NO. You cannot question my child without me
- Karla Lee
- 11 minutes ago
- 4 min read
You have always had the right to keep your child from being questioned without you. Orange County finally made it clear for parents, with one catch: do nothing, and you are opted in.
The call comes in the middle of your workday. It is the school. Your stomach drops before they finish the sentence. There was an incident. They already talked to your child. They have a written statement. And no one called you first.
We have seen that story circulation around social media time and time again.
Here is the first thing you need to know. You have always had the right to say NO. But it was never made easy AND it relied on adults respecting the boudary and your children knowing how to hold the line. After years of leaning on the Latin words "In loco parentis" to mean in the place of the parent they are acknowledging that your rights as a parent do not go away the moment your child walks through those doors.
I have held this boundary for years, the hard way. Letters, phone calls, conversations with administrators who acted like I was inventing a right out of thin air. It was manual. It was painstaking. It was worth every minute. So believe me when I tell you what this year’s change is really worth.
What Orange County finally put in writing
This year, OCPS families can opt out, and the district’s own Code of Student Conduct says it plainly.
Students have the right to choose to participate in an OCPS disciplinary investigation.
In plain terms, parents can request, in writing, that their child not take part in a discipline investigation without a parent’s authorization. Your child has the right not to answer. And you have the right to require that the school reach you, and get your written consent, before a single statement leaves your child’s mouth.
The catch they are counting on you to miss
It is an opt-out. Which makes it an opt-in by default. If you do nothing, your child is already in. Silence is not neutral here. Silence is consent. The protection only exists for the parents who go looking for it, which is exactly why I need you to stop reading in a minute and go find the form.
What opting out does, and what it does not
I will never hand you a false sense of safety.
It does not shield your child from consequences. If your child is found to have violated the code of conduct, opting out does not erase that.
It does not gag your child or take away their side of the story. Your child can still give a statement. They can still tell it exactly as it happened, even if they aren't able to tell it until after you give consent.
What it does is simple and enormous. It means the school has to reach you first. Not leave a message. Not send an email. They have to contact you and obtain your written consent.
Before your child says anything. Before your child does anything. You get the call, and you get to be in the room. Which is all a child alone with an adult who holds power over them ever needed in the first place.
Why being first matters
For a child, facts can be fluid. A frightened kid under pressure will reach for whatever answer makes the questions stop. Memory bends. A leading question hardens into a confession.
I want to hear what happened from my child before anyone else has shaped it.
Their account, in their own words, before an interrogation rewrites their memory for them. I do not want to be handed the school’s version of my child’s day before I have had the chance to understand it from my child.
Opting out does not stop the school from investigating or deciding on a consequence, and it does not stop a school resource officer or law enforcement from running a criminal investigation. I am a pharmacist and a mother, not your attorney. If your child is facing something serious, get a lawyer in the room. What I am handing you is the thing that comes first. The right to be in the room at all.
How to opt out
OCPS parents can access the form on a desktop computer (NOT a cell phone). If you are not able to complete the request online, submit your request in writing to your school’s administration, and do it before anything happens, not after. Put it on file at the start of the year so the protection is already there the day you need it. Keep a dated copy for yourself.
If your district has not caught up
And if you are reading this from another county, another state, a district that has not caught up, you are not out of options. You have the same right. Take the language OCPS used and make it yours. Put it in writing to your principal as your official notice of non-consent. That you do not consent to your child being questioned or giving any statement in a disciplinary investigation without you being contacted first and giving written permission. Date it. Send it. Ask them to confirm they received it. A form your district has not printed yet does not erase a right you can assert on paper today.
We spend so much energy teaching our children to advocate for themselves. This is us doing it for them, before they are even old enough to know they were allowed to say no. Do not wait for the phone call. Put it in writing, and get it on file.
And if you want the exact language ready to send, along with the words for the rest of the conversations this year is going to hand you, that can be found in my Back to School Basics for $27.
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