Special Education Law Blog

Psychic Vision Leads to Child Protective Services Call on Parent

    I have seen school districts using calls to child protective services agencies as a means of chilling parental advocacy. Of course, these calls are couched under the heading of "doing our jobs", "better safe than sorry", and "we are mandatory reporters." All of these justifications would have more credibility if the calls were more even-handed and applied to school personnel who may have committed acts of abuse in the classroom. These claims are met with wide-eyed innocence with the administration dismissing such accusations with a blanket immunity that "school people do not commit acts of abuse." My glib answer is that school personnel do not take virtue pills in the morning and they are just as able to be an abuser as any parent.  At a minimum, any call to child protective services also needs to be grounded upon a reasonable basis.

    Well, one district in Canada left reason and reasonableness outside of the front door of the school. A classroom aide visited a psychic who reported that a child in her class was being abused. On this basis, the school called child protective services on a parent, who had expressed safety concerns over the handling of elopement in school. After a heart-wrenching investigation, the allegations were unfounded.  Schools everywhere need to review their internal policies as to when and on what evidence they make that hotline call to child protective services. I would hope that psychic reports without more evidence would generally not fall within any school's policies.

Florida Teacher Needs to be Voted Off the Island

School personnel too often have an unshakable belief in their own inherent virtue and goodness; "we are here for the children after all." I run into the falsity of this belief all too often. A prominent illustration of a total lack of virtue happened recently in a Florida classroom. A teacher in Florida allowed the classroom to vote a child, who is on the autistic spectrum, to be voted out of the class. This teacher went beyond simple mean-spiritedness or  bad judgment. While the police declined to press charges, this teacher is obviously not fit to continue in this profession. She should take up any occupation that she does not have to consider other people's feelings. I have not seen such cold and callous conduct in my first hand experience, I have seen, however, lesser examples of extreme hurtfulness and bad judgment.  We all need to the ability to be self-critical of ourselves and our professions. Teachers are not immune from the bad parts of human nature.

Any interesting side-note to this story is that the vote was 14-2 to remove the student from the class. We could all learn something about compassion and standing up against peer pressure from the 2 children who voted to keep Alex Barton as a classmate.

PS the school apparently has re-assigned this teacher to non-teaching duties pending its investigation. If she had any decency she would just quit and go and work on a desert island.

Illinois District Brought to Shame by Amanda Windom

The expression is that it takes "two to tango." In this case the two were some dedicated parents and District #203 in Naperville, Illinois over an AAC device known as the Tango.  School District #203 in an act of overt meaness recently denied a six-year-old boy with autism access to his communication device, the Tango.  The District first agreed to supply the Tango and than decided that the child could only have the device if his parents agreed to put him in a summer program that had been deemed inappropriate.  The Hynes family appeared in court pro se, and the school district, represented by its counsel, was literally brought to shame.

The Hynes, in an attempt to enforce their son's rights to access the  Tango, moved in state court for a Temporary Restraining Order.  On June 27, 2007, Mr. Hynes  appeared before Judge Milton Shadur in federal court, responding to the school's efforts to have the case moved to Federal Court.   Judge Shadur decided in favor of the family directing the famous question "Have you no shame?" from the McCarthy hearings, to the district's counsel for trying to remove the Tango from the child. Judge Shadur also stated that the school district was "blackmailing" the parents trying to get them to agree to a program that their "own professionals have not found to be in his best interest".Download JudgeShadurDecision-5.pdf

Later that day the District  sent the family a gag order stating that they would provide the device only after the family agreed to keep quiet about Judge Shadur's decision.  Instead of responding, the Hynes family re-filed the Temporary Restraining Order in State Court.

Students with Special Needs Are Wilted Lettuce and Rotten Tomatoes ? by Daunna Minnich

I have not found much time to post blogs  recently because of IEP season and my impending office move.  My electronic friend and loyal reader and commentator on this blogsite, Daunna Minnich, has come to my rescue with the following blog. She puts a big spotlight on another example of school people publicly sharing  their real feelings about students with special needs, and the truth is not pretty.

Daunna Minnich is a guest author for the blog and a special education advocate in Palo Alto, California.  A former teacher, she is mother of two teenagers with special needs.  She derives a lot of satisfaction from helping parents find their way through the special education maze via an online education forum, which she helps moderate for the Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation and via a hotline sponsored by the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) for Special Education in her school district.  Deeply committed to the work of the CAC, which she chaired for three years, Daunna enjoys advocating directly with school board members and administrators, writing articles for the CAC newsletter and organizing monthly parent education programs.  She never has enough time for all the ideas that pop into her head.

Child Missing from School for Hours and No Call to Parents

School personnel always say to parents "why don't you trust us !" Well a prime example of why parents do not trust schools occurred in Baltimore, when a child with special needs eloped from school and went missing for days.  The school did not even have the sense or the decency to call the parents. The parents had requested an aide to be with child because of prior elopement episodes, but were refused.

Will the school personnel be brought up on charges of child endangerment ? Not likely in my direct experience with a case I handled several years ago, where a client-child eloped from school and nearly died in a nearby river. The local State's attorney and Attorney General did not have the backbone to take a stand against school personnel. Until school personnel are made to understand that they have real and meaningful responsibility for student's safety, not to mention an appropriate education, callous and even cruel disregard of parents and students will continue without any real consequence.

Baltimore School Children Still Missing Services

Last year there were a number of articles about the possibility of Baltimore school officials going to jail for failing to provide needed services to students with IEPs under the terms of a 2005 "emergency order". Well of course no one went to jail and now another year has gone by and students are still being short- changed on their IEPs. The excuse is that their are not enough service providers; the same underwhelming excuse that they used last year.

Louis Bohn Elementary School Alleged to have Abused Child with Special Needs

George and Gia McElroy, parents of a grade schooler with a seizure disorder, filed suit against, Louis Bohn Elementary School that is part of Tracy Unified School District, located in San Joaquin County, California for treating their son G.J. like a circus animal. The suit alleges that the school put him on display in a tent in a public area of the school thereby subjecting him to humiliation and ridicule.  The tent apparently was represented to be a sensory calming area and a means of behavioral intervention.

School Districts Say the Darndest Things

It never ceases to amaze me the things that school personnel say at meetings, that parents relate to me, or testify to at hearings, Here are few a choice ones. I will supplement this list as I recall more and I invite readers to post their "darndest statements" in the comments:

Special Needs Students Taking It On the Chinn

 

A school board member in Oregon, Ron Chinn, referred to students with special needs as "slabs -slow,low and belows." While he gave what appeared to be contrite apology, this man needs to resign as several members of the school board have urged.  There is no room on any school board for a person who has such impaired judgemnt to put it mildly.

What could this man been thinking at the time he made such a nasty statement ? He claimed in his apology that he was ill at the time, but still that hardly explains his willingness to share such gratuitious nastiness, especially given his public position. Mr. Chinn may not appreciate that his comments degrade children with special needs throughout the country, and give voice to others who hold low opinions of children who receive special education. Comments such as these should spark a public dialogue on the reasons and the remedies for the negative perceptions of children with special needs.    

Assistance Dog 2, School District 0

Well the story of the assistance dog gaining access to East Meadow, New York High School is far from over. Today marked the family's fourth attempt to have their son, who is hearing impaired, come to school with his assistance dog, Simba. The dog was again turned away.