Issue with a student: what should I do?

I teach Spanish in High School and have a class of 27 students of which five already speak Spanish because they are from Spanish-speaking families. This week we had teacher-parent conferences. One of the students that I requested to have a conference with his parents has both academic and behavior problems in the class. He is constantly laughing and saying how much he’d rather be home sleeping than being in that class which he has called a bull crap class. In the conference he briefly accepted that he hadn’t really done his best and would try to improve in both areas. Then, he said that he didn’t appreciate the fact that I was complaining about his talking in class but that I let the kids that already speak Spanish talk and that they didn’t have to do the same work that the rest of the students had to do. He managed to switch attention from his issues in my class to make it all about me and the kids that already speak Spanish. We spent more than half the conference with me explaining to his mom that I had different expectations about the kids that already spoke Spanish for obvious reasons, and that I wanted to concentrate in helping the other kids develop oral skills but that in terms of written Spanish everybody had to do the same work. At some point one of the teachers at the conference called a guidance counselor who suggested that my student addressed those concerns to the assistant principal. I was really upset that this kid and his mom had managed to focus the problem on me and not in trying to find solutions for the student’s low grades.

In general terms, I am a non-confrontational person and always wait for situations to take their course, but sometimes that has backfired on me as some people have misinterpreted my non-taking action for being guilty or as a proof that things that I have been accused of are true. This time I don’t want to wait to be called to the principal’s office, but would like to take a more assertive action and I am considering talking to the assistant principal on Monday as opposed to waiting for them to call me. I want him to listen to my side and I want him to know that this kid in twisting the facts and at times he is simply lying about what goes on in class with the kids that already speak Spanish.

I would very much like to hear what you have to say about this and any suggestions as to how to handle this situation. I want to be strategic about it and don’t want a fifteen-year-old kid run the show and get away with such mean manipulative antics to shift attention away from himself.