Special Education Law Blog

School District Acts Shamefully in Danville, Pennsylvania

This will be the second posting this week where the school district involved the police to inappropriately address issues involving children with special needs. It appears that their New Year's Resolution was to call the police more frequently and for matters that should be addressed inside the school building. 

Assistance Dog 1 and School District 0

A young child with a hearing impairment attempted to bring his assistance dog to a High School in East Meadow, New York. Apparently, the school and the family have been at odds over this issue for some time. When the parent and her son refused to leave with the dog in tow, the school called the police.

The police to their credit informed the school that there was no law against assistance dogs in school,  and in fact the law states that assistance dogs can not be barred from public buildings. The police to their credit left without slapping two sets of cuffs on Simba, the assistance dog.

Throughout this episode the dog remained calm and behaved impeccably; too bad the same can not be said about the adults involved [the mother admitted that she used vulgar language when she realized the school had called the police].

The lessons we learn from this episode are:
1. Assistance dogs are trained to have better manners than some people;
2. School people too often resort to calling police when something less drastic would seem reasonable;
3. Schools are slow to adapt to the need  for assistance dogs despite the increasing popularity of these dogs for children with a variety of disabilities.

School Discipline Lacking Common Sense

I thought I had seen strange things in schools in the this area but the blog zero intelligence has compiled an impressive roster of the truly bizarre--Ripley's has nothing on this lineup. Here are some of the strange events which have been recently featured:

• a student who was acting as a designated driver drove and picked up friends at an off campus party where alcohol was being served. For this act of public safety he was suspended 20 days;
• a student was suspended (later repealed) for weapons violations for folding paper into the shape of a gun;
• a student was charged with a felony for bringing a butter knife to school;
• under Indiana law a student can be suspended or expelled for actions taken "any where and at any time" even if the action has no geographic relationship to the school or any connection to a school activity no matter how remote;
• a student was charged with sexual assault and sexual harassment for streaking in his underwear during homecoming when he accidentally bumped into a science teacher;
• an honor roll student held up a 1 oz. test tube of beer (she did not drink it) and received a 6 week stint in an alternative school [probably will not be on honor roll when she gets back];
• Janesville, Wisconsin High School students beware; there have been 7 expulsions this year almost equaling the total for all of last year.

I understand the need for school discipline and order in schools.  The point is that arbitrary and irrational applications of rules does not encourage respect for the system, it undermines it.  Historically, there seem to be spike in this kind of irrationality, especially in the  wake of real and tragic school violence in the headlines like we have had this last week.  Talk to your children at all grades to be extra vigilant of staying clear of the deans of discipline, especially if there is a shortage of common sense in your district.

Baltimore Special Education Still In Flux

The Baltimore special education system remains in a total state of flux after 22 years of litigation. There is little planning or implementation of the court ordered compensatory education. Many of the top administrators have resigned and many positions remain unfilled.  The new interim head of the school system has promised that special education will be a top priority but those words do not appear to have much substance.

The one thing that is certain among all of this uncertainty is that the school district's high powered Washington D.C. law firm has been approved for $1 million in fees for next year.  Well even if the children's needs remain on hold, the school district's law firm will have its contractual obligations met. Wow I feel so much better knowing that.  Is there something wrong with this picture ? Maybe we should recast these school district fees as expert witness expenses for the parents so it is not payable under the precedent of Arlington Central case; just a wild thought !

Baltimore School Officials to Drop Appeal

This is a followup to a series of posts about the substantial breakdown of the special education system in Baltimore. With plenty of finger pointing going around and the prospect of jail time for contempt of court, the Baltimore school officials moved to appeal the federal court's orders. After nearly 22 years of litigation, the parties appear to have finally reached a resolution of sorts and have moved to dismiss their appeal. Download Schools To Drop Appeal.doc

Baltimore School Officials Failing To Deliver Ordered Services For Special Education Students

In the movie "Its a Wonderful Life" at its climatic moment Jimmy Stewart says to his hapless uncle "Do you know what this means ? Bankruptcy, scandal and jail." In Baltimore school officials may be saying the same to themselves.  Court ordered compensatory services have woefully not been implemented; of 90,000 hours of service ordered less than 4,000 have been provided.  While the school officials are short on services there is no shortage of excuses and finger pointing among the politicians and school administration. Contempt of court orders are possible with penalties to include jail time. 

Inclusion Does Not Exist for Many Children In Boston

IDEA has been a Federal law for the better part of three decades.  From the beginning the concept of educating children in the least restrictive environment ("LRE") has been a cornerstone of the law. To combat wholesale segregation of children with special needs was one of the motivations for enacting the law.   Even after all of these years, in Boston over 40 percent of children with IEPs are segregated from their neurotypical peers and not exposed to the general curriculum. Boston is the harsh reality that thousands of children face; not the fantasy world of Nanette Asimov's imagination, or the false construction of the school side in Arlington Central v. Murphy--that experts and advocates are coopting parents into filing due process. As discussed below,  the abject lack of inclusion in Boston's special education system raises fundamental issues.

Schools Behaving Badly: San Jose, California

It is hard to establish a claim for physical abuse in schools.  Schools often have both legal protections and community reluctance that help insulate them from liability. A recent case in San Jose California surmounted these obstacles and resulted in a jury verdict of $700,000 for the parents of a  child with Aspergers syndrome, who was 7 years old at the time of the incident, against Eisenhower Elementary School and the classroom teacher, Karen Miller .

Schools Behaving Badly: Chicago

In an apparent effort to chill parental advocacy,  the Chicago Public Schools suspended  Lillian Mosely's son on at least 3 separate occasions in September 2000.  Each episode of  discipline coincided with Ms. Mosely advocating for her son's rights in school.  In March 2001, the police "arrived at the classroom and pulled [the child] out for questioning" because of a fight "notwithstanding the fact that the parent [of the other child] had spoken with Mosely and had told her that the problem had been solved," and she did not wish to pursue charges.  It was later revealed that the other child was responsible for starting the fight.  Moreover,  in April 2000 the police, at the request of school staff,  removed Ms. Mosely from a school meeting for handing out flyers.

Schools Behaving Badly: Baltimore

There are myths that have grown up around school systems that are not deserved. One primary myth is that schools are altruistic organizations that have children’s needs at the top of the agenda. Instead, schools are tough self-interested political bureaucracies where children’s interests often do not top the agenda, and sometimes it is hard to discern where on the agenda children fit at all. I recognize and appreciate the vital role that schools play in our society and the devotion of so many teachers, staff and administrators across the country. School systems, however, should not be afforded immunity which does not allow real scrutiny. Their actions and omissions should not enjoy presumptive validity--a premise of the Shaffer case where the Supreme Court found IEPs to be presumptively valid. The following post will be part of an ongoing series to hold school systems up to the scrutiny they deserve when in too many instances they just behave badly.