDonough
Parents of two South Carolina high school students are challenging a school board decision to kick the kids out of school after they were caught kissing on a school bus.
The students, Dominique Goyner and his girlfriend, were expelled in October for the rest of the academic year, the Associated Press reports.
The boy's mother, Jody Free, says she was initially told her son was being removed from school for "sexual misconduct."
"I saw the tape. They kissed maybe two minutes and the rest of bus ride home they leaned back on seat and that was it," Free is quoted saying. "Had it been anything different, I would have said 'OK, you two have to suffer the consequences.'"
Goyner's attorney, Russell Brown, says he plans to appeal the school board's decision in circuit court. "What we have here, in my opinion, is an overzealous enforcement of a rule," he says.