Special Ed Exodus in D.C.
Our children's needs come first.
Parents, you have a right to keep your child in their current education placement under the IDEA 2004 “stay put” provision. Do not be suckered into negotiating a new placement. Know your rights.
The Washington Post and other media outlets are reporting that the District of Columbia school district plans to remove 170 special education students from their private school placements in the Accotink Academy, a therapeutic day school for qualified special education students with learning and emotional disabilities in Virginia. Accotink Academy was established over 30 years ago and has been serving D.C. school district students for 15 years. Currently, the D.C. district funnels about $10 million per year into Accotink Academy. Accotink does not publish tuition costs on their website but taking the numbers given by the Post, $10 million divided by 170 is approximately $59,000 per student per year. That is expensive but comparable to other intensive therapeutic day schools. Students who are being removed from Accotink will be “allowed” to transfer to other private schools.
Richard Nyankori, deputy chancellor for special education in the D.C. district knocked off an e-mail to the Accotink Academy informing them of their plan to remove the students within the next several weeks. According to the Post, D.C. school officials regard Accotink Academy teachers as inadequate, “indifferent,” and they accuse the private school of focusing too much on punishment and allowing the children to spend too much time outdoors. The Accotink Academy, in turn, threatened legal action for libel and slander.
What is most interesting is that the D.C. district believes that it can disregard 170 IEP contracts with a proverbial flick of the wrist. Taking a large group of children out of a school at once without plans for future placement relies on an assumption that any placement is better than the current placement. It also completely disregards special education law. Imagine if 170 sets of parents put their collective feet down and said, “No! Our children stay put!” The D.C. school district would be required, at the very minimal, to do the following: 1) Hold 170 IEP meetings, providing at least 10 days advanced notice to each team, including the parents; 2) give a rational argument based in each child’s individual needs as to why Accotink is not adequate FAPE; and 3) then, after waiting a period of time for each parent to agree to an IEP and failing that, file 170 separate due process complaints. What a barrel of monkeys that would be. Even then, each child has a right to “stay put” until a due process decision is reached, which probably means months, if not the entire school year before they can forcibly move your child — and that’s if they win.
Undoubtedly, the district is hoping to hoodwink parents into placement negotiations who do not know their rights and who are willing to believe that the school district has their child’s best interests at heart. Even if you want to give the school district some credit for caring, make sure they have significant, believable evidence to back their claim that Accotink Academy is inappropriate for your child.
Some parents are fighting it because they believe their children are thriving at Accotink. Many parents contend that moving schools will be more disruptive, to their children than the alleged “low quality” of teachers at the school. Research tends to back their concerns. Children with emotional disturbance need stability and careful team planning for transitions, especially to new schools and classrooms where the child will leave their established peer group and mix with an entirely new one.
Children in special education are given Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). Under federal and state law, children in special education are afforded the right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE), which may be provided at a private institution. IEPs are essentially contracts developed by a team, including the child’s parents, who agree to an education plan for the school year. They must meet and develop this plan at least once per year. Each student’s IEP offers a continuum of placement options on an individual basis. The team picks a placement and that is where the student goes, unless the parents otherwise object. To make a long story short, D.C. district officials are not in a place to make decisions about placement without input from the IEP team, which includes the parents. The school district can hold an IEP meeting for an individual student and decide on a new placement but if the parent disagrees, the district must either defer to the parent or initiate due process. In that case, the child “stays put” in their placement. If the claims the Post have made are accurate, then the D.C. district simply does not have the power to pull the special ed students from their placement without violating special education law.
Here’s my main contention with the issue. In reading reports and various comments around the net, there seems to be a pervasive attitude blaming special education students, as if they are at fault, personally, for draining school district budgets around the country. Sometimes parents are blamed for causing disabilities. Sometimes lawyers are blamed for “milking” the system. Sometimes that is true but more often students with disabilities have a range of problems that are unrelated to the quality of their home environment. If you have ever been around special education parents, they are often some of the most dedicated, loving people you will ever meet. There are always exceptions but they are not the rule. School districts, however, are often overlooked as a primary source of their own overwhelming fiscal problems.
School districts have an enormous burden that requires a high standard of competency when dealing with educating children, particular special education students. When students have learning disabilities, autism, aspergers, and behavior disorders, including “emotional disturbance” then school competency is so critical that without it education is lost. If the school staff is writing poor IEPs, not properly implementing best practices in research within their programs, and generally going through circular motions without finding meaningful solutions, e.g. doing the same thing repeatedly and getting the same result but doing nothing more than complaining about it, then they are wasting so much money they may as well burn it.
According to the Post, the D.C. district has 9,300 special education students and fully 30 percent of them have been placed in private schools because their respective public schools cannot meet their needs. What does it mean when a public school cannot meet the needs of a particular student? It will certainly almost always be the position of the school district that they are doing everything humanly possible to meet the needs of that student but because of the student, it simply cannot be done. The student then has to be moved, often to a more expensive setting, where the school district is generally liberated from the inconvenience of dealing with a difficult student on a daily basis. Private schools are supposedly a last resort. You have to question a school district that sends nearly one third of their special education students elsewhere. You really have to question a school district that is so ignorant of special education law that they think they can pull 170 students out of a private school setting and change placement, sans parent agreement, without serious repercussions.
If you are a parent of a special education child, you must be intensely involved in their education and upbringing. It’s the best gift you can ever give them in life, along with your parental love. If you do not know your rights, visit the Wright’s Law website.
If your child has ADHD with or without other comorbid disorders, such as learning disabilities and/or “emotional disturbance,” try ADHDParents. There is a nice support forum there with a knowledgeable crew.
My favorite FAPE book: Free Appropriate Public Education: The Law and Children with Disabilities. It’s a bit expensive and it’s out of print but it’s a great book. It’s for those of us who want to know everything about FAPE. If you decide to buy it, it is important to get the most recent edition since so many changes have been made to IDEA.
Wright’s Law Emotions to Advocacy is a good guide for special ed parents.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and the information in this post does not constitute legal advice.