DAEPs feel – From a North Texas honors student’s protest flyers to a 15-year-old’s hacked email threats, Texas families describe a discipline system powered by Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs that can end up harsher, longer, and harder to challenge than many pa
When Jordan Comfort’s phone buzzed with school email on a February afternoon. his mother thought the story was already over. The 16-year-old. an honors student in Garland. Texas. had been in trouble for distributing flyers on campus about a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement—students across North Texas were planning to walk out. and Jordan wanted to join.
Comfort says she didn’t understand what went wrong because she believed her son wasn’t near the protest site on the day he was supposed to have created a problem. “I didn’t even let him go near the school” the day of the protest, Comfort said. “No new behavior could have been seen to warrant any kind of new discipline.”.
That same afternoon, though, the email arrived. Jordan was being assigned to the district’s Disciplinary Alternative Education Program.
Comfort later said an administrator told her Jordan was facing a six-week placement for being disruptive, according to Comfort. If he behaved well and took behavior and anger management classes, she recalled he could be out in five weeks.
Comfort’s case isn’t unique in Texas. Over the last three decades. DAEPs—meant to serve as punishments for serious misbehavior—have become a central feature of the state’s discipline system. State data shows that more than 100. 000 students attend DAEPs each year. not only for offenses such as bringing a weapon to campus but also for violations like insubordination and failure to follow dress codes.
Before the pandemic, educators were slowly moving away from using DAEPs as punishment, state data shows. That shifted after schools fully reopened: the number of students sent to DAEPs jumped back up again. Then last year. after lawmakers heard reports of student misbehavior and violence rising. House Bill 6 passed. allowing more districts to send students to these alternative schools for disruptive behavior.
Districts have wide discretion over when students are assigned and how the programs are run. “Local educators almost never have to answer to any other entity, including the justice system,” the reporting notes, and “parents often have limited recourse to get placements overturned.”
Even the state’s oversight is thin. The Texas Education Agency requires DAEP campuses to provide an “academic and self discipline program that leads to graduation” and conducts limited monitoring. The TEA acknowledges DAEPs’ shortcomings: once a student enters, the agency considers them at risk of dropping out. Research cited in the reporting shows less than half of ninth graders who are placed in one of the programs graduate from high school on time.
TEA officials did not respond to interview requests or a list of emailed questions, including about the role agency officials play in monitoring DAEPs.
In Garland, the district declined to comment on Jordan’s situation. Spokesperson Typhani Braziel said in an email that district administrators could not comment due to federal privacy laws but that it was “addressing it in accordance with established policies and procedures.”
For critics, the system’s expanding reach is exactly the problem—because DAEPs often end up resembling the logic of the criminal justice system: strict rules, limited freedom, and few practical opportunities to challenge the decision once the punishment starts.
Paige Duggins-Clay. chief legal analyst of the Intercultural Development Research Association. said the campus environment feels “jail-like.” She described a change this year in how districts approach discipline and DAEP placements. arguing that House Bill 6 gave school systems “full license to do whatever they want to get rid of kids they don’t want to deal with.”.
The emotional impact of that “license,” for families, shows up most sharply when school discipline doesn’t match what parents believed DAEPs were for.
Comfort remembered her own experience when she was pregnant at 18 in 1997. She said a Garland school administrator tried to send her to the district’s alternative program. and she refused. telling them. “I’m not a bad student.” At the time. she believed DAEPs were brand-new—created as part of zero tolerance discipline reforms spreading nationwide.
Those reforms gained momentum after the 1995 Texas Safe Schools Act required districts to remove students who had committed a serious infraction, such as assault or a drug-related offense, and provide them with an alternative setting.
Other states developed similar laws, often using alternative schools to remove students deemed safety threats. But in Texas. DAEPs grew into something more comprehensive: lawmakers created a list of behaviors requiring mandatory DAEP placement. and that list has expanded over time. Educators are required to consider factors such as a student’s disciplinary history and disability status when assigning the punishment. but districts also can— and do—send students to DAEPs at their discretion.
The reporting points to one reason the system has broadened so drastically. The number one reason students are placed in alternative schools is “violation of local code of conduct. ” according to state data. Nearly 36,000 DAEP placements were assigned under that catchall in 2024-25, compared to fewer than 12,000 for assault. Just 208 were related to a student possessing a weapon. That year, about 5.5 million students were enrolled in Texas public schools.
Renuka Rege, a senior staff attorney at Texas Appleseed, said DAEPs were “designed originally to be for more serious offenses and more serious behaviors,” but “they’ve been expanded.”
Comfort said that before Jordan’s punishment, she assumed DAEPs were for only the worst problems—those who brought weapons or made it “impossible for other kids to learn.” What happened next made her see the system differently.
After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to withhold state funding from districts whose students participated in ICE protests. teens across the state still took part. including in Garland. Comfort said that as far as she knows. no one else at Jordan’s school was subsequently assigned to a DAEP. including friends who helped him with the flyers.
Other families describe the same sense of mismatch—between what they believe happened and what the punishment ultimately says about their child.
In May 2025. Laura Wickwire drove into the parking lot of North East Independent School District’s administrative building in San Antonio armed with documents. Her son. Kevin Jenkins. was facing a 75-day DAEP placement after someone hacked his email account and used it to send threats to educators earlier that month.
Wickwire told the reporting that Kevin was 15 at the time and had been the victim of cyberbullying for over a year. She said he was the subject of dozens of false reports made to school tip lines alleging he had a weapon or was suicidal. The email account was hacked repeatedly. including one time when Wickwire and Kevin himself received a death threat from the address.
The district knew about the hacking, Wickwire said. It had given Kevin a new username and reset his account three times, she said, and Kevin couldn’t even log in when some of the emails in question were sent.
In the end, Wickwire said her paperwork didn’t change the decision. The staffer who handled the case told her she could only consider the May threats. “I literally was so mad,” Kevin said. “She was like, ‘I don’t care.’”
North East ISD spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor said in an email that the district uses impartial hearing officers. The officers, Chancellor said, consider mitigating factors including a student’s intent and disciplinary history. “All allegations of bullying are taken seriously and investigated. ” she said. and “Decisions made by the Hearing Officer are determined by evaluating the evidence provided against a preponderance of the evidence standard.”.
Wickwire says the hearing moved quickly. No more than 90 minutes into it, she said, the official issued her decision: the 75-day placement was upheld.
“She made her decision before we even entered that building,” Wickwire said. The family had no option to appeal. North East’s policy, according to the reporting, is that a hearing officer’s decision is final.
Texas law doesn’t require school districts to offer families the chance to appeal most DAEP placements. It also does not spell out how an appeal process would work if offered, nor how families should be informed. The state does not track outcomes of DAEP meetings. and advocates say it is uncommon for punishments to be changed at any point.
When parents can find other options, the consequences are often immediate and practical. For families with the resources to withdraw a student, enrolling in private school is common. Students assigned to DAEPs typically cannot enroll in a different public school before completing the punishment.
Comfort removed Jordan from Garland and began homeschooling him with a virtual program for the rest of the year. She said she is still figuring out where he will go for his senior year.
Wickwire pulled Kevin out of school and started paying for him to attend an online private school.
In Seguin, outside San Antonio, a student’s “fresh start” quickly became a daily routine of confinement.
Sharenda Claros said she moved her family from San Antonio an hour away to Seguin in the summer of 2025 so her son, Brandyn, could begin again. For two weeks, he attended the regular middle school, made friends, and planned to join the soccer and basketball teams.
Then records from his old charter school arrived. Claros said Seguin assigned Brandyn to a DAEP for a year based on an accusation that he had physically threatened students at his old school. a claim he denies. Police investigated and the district attorney declined to pursue charges—information that Claros said was shared with Seguin officials.
Claros said it didn’t matter. Almost every day of the school year, Claros said, Brandyn dressed in required all-black clothing and took a bus from his subdivision into the heart of town. At 8 a.m. sharp, he entered the building as a guard waved a metal detector wand over his body.
Claros said Brandyn spent almost all of the next seven hours in silence, clicking through computer programs in most of his classes. She said he felt comfortable asking for help only with a couple of teachers; most redirected him back to videos on his screen.
“He spent almost all of the next seven hours in silence,” Claros said the reporting notes, and she described the result: Brandyn learned little and became completely disinterested in school.
“It’s like setting him up for failure,” she said. “I feel like they know that.”
Seguin officials could not comment on specific students, and they referred questions about how their DAEP operates to the district’s Student Code of Conduct.
The daily mechanics of DAEPs, across Texas, can look startlingly uniform, the reporting says. Statewide, students at DAEPs most often work individually on computer programs and follow strict rules. According to an analysis of handbooks from 75 districts, students are typically forbidden from speaking in class unless granted permission.
The rules often extend to movement and appearance: students may have to walk single file with their hands behind their back, and dress codes can ban facial hair, jewelry, sandals, or hair dye. If students do not follow the rules, extra days can be added to placements.
In the White Settlement school district near Fort Worth, a DAEP handbook describes students spending their first week sitting on stools in a cubicle facing a wall. Only after five days of good behavior, the handbook notes, can they move to sitting on a chair.
In Andrews, in far west Texas, jumpsuit-clad students who misbehave may be forced to do “physical conditioning.” In Commerce, about 70 miles northeast of Dallas, students are required to eat lunch in cubicles in silence.
White Settlement DAEP principal Charlie Etheridge said the stool-and-cubicle setup is designed “to provide safety and limit student interaction,” and that students who behave well gradually see fewer restrictions.
In Andrews, the reporting says the district did not respond to requests for comment. Commerce spokesperson Heather Kilgore said the DAEP was a “structured disciplinary setting.”
The Texas Education Agency’s website on discipline says state regulations are intended to ensure that “all students are treated with dignity and respect. as well as educated in a safe environment. ” and that behavior management practices must be implemented to protect “the health and safety of the students and others.”.
Claros said her family’s experience in Seguin did improve slightly: district officials worked with her to reduce Brandyn’s placement. If he completed 30 consecutive days where he did all his work and broke no rules, he could return to his regular campus.
But Claros said the combination of the DAEP’s restrictive environment and Brandyn’s disruptive mood disorder and ADHD diagnosis made that unlikely. She said the rules were hard to meet consistently.
She also worried about the message Brandyn would absorb in a year that she described as crucial.
Students with disabilities, advocates say, are more likely to end up in DAEPs and when they do, they are less likely to receive the services and accommodations they are owed under federal law.
Colleen Potts of Disability Rights Texas said, “They’re placed more often. A lot of times we find that they struggle more, and we find that they stay longer.” She added that “DAEP does not have the ability to be individualized like the main campus would.”
Claros said Brandyn doesn’t have access to the support he is supposed to get under his individualized education program because of his disabilities. and that DAEP educators do not allow the accommodations listed in it. She said that when he gets overwhelmed. he should be allowed to go to a different room to calm down and reset. But Claros said that when he tries, it counts as an unsuccessful day.
Brandyn told the reporting: “It’s kind of annoying, because they see me as somebody I’m not. I feel like they see me as a dangerous person, and I’m not a dangerous person.”
Claros said she worries constantly about what her son is learning about himself, and what happens when he moves from such a restrictive environment to a regular high school next year.
“This is the stage I believe is a make-or-break stage,” Claros said. “He may think this is okay in the future. He may feel like, ‘Oh, I have to be locked up.’”
What families see in DAEPs is not just punishment—it’s a system built to move quickly. with strict rules and limited challenge. and with the power to redirect a student’s entire year. In Texas. the consequences can begin with something as small as a flyer. a hacked inbox. or a record that arrives late—and then harden into a place families describe as jail-like. even as oversight remains constrained and decisions often feel final.
Texas education DAEP Disciplinary Alternative Education Program House Bill 6 school discipline student suspensions student rights special education Disability Rights Texas Texas Education Agency