Posted on 10/27/2007 6:45:51 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...Cases like these have increasingly become a flash point in special education, pitting parents against school systems that say they cannot afford to pay to privately educate disabled children whose parents unilaterally reject their proposed placements.
Expectations that the Supreme Court would settle whether such parents must try public schools first evaporated after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy recused himself without explanation in two cases from New York State.
Without Justice Kennedy, the court split 4 to 4 in a New York City case on whether Tom Freston, the former chief executive of Viacom, should have put his learning-disabled son in a public school before sending him to a private school and seeking tuition reimbursement. The split let stand an appeals court ruling for Mr. Freston, but set no precedent outside of New York, Connecticut and Vermont. And when Justice Kennedy opted out of a similar case from Hyde Park last week, the court turned the case down.
“What guidance does Tom F. provide?” asked Perry Zirkel, a professor of law and education at Lehigh University, referring to the Freston case. “No guidance.”
The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guarantees a “free appropriate public education” for children with disabilities. Most of the nation’s nearly six million special-education students attend public school, but the law allows parents to seek public financing for private schools if they can show that the public schools cannot adequately serve their children.
As of 2005, more than 88,000 disabled students were educated in private settings at taxpayer expense, an increase of 34 percent over a decade, according to the National School Boards Association. Often school districts acknowledge that they cannot provide an adequate education, and willingly pay for private tuition. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
From my perspective, it is possible to determine to what degree a child can achieve in any school--private or public. I believe in some occasions that parents have required to government to pay for the parents denial as to what is possible for their handicapped child.
I saw something about this on the news a couple weeks ago. At issue was not that actually disabled children got public tuition for private schools, but a huge number were abusing the system.
Freston is worth **hundreds of millions** as the developer of MTV and gives extensively to Democratic organizations and PACS.
And he wants NY State money to educate his kid. The issue may be right (who would want NY City Schools) but this guy has alot of damn gall to complain.
Depending on the specific schools and programs involved, the option of having the state pay private tuition may very well be cheaper than the cost to the taxpayer of the public school program. The State resistance may be over control and not money.
Truth be told, with all the tax break these fat cats qualify for, he may be paying less in taxes than the average joe - this is just one more way to decrease his tax burden - no more, no less.
The simple and fair solution in the case of a wealthy individual such as Tom Freston would be for the state to offer compensation in the amount required for his child to attend an appropriate public school, and then let Freston make up the difference if he wants to send the child to private school. Freston’s idea that the state should pay in full no matter where he wants to send his child to school is obviously flawed (ease up on the greed, Tom).
Here’s one I think y’all will be interested in.
Read the article. It is a crock. The parents enrolled the child in a school before the legal age of FAPE, and then expect the public system to reimburse them.
All of this happened before a diagnosis, recommendations and all of the other things that go with placing a child. (Placement, I may add, that is normally determined by people with PhD’s in pyschology, not education)
This sounds like suing a fast food restaurant for you getting heart disease before you eat at the restaurant.
I have no problem with vouchers or placement, but if you place a child in a school before you have them in public school, you have no right to complain.
In the case of severely handicapped children, private institutions can, and do, run into hundreds of thousands of dollars A YEAR. In the case of learning disabled, the cost will still be more, but will be closer to acceptable.
It remains to be seen how this affects day-to-day operations, but it certainly could become a major deal.
Yhe unfunded liability is more than a little frightening.
For the particular parents featured, the child isn't even enrolled in a school for students with disabilities, so it's hard to see what the advantage would be.
In other words, you get the Chevy, not the Cadillac.
The other thing I found interesting was the cost of educating these students...for some of those in NY, the cost of sending them to private schools averaged $15.5K per year...I wonder what this does to the average cost of education in NY?
Not much - if you recall, I dug through our VA city budget, and learned that the real cost is 26k/kid/year for public school.
That little factiod is really well hidden.
“Learning disabled” is becoming a new way for ethically challenged yuppie parents to manipulate the system. Their lazy, unscholarly offspring get tutors, private school tuition, extra time and “re-norming” on tests, special consideration at selective colleges that fear an ADA lawsuit, etc. What a scam it has all become.
Funny that you would mention that.
I have seen scores of kids come through my school and have mom demand every single accommodation on the planet, and crawl my case in the office because I was too harsh on their precious baby.
And, when they flunk every class after mine and end up dropping out of college because mom and dad’s money means squat to a fully tenured professor, suddenly I don’t look like such a bad teacher/person after all.
Then, I have the same parents who do the same thing, and when their babies score dang near perfect on the tough tests, ace Freshman English and fire me emails about how their kids have come home and do nothing but talk about my class, well, you get the picture.
:)
Courts have also found for parents. In the Hyde Park case, Diane Gelormino rejected the school district’s plan to put her 5-year-old son, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, in a class with 30 children. Instead Ms. Gelormino enrolled him in a private school.[snip]
By the time the boy was in fourth grade, he had still not attended the public schools, although the schools at this time offered him placement in a public special education class. But an impartial hearing officer deemed the district’s plan inadequate. The schools repeatedly appealed, until the Supreme Court turned down the case last week. “I wasn’t looking for a fight,” Ms. Gelormino said, “but he needed to be some place where he would get attention, where he would have people helping him with math.”
I'm not sure why placement in a special education class wasn't deemed adequate, but I am interested to see if more of these cases result from the move to more inclusive placements.
I’m surprised the administration hasn’t persecuted you or fired you for doing your job! Teachers in my district (as well as the school psychologist) have been railroaded out just for following an IEP.
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