Juan Lozada’s grandson lost out on almost his entire fifth-grade year at his dual language grade school in San Antonio, Texas. All because of a child-friendly knife, marketed as safe for ages 3 and up, that the young boy brought to school in September 2025 to cut fruit for his lunch.
Lozada was among the very first individuals I talked with when I began investigating Texas’ system of disciplinary alternative education programs, or DAEPs, as they are more frequently known. The schools were created in the mid-1990s as a punishment for trainees who committed serious offenses. Trainees spend weeks or perhaps months in them. Today, more than 100,000 students a year are designated to DAEPs, sometimes for offenses as small as violating a gown code or using profanity.
By the time I transferred to Texas in 2021, I ‘d been a nationwide education reporter for over a decade, but I had actually never ever stumbled upon a state that relied so heavily on strict alternative schools to discipline students and different them from their peers.
These programs stuck in my head, even after I moved away. Then, my coworker Meredith Kolodner returned from an unassociated reporting journey to northwest Texas with stories of trainees using jumpsuits at a DAEP. I knew we had to dig in.
My reporting brought me very first to Lozada, whose grand son was described a DAEP for 25 days since of the fruit-cutting event. Lozada is an attorney and attended the young boy’s positioning hearing. He was shocked at how one-sided it seemed.
“It’s not a genuine hearing, it never was, and it was never intended to be,” he informed me. “When you do not have that, there are no guardrails.”
Lozada filed a claim against the district. In arguments, the San Antonio school district’s attorney made the case that district courts do not have the jurisdiction to examine a DAEP placement. (District spokesperson Laura Short stated in an e-mail that it does not permit knives of any kind on schools which authorities followed the student code of conduct.)
Conversations with more families followed. I spoke to moms and dads who did not have Lozada’s legal knowledge but were likewise desperate to keep their children out of DAEPs, along with some who felt their teenagers were even worse off for attending them.
Some clear themes emerged. At nearly every point in the DAEP placement procedure, the odds are stacked versus households. Schools have enormous discretion over when they send out trainees to these placements and do not require to allow appeals. The DAEPs themselves are stiff environments where moms and dads and advocates say little knowing happens.
Lozada was given a momentary injunction against the penalty and continued through the district appeals process. The family pulled him out of his public school throughout that time. In May, the San Antonio Independent School District Board of Trustees overturned the preliminary DAEP positioning, a reversal that specialists informed me is unusual.
However damage to his grand son has actually currently been done, Lozada stated. The young boy now has difficulty socializing and worries that other kids will see him differently.
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Contact examinations editor Sarah Butrymowicz at [email protected] or on Signal: @sbutry.04.
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