Indiana — school discipline
- The lines the state draws
- Suspension is the principal's and capped: "A principal may suspend a student for not more than ten (10) school days under section 14, 15, or 16 of this chapter." (IC 20-33-8-18(a)) Expulsion is bounded by the school calendar rather than by a day count: "a student may not be expelled for a longer period than the remainder of the school year in which the expulsion took effect if the misconduct occurs during the first semester. If a student is expelled during the second semester, the expulsion remains in effect for summer school and may remain in effect for the first semester of the following school year, unless otherwise modified or terminated by order of the governing body." (IC 20-33-8-20(a)) The grounds are stated broadly and then left to local rules: "The following are the grounds for student suspension or expulsion, subject to the procedural requirements of this chapter and as stated by school corporation rules:" "Student misconduct." "Substantial disobedience." (IC 20-33-8-14(a)) One expulsion is mandated: a student identified as bringing a firearm or destructive device to school, or in possession of one on school property, "must be expelled for at least one (1) calendar year, with the return of the student to be at the beginning of the first school semester after the end of the one (1) year period." (IC 20-33-8-16(d))
- Offices and appeal bodies in these sources
- Suspension is the principal's; expulsion runs through a meeting the superintendent conducts or assigns. The statute states who may conduct it and who may not: a superintendent "may conduct an expulsion meeting or appoint one (1) of the following to conduct an expulsion meeting:" "Legal counsel." or "A member of the administrative staff if the member:" "has not expelled the student during the current school year; and" "was not involved in the events giving rise to the expulsion." That person carries hearing powers: the superintendent or designee "may issue subpoenas, compel the attendance of witnesses, and administer oaths to persons giving testimony at an expulsion meeting." (IC 20-33-8-19(a)) The court's role is stated narrowly: "Judicial review of a governing body's action under this chapter by the circuit or superior court of the county in which a student who is the subject of the governing body's action resides is limited to the issue of whether the governing body acted without following the procedure required under this chapter." (IC 20-33-8-21)
No state office, phone number, or email for parents appears in the sources; that absence is the finding. - Sources last checked
- Aug 30, 2026
Reproduced from the state's own statute quoted below: potentially relevant official sources, not a determination of which one governs any situation.
This page assembles what Indiana publishes in statute about K-12 school discipline. This is a baseline docket page: the governing sections, the lines the state draws, and the decision-makers and review route, quoted with dates. The full sections (the framework route by route, the four hoisted process rows, every stated timeline, the district delegation map, and records access) follow as the discipline layer deepens behind its breadth sprint; the change log states exactly what is not yet captured. Before a suspension the statute states a meeting and its contents: "A principal may not suspend a student before the principal affords the student an opportunity for a meeting during which the student is entitled to the following:" "A written or an oral statement of the charges against the student." "If the student denies the charges, a summary of the evidence against the student." "An opportunity for the student to explain the student's conduct." Where the removal cannot wait, the meeting follows instead of preceding: "When misconduct requires immediate removal of a student, the meeting under subsection (b) must begin as soon as reasonably possible after the student's suspension." Afterward, "the principal shall send a written statement to the parent of the suspended student describing the following:" "The student's misconduct." "The action taken by the principal." (IC 20-33-8-18(b), (c), (d)) Schoolwork continues: "If a student is suspended, the student is required to complete all assignments and school work assigned during the period of the student's suspension." (IC 20-33-8-18(e)) Before an expulsion the notice is stated with its delivery methods and contents: "An expulsion may take place only after the student and the student's parent are given notice of their right to appear at an expulsion meeting with the superintendent or a person designated under subsection (a)." That notice must "contain the reasons for the expulsion; and" "contain the procedure for requesting an expulsion meeting." (IC 20-33-8-19(b)) An expulsion that straddles the year gets a second look: one "that takes effect more than three (3) weeks before the beginning of the second semester of a school year must be reviewed before the beginning of the second semester", a review "limited to newly discovered evidence or evidence of changes in the student's circumstances occurring since the original meeting" that "may lead to a recommendation by the person conducting the review that the student be reinstated for the second semester." (IC 20-33-8-20(b)) What counts as misconduct in the first place is the school corporation's to state, by the statute's own terms — grounds apply "as stated by school corporation rules". That delegation will anchor the full page's delegation map. For a student with an IEP or Section 504 plan, the disability layer lives on this site's Indiana special education page. Confirm applicability with the school corporation and the agencies. All dates on this page are quoted from the sources, not a deadline calculation performed for you.
Source map
| Document | Location | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Indiana Code Title 20, Article 33, Chapter 8 (student discipline), within the published Title 20 document | iga.in.gov | published as the 2025 Indiana Code; no separate revision date in the document; retrieved Aug 30, 2026 |
| IC 20-33-8-13.5 (bullying discipline rules), IC 20-33-8-22 (student due process) and IC 20-33-8-23 (suspension pending expulsion) | in the same chapter, outside the captured range of sections 14 through 21 | capture pending; the range in the recipe should widen when the full page quotes them |
| Indiana Department of Education, Indiana School Safety Laws for Reference | published by the Department as a PDF | capture pending |
| 511 IAC rules of the Indiana State Board of Education on student discipline | — | not located in this review; capture pending |
| School corporation discipline rules | each school corporation, per IC 20-33-8-14(a) | never captured; the full page's delegation map will point at them |
Change log
Aug 30, 2026 · Baseline page created (discipline-layer breadth sprint). Captured first-party under recipe tools/recipes/indiana-discipline.json: the General Assembly's published Title 20 document. Findings recorded: (1) Indiana caps a principal's suspension at ten school days and bounds expulsion by the school calendar rather than by a day count, with the second-semester rule stated expressly; (2) the pre-suspension meeting and its three entitlements are stated in statute, as is the rule that an immediate removal moves the meeting after the suspension rather than dispensing with it; (3) the expulsion meeting may be conducted by the superintendent, by legal counsel, or by an administrative staff member who has not expelled the student that year and was not involved in the events — the disqualifications are stated rather than left to policy; (4) the person conducting the meeting may issue subpoenas, compel attendance, and administer oaths; (5) judicial review is limited by statute to whether the governing body followed the required procedure, which is narrower than the review several other states leave open, and is recorded as the statute states it; (6) the grounds themselves — student misconduct and substantial disobedience — apply "as stated by school corporation rules", a delegation that will anchor the full page's delegation map; (7) no state office or parent contact appears in the sources. Capture note: the General Assembly's code browser is client-rendered and returns a 691-byte application shell to any fetch, including of its own per-title, per-article, and per-chapter addresses; the only first-party address that serves the text is the static whole-title document the application itself requests. Captured whole, that document puts roughly 3.7 MB of Title 20 in the packet to hold eight sections of it, and every later review pass would then re-hash and re-diff the whole title, with the diffs dominated by amendments to statutes this page does not quote. Rather than narrow it by a local extraction the project could not re-run, capture.py gained a declared element_range field on this state — the HTML counterpart of the PDF extractor's existing pages field, with the same lint rules, the same place in the recipe digest, and its own self-test. The recipe names the run from the section 14 heading through the section before 22, and the packet holds 16.6 KB. If the General Assembly later publishes a per-chapter address, the recipe should move to it and the change belongs in this log. Not yet built, pending the deepening pass: sections 01–02 (framework, hoisted rows, timelines), the district delegation map, and records access. Internet Archive captures: to be added. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-08-30. Corrections on the record in this log: hello@fieldassembly.net.