09/14/2026
BREAKING 🚨 A New York high school senior was suspended for bringing a cup of coffee to class—and it just blew up in the district's face.
Julie Kaputa walked into her first period class on September 3 holding a latte. Her teacher told her to dump it out, drink it right there, or go to the office.
She wouldn't dump it. So she spent the first day of her senior year in in-school suspension.
The district said she'd broken a “brand new” rule that banned outside food and drinks, added to this year's code of conduct. But New York doesn't let a district change its code of conduct without holding a public hearing first. So Julie asked when they held it…
Her mother went on Facebook and asked other parents the same thing. Julie was put in ISS for refusing to dump out a "banned beverage," she wrote. A latte. Had anyone seen a notice about a hearing? Because she couldn't find one.
Then she started digging. Board meeting minutes from July and August, the meetings where the rule might have been discussed, had never been posted to the district website. They only went up after she called and asked. The district office had no record of any public hearing at all.
"I am certain that the school can not enforce a substantial change to the code of conduct without a public hearing," she wrote.
Superintendent Todd Green told WWNY's Seth Appleby that the August board meeting counted as the hearing. Then he talked to Julie, and agreed it had never been properly announced. "We know there's open meeting laws. We try to follow that," Green said.
Tomorrow night, the board will hold a real public hearing. They're bringing students in to help rewrite that section of the code.
Julie says she isn't angry at anyone. She just wanted the process followed. "Transparency in government is a big thing that I care about a lot," she said, "and it just kind of struck me as odd that there wasn't a public hearing."
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