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Susan Luger Associates Newsletter |
Happenings in the World of Special Education June 2010 |
Special Edition
The (Not Too Secret) War Against Special Education |
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Susan Luger Associates is now on Facebook.
Editor's Notes:
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Lawrence Weinberg, one of our esteemed affiliated attorneys, points out that, in our April issue, the ruling against the Bay Shore School District came from a state court, not a federal court, as I had stated.
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If you are looking for the May, 2010 issue, look no further. Susan asked the entire staff of reporters and editors to focus on a new website that is coming out soon. There was no May issue distributed, but we've double-packed the June issue to atone.
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NYC DOE Reorganizes Special Education (into Utter Chaos)
Total Decentralization of Special Education Puts Local Public School Administrators in Charge of School-Level IEP Teams
Motivation has to be cost savings
Saving grace that reorg does not apply to those students already in private schools
Starting June 1, the NYC DOE has instituted a new organization of the special education process for students who are not in private schools. In this new organization, each public school will contain its own IEP team (a.k.a. the Committee on Special Education -- the CSE), headed by the Principal (who, likely, has zero background and college-based training in special education). Each public school will have to provide all special education services to all students on the school's roster, so that students will be kept in their home school. One anonymous official stated, "These kids [special education students] don't learn anything anyway, so let's at least keep them in their local school. It's more convenient that way."
The "glue" that coheres this decentralization is a network of special education experts who service specific subnetworks of the 1500 schools in NYC. These networks, which should have been ready for the June 1 rollout, has not yet been made public. So no one knows how this is will work - not even DOE employees themselves. What is known, according to one source, is that the rhyme and reason of the subnetworks is without rhyme or reason -- the subnets are not geographically connected.
Just to remind our reading public, the constitution of the IEP team is defined by federal law and mirrored by state regulation to include: (1) The parents of the child;
(2) Not less than one regular education teacher of the child (if the child is, or may be, participating in the regular education environment);
(3) Not less than one special education teacher of the child, or where appropriate, not less then one special education provider of the child;
(4) A representative of the [educational] agency who--
(i) Is qualified to provide, or supervise the provision of, specially designed instruction to meet the unique needs of children with disabilities;
(ii) Is knowledgeable about the general education curriculum; and
(iii) Is knowledgeable about the availability of resources of the [educational] agency.
(5) An individual who can interpret the instructional implications of evaluation results;
(6) At the discretion of the parent or the agency, other individuals who have knowledge or special expertise regarding the child, including related services personnel as appropriate; and
(7) Whenever appropriate, the child with a disability.
Until this June 1st organizational change, the CSE/IEP team was a region-wide organization wherein psychologists, special and general education teachers, and social workers can rightly/wrongly weigh opinions of a child. With the new organization, every public school is responsible for its own staffing of the team and its alignment to meet federal and state regulations. The burden of organization and scheduling are now placed at the local school level -- how many CSE reviews are anticipated in the upcoming school year? How are general and special education teachers supposed to perform their educational functions and still participate in the CSE process? And the final question -- what on earth were they (Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg) thinking and what could their motivation be for such an unworkable scheme? Rumors swirl that the saving in local IEP teams will get local solutions. Children with LD, ED, Speech and Language disabilities, autism, Asperger's syndrome, Other Health Impaired will all need to have their services supplied in their local public school. This reduces the busing costs tremendously.
District 75 programs for the most involved students will, for now, continue to exist. All other special education students will be at the mercy of their school's operating budget and school leadership which may not fully appreciate their needs. ... There is no need to further belabor the efficacy of this great plan. |
The Barracuda and the Mermaid
A fable that can't be true but is |
Back in April, we started seeing a letter sent out by the district Committees on Special Education which demanded that parents provide to the CSE specific documentation regarding their children. The language of the letters appeared to come from a subpoena-like document, listing documentation demanded and stating that CSE activities cannot proceed without the documentation. The letters were often followed by a "Second Notice" letter and telephone calls.
At the SLA office, Susan (aka the Barracuda) assembled our legal and advocacy teams. It was determined that the CSE's were evading their responsibilities to collect this documentation. In addition to the CSE sidestepping its mandated work, there was an aura of parental uncooperativeness when/if the parent could not meet the demands of the letter.
So the Barracuda wrote a complaint letter to the NYS Education Commissioner and to the US Department of Education. Coincidentally, Susan met the recipient of the federal letter at a conference in Orlando, although the letter and its consequences were not discussed. A number of you may have received our letter in our mailing to clients. Our letter is now on the SLA Facebook website.
So the Barracuda receives a phone call followed by a letter from the State Education Department, cc'ing a number of NYC special education people. The State Ed letter stated that the CSEs were indeed incorrect in sending out their demand letter and they were told to stop. Can we (aka the Barracuda) please withdraw our complaint?
Before you can sing the second verse of America the Beautiful, guess what? One of Susan's clients called and complained that they got the offensive letter from the CSE! When Susan called the district to investigate, the district's attorney had no knowledge "of nothing".
So, Susan sends a follow-up letter to State Ed declining to withdraw the complaint without further assurance that the CSEs are following the letter of the law.
In Act II, the DOE sends the Barracuda a pleasant letter stating that someone important has spoken to all CSE chairpersons and that no forms that are not in the Standard Operating Procedures Manual (SOPM) of the DOE may be used by CSE personnel to parents. Maybe, they all lived happily ever after.
So where does the mermaid come in? I lied. There is no mermaid in this fable but the title sounded too good to pass up. |
| Workshop News | |
Workshops in summer recess | |
We are moving the workshop on "Understanding Neuropsych's" to the 2010-11 Fall season. More information to follow.
Prior Workshops in the 2009-2010 Year
Andrea Silvia, our own double-threat advocate & attorney, provided the workshop: The Essentials of a Multisensory Orton-Gillingham program.
David Cooperman, MD presented "Is It ADD or Is It Asperger's?".
Dr. Nancy Eng spoke on 'Identifying Speech and Language Issues in Mono- and Bi-lingual Children'.
Financial Consultant Stuart Flaum to discuss 'Special Need Trusts'. Presentation available on request. |
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Community Corner |
Announcement!
SLA is proud to introduce our newest professional advocates, Barbara Penna Goldsmith and Tom Feola. New to SLA but with in-depth special education experience par excellence.
Keep an eye out for our new website. Launch date approximately July 1st! |
Susan and a contingent of SLA advocates and affiliated attorneys attended the annual LRP Conference in Orlando. No one on our team was arrested or even detained! (A first for the SLA toughs).
Seriously, Susan met the federal special education representative to whom she sent her recent complaint (see article 'The Barracuda and the Mermaid').
We all picked up a great deal of strategy since the meeting is essentially for school districts and their attorneys.
Contact us to highlight your organization's activities. |
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School in Queens has students waive their special education rights | |
An article in Suite101.com authored by Donna W. Hill highlights a Queens school, the Jamaica Learning Center which is part of NYC's GED Plus program.
According to the article, the special education teachers were all removed from the school. Students were required to sign a waiver of their special education rights to remain in the program. (We assume these students were 18 years or older.)
Robert Zweig, who heads the GED Plus program, relates in the article that the Jamaica Learning Center is an alternative learning environment and is not governed by the IDEA.
The question to ask then: if the alternative learning environment is not covered by the IDEA, why then were the students required to waive their special education rights? | |
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| Share this Newsletter with your friends and colleagues by forwarding this email to them. |
If you learn of any newsworthy item related to Special Education, contact us with the information. |
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US Supreme Court Avoids Specificity of Placement Issue on the IEP | |
The US Supreme Court has decided to not weigh in on the issue of how specific the placement must be on the IEP. This means that the 2nd Circuit and 4th Circuit, with opposite views must continue to coexist.
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, in a recent NYC case, held that an IEP must identify the location of a student's services only to the extent of determining the student's placement on the Least Restrictive Environment continuum. Effectively, identifying schools on the IEP will disappear.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated that a Virginia district denied FAPE to a teenager with multiple disabilities when it developed an IEP that called for the student's placement in an unspecified private school.
And people wonder why advocacting special education is so confusing. | |
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End Notes
A recent article in the UFT newspaper, the New York Teacher, focused the spotlight on charter schools in an article entitled "Attack of the Hedge-Fund Managers: Why do they care about schools? It's all about the money". While my main interest lies in special education, looking over the fence at the other educational areas helps prognosticate the future.
The article identifies a well-heeled propaganda and control group called 'Education Reform Now' whose board membership includes the chair of Gotham Capital Management, John Petry; Sidney Hawkins Gargiulo of Hawkshaw Capital; John Sabat of SAC Capital; and, Brian Zied of Maverick Capital. Education Reform Now promotes charter schools, mayoral control of schools and vouchers for private and parochial schools. The organization is strongly anti-union and advocates privatizing reforms of the current system. This innocuous-sounding cadre is merging politics, business and education, into a mixing bowl which will only return profits for them and less education for the average child.
Why is this disturbing to me?
Truly, the general education system could use a good old-fashioned broom to sweep (or swat) cobwebs away from the current system. But there is a subtext to the Education Reform Now movement of Bloomberg-level elitism of the richest of the rich; these charter schools can quickly and easily be turned into state-funded private schools for the privileged rich; in fact one is opening in East Hampton next year.
And, finally, why I am so disturbed is because the privatizations that are innocently proposed can be turned on the special education sector. What happens to our neighbors can happen to us.
Sincerely,
Susan Luger Associates, Inc. |
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