Special Education Law Blog

COVID-19 Cannot be a Time of No Education for Students with Special Needs

It appears that this pandemic of COVID-19 is a time that lawmakers such as Senator Lamar Alexander and others are ready and willing to basically exempt school districts from their obligations under IDEA. At this time our students need more not less education and more creative solutions. Elearning will not be the answer for many students with a high emphasis on self teaching and self-initiative. I have rarely seen schools take creative approaches but now is the time for schools to be more creative and not take an "oh well" approach to special education. This time off from school, that will likely last until the end of the year, and perhaps beyond cannot just be dead time. Fortunately there is guidance that school's still must meet the needs of students with special needs. The following is a posting from COPAA, detailing school's obligations (see below) at this time and beyond. We will likely need to have many (and extended) conversations about compensatory education for the many missed educational opportunities. Do not be shy about emailing your case manager and special education director requesting more than ineffective elearning for your student.

 

Threat Assessment Plans and Students with Special Needs by Charles P. Fox and Marilyn Green-Rebnord

It has happened again--yet another school shooting in our country with multiple fatalities.  This shooting is the 16th school shooting this year, an average of about one every week.  Parents and teachers are terrified, students are marching, politicians are offering thoughts and prayers, and administrators are struggling with how to protect our nation’s students.  We can anticipate over the next few days that someone will proclaim that the latest violence is the result of a “sicko;” we could not, however, predict that incoming NRA president Oliver North would blame the shootings on a culture of violence and all of the boys who have been on Ritalin since “their early years.”  Comments such as this only serve to increase the stigmatization of students with mental health issues or special needs. We must not let this happen.  The purpose of this blog is not to address the need for commonsense gun laws.  Instead, it focusses on addressing other strategies that can help prevent school violence, such as threat assessment plans, and recognizes what does not work, such as profiling of students with special needs (a la Oliver North).  

School Shootings and Students with ED by Charles Fox and Marilyn Green-Rebnord

COPAA, the Council of Parents, Attorneys and Advocates, released a statement after the Parkland shootings urging us not to use yet another school shooting tragedy as an impetus to marginalize students with emotional issues and mental illness but to remind us that school districts need to address these students’ issues.  School districts are mandated under the IDEA to both identify and provide services to students with mental health issues under the classification of Emotional Disturbance.  These students need help; they don’t need to be pushed out or excluded from school due to their occasionally very problematic behavioral issues. 

Illinois Issues Major Findings Against Chicago Public Schools

While I am still digesting the report that just came out, I wanted to share it more broadly. CPS is one of the biggest district's in the US and has huge problems that I see everyday far beyond the parameters of this report. Download Public_Inquiry_Final_Report. I most appreciate the fact that this report puts the problems and obstacles that CPS's computer system creates for parents and students. Another main focus are some of the issues with transportation in Chicago. The issue almost immediately becomes what happens in Phase II of this process which is remediation. Stay tuned.

#MeToo and the Disability Community

Women across the world are embracing the hashtag #MeToo to publicly share their own experiences with sexual abuse and assault and to seek empowerment. The result of this movement has sent shock waves through our society as powerful figures in politics, journalism, and entertainment have been identified as abusers and suffered consequences.  Yet one group has been conspicuously absent from this conversation—the disabled.  And unfortunately, the disabled are among the most vulnerable in our society to sexual abuse and assault. Nancy Thaler, deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, said, “If this were any other population, the world would be up in arms.  We would be irate and it would be the No. 1 health crisis in this country.” 

Mental Illness and Gun Violence--A False Fallacy

Mass shootings keep happening. Mental illness is the easy answer but not the cause.  Almost monthly we read about horrific shootings in Las Vegas, Orlando, or small towns in Texas and California.  The subsequent finger pointing continues as to why these shocking killings keep occurring.  Whether you are for additional gun control laws or against, we clearly need to have a reasoned discussion about the root causes of these shootings.  These discussions need to be predicated on one fact:  we must not equate these shootings with mental illness. It is too facile to claim as did the President that “mental health is your problem here,” or that “Guns don’t kill people—the mentally ill do,” as did Ann Coulter. These statements are inaccurate and fail to recognize how complicated and nuanced the intersection between gun violence and mental illness is, because data show that the nexus is actually quite small. 

Although the image of a lone psychopathic mass shooter is an easy narrative to adapt to understand gun violence, the reality is that persons with mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.  According to the  Department of Health and Human Services, persons with severe mental illness are 10 times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the general population. For instance, people with schizophrenia are 14 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than they are to be the perpetrator.  Convenient as it is blame the violence on mental illness, doing so risks further stigmatization of mental illness and subsequent failure for persons who need mental health care to seek treatment.

Giving Meaning to the the term "Meaningful Progress"

Special education advocates were excited with last March’s Supreme Court ruling on Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District and its determination that students must make “appropriately ambitious” progress in their special education programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Cases are now coming up that will hopefully begin to flesh out the pararmeters of Endrew F and give more defintion to the term "meaningful progress". The Rowley case, which was decided in 1982, provided some guidance on what constitutes progress, but Endrew further refines it and raises the standards of special education for students.   This past October, referencing the Endrew case, the Supreme Court remanded a special education case (E.F. v. Newport Mesa Unified School District) back to the lower court not because of the arguments in the case put forth by the parents, but because the Supreme Court wanted the district court to reconsider the case using the new Endrew standard. 

Hurricane Harvey and his Brethren Hit Disabled Hard

Hurricanes hit the most vulnerable the hardest and that applies without a doubt to people with disabilities. The death of Benilda Caixeta, of New Orleans tragically underscores this point.  Ms. Caixeta was found drowned in her apartment, next to her wheelchair, despite her repeated calls to 911 pleading for help. Ms. Caixeta’s death served to emphasize one of the many terrible lessons we learned from Hurricane Katrina.

Gender Identity and Special Needs

The Trump Administration’s February 2017 reversal of an earlier Obama decision ensuring that transgender students under Title IX should be allowed to use the school restrooms of the gender to which they identify has thrown school policies with regards to gender identify into flux. The February 22, 2017 “Dear Colleague Letter” stated that the earlier Obama position had wrested the primary responsibility of devising education policy from the states and local school districts. Despite its unhappy conclusion, the letter reiterated the need for protecting transgendered students from both bullying and harassment. It is highly questionable, however, if those words have any actionable meaning.

Call Congress Immediately to Save Medicaid

The following is a reproduced statement as to the critical need to save Medicaid from Trumpcare.

The American Health Care Act (AHCA) jeopardizes healthcare for the nation’s most vulnerable children: students with disabilities and students in poverty. Specifically, the AHCA reneges on Medicaid’s 50+ year commitment to provide America’s children with access to vital healthcare services that ensure they have adequate educational opportunities and can contribute to society by imposing a per-capita cap and shifting current and future costs to taxpayers in every state and Congressional district.  While children currently comprise almost half of all Medicaid beneficiaries, less than one in five dollars is spent by Medicaid on children. Accordingly, a per-capita cap, even one that is based on different groups of beneficiaries, will disproportionally harm children’s access to care, including services received at school.