This Note examines the unregulated use of abeyance agreements in school discipline and proposes safeguards to ensure they do not function as coercive mechanisms that strip students of due process or reinforce systemic inequities. Abeyance agreements are behavioral contracts in which a school agrees to suspend disciplinary action in exchange for a student’s compliance with specified terms. These contracts can offer students a second chance, but they come at a steep cost: students must forfeit their rights to procedural due process, including a hearing on the initial allegation and any appeal. Although abeyance agreements could replace more severe disciplinary actions, they currently operate without oversight and risk amplifying the harms of exclusionary discipline, reinforcing systemic pushouts, and enlarging the school-to-prison pipeline.

This Note argues that abeyance agreements should be subject to procedural and substantive safeguards informed by lessons from the juvenile legal system. First, it explores foundational issues in school discipline, such as the limited rights afforded to individual students, the lasting harms of exclusionary discipline policies, and the systematic pushout of marginalized students from traditional educational settings. Second, it examines opportunities arising from abeyance agreements and their potential risks, especially to fairness and equity. Third, it draws lessons from plea agreements and deferred disposition agreements in the juvenile legal system to inform potential reforms based on voluntariness, developmental appropriateness, and systematic fairness. Fourth, it proposes reforms that adapt promising juvenile justice safeguards— including consent standards, individualized supports, and a substantial compliance model—to ensure that abeyance agreements function as just and nurturing alternatives to exclusionary discipline rather than as hidden pathways to student removal.

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