1. Who This Applies To

This Code applies to every student taking a Red Comet course, in every state.

Students come to Red Comet two ways:

• Red Comet is your school. You enroll with Red Comet directly or through a state program, and Red Comet keeps your transcript. If Red Comet is your high school, it grants your diploma.
• Red Comet provides your course. You are enrolled in a public/private school or district, or you are a homeschooled student. You are typically enrolled in one or more Red Comet courses.

If another school or district enrolls you, its code of conduct also applies. This Code sets the standard for your conduct in Red Comet courses; it does not replace your school's rules.

This Code sits alongside the Red Comet Acceptable Use Policy. That Policy covers your account, the platform, and course materials. This Code covers how you conduct yourself and treat other people. You will be expected to follow both policies.

2. When This Applies

This Code applies to:

• What you do in a Red Comet course or on the Red Comet platform
• Emails and messages you send to Red Comet teachers and staff
• Anything you post on Red Comet platforms and information channels where other Red Comet students can see

Red Comet does not claim authority over what you do outside its platform. Your conversations, accounts, and activity elsewhere is not governed by this Code.

Two things might look like exceptions and are not:

• On the Red Comet platform, asking another student to contact you somewhere else. Posting your phone number, social handle, or gaming tag on a Red Comet discussion board, or asking a classmate for theirs using the Red Comet platform is a violation of this Code.
• Red Comet's course materials stay Red Comet's wherever you put them. Posting lessons, assignment prompts, or assessment questions to a homework site or a group chat is a violation of the Acceptable Use Policy, because it concerns Red Comet's property rather than your conduct.

3. Academic Honesty

The work you submit must be your own. The rules are in the Red Comet Academic Integrity, Artificial Intelligence, and Research Policy: plagiarism, citation, permitted and prohibited AI use, disclosure, how concerns are reviewed, and what happens when a violation is found. Read it. You will be asked to accept it before you begin a course.

4. Communication Etiquette

A general note on tone. Sarcasm and humor read differently in writing than in person and typing in all capitals reads as shouting. Reread before you send an email, message or post.

With teachers and staff, keep communication course-related and respectful. This applies to email as well as to messages on the platform. Red Comet staff communicate with students through official school channels only.

On coursework content. Red Comet courses cover health, human development, literature with mature themes, and history involving violence. Engaging seriously with that material is the point. Sexual, graphic, or degrading content unrelated to what the assignment asked for is unacceptable. If you are unsure, ask your teacher before you submit.

On discussion boards: Some Red Comet courses include discussion boards. A teacher moderates them. They exist for coursework.

• Post about the course. Boards are not for personal conversation, advertising, or anything unrelated to the class.
• Disagree with ideas, not with people. A discussion where everyone agrees is not much of a discussion, but the disagreement stays about the prompt in question.
• Do not post language or images that demean or attack a person or group, including based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.
• Do not harass, threaten, or intimidate anyone.
• Do not post sexual or explicit content.
• Do not post your own contact information: phone number, personal email, social media handles, gaming tags, and do not ask another student for theirs.
• Do not post anyone else's personal information.

5. Safety

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call emergency services, and tell an adult immediately: a parent or guardian, a trusted adult, a local teacher.

Tell Red Comet if:

• Someone asks you to move a conversation off the Red Comet platform, or asks for your phone number, social media, or other contact information
• Someone asks you for pictures, personal details, or to meet in person
• Someone threatens or harasses you
• You are worried about another student's safety
• Something in a course makes you feel unsafe

Why the above matters. Red Comet's platform has no direct student-to-student messaging, and discussion boards are monitored by a teacher. That is deliberate. Anyone trying to move a conversation with you somewhere unmonitored is trying to get around a protection that exists for your benefit. Red Comet will investigate and take steps for your protection.

6. If There Is a Concern About Your Conduct

We Will Talk to You First

No one decides you violated this Code without telling you what was observed and giving you an opportunity to respond. If you are under 18, your parent or guardian is involved.

When Red Comet Is Your School

1. Your Red Comet teacher or a staff member describes the concern specifically and asks for your account of it.
2. You respond and provide any supporting explanation.
3. A decision is made based on investigation of what happened and on Red Comet's published policies.
4. You (and your parents/guardian) receive the decision in writing, including how to appeal.
5. Appeals go to the Lead Teacher, then to the Head of Teachers. The Head of Teacher may involve the school’s leadership prior to making a final decision.

When Another School Enrolls You

1. Red Comet teachers determines scores for your Red Comet courses. Our certificated teachers decide the scores that appear on the Red Comet transcript. This Code and the Academic Integrity, Artificial Intelligence, and Research Policy govern that decision, including retries, a partial score, or zero score an assignment. We send the Red Comet transcript to your school's registrar. What your school records as your final score is your school's decision.
2. We contact your school, not your parents. For a student enrolled elsewhere, Red Comet documents the concern and reports it to your school with what we observed. Your school decides what to tell your family, under its own policies.

The exception is safety: where a student may be at risk, Red Comet contacts whoever needs to be contacted per federal and state regulations.

3. Your school's policies may also apply. Your school may take its own action under its own rules, in addition to anything Red Comet does.
4. If a concern is serious enough that continued participation is in question, Red Comet works with your school and district to make that decision.

What Can Happen

Most conduct concerns are resolved with a conversation. Depending on what occurred and whether it has happened before, outcomes may include:

• A conversation with your teacher and a warning
• Revision or resubmission of work
• Parent or guardian involvement
• A written conduct notice in your Red Comet student record

Credit You Have Already Earned

Red Comet does not take away credit you have already earned as a punishment. Once you have earned credit and it appears on your transcript, it is yours. That does not change because of a later conduct decision.

Separately from conduct: if a record is later found to have been obtained by fraud, correcting it is governed by Red Comet's records and accreditation obligations rather than by this Code.

Ending Enrollment or Withholding Credit Not Yet Earned

These are reserved for extremely serious conduct, and no individual teacher or administrator decides them. A decision to end a student's enrollment, or to withhold credit that has not yet been awarded, is made jointly by Red Comet's leadership team together with the relevant department heads, after the review described above and after the parent or guardian has been notified.

Conduct that can reach this level includes:

• A credible threat of violence against any person (Red Comet teacher staff, teacher, or another student)
• Sexual harassment or sexual exploitation of a Red Comet teacher staff, teacher, or another student, or soliciting a minor who is also a Red Comet student
• Attempting to move another student off-platform for a purpose that endangers them
• Serious harassment of another student, teacher or a staff member that continues after intervention
• Repeated academic integrity violations after the process in the Academic Integrity, Artificial Intelligence, and Research Policy has run its course
• Serious violations of the Acceptable Use Policy that cause harm to another person or to Red Comet's systems

Withholding credit can affect your progress toward graduation, courses submitted for NCAA initial eligibility, and courses counted toward University of California a-g requirements. That is part of why the decision sits at leadership level.

For Texas students in the TEFA program, how withdrawal interacts with program funding is described in the Student & Family Handbook.

7. Questions

If you are not sure whether something is allowed, ask your teacher before you do it. Asking in advance has never caused a problem and has prevented a great many.

8. Acknowledgment

This Code will appear in your Red Comet course for which you are earning credit and a grade. Acceptance of the Code is required before you can start the course.