NationStates Jolt Archive


Billing the Public for Private Schooling

NERVUN
19-02-2006, 14:10
I know, I know, it's a long article. I give this warning ahead of time for those of you who cannot be bothered to actually read anything longer than two sentances. If this addresses you, feel free to make a comment based off of the topic so that it can be torn apart and laughed at.

At Woodside High in San Mateo County, college-prep classes awaited a 15-year-old boy with learning disabilities and anxiety.

He would blend in with other college-bound students, but also receive daily help from a special education expert. He would get a laptop computer, extra time for tests -- and an advocate to smooth any ripples with teachers. If an anxiety attack came on, he could step out of class.

But Woodside High wasn't what his parents had in mind.

Instead, they enrolled him in a $30,000-a-year prep school in Maine -- then sent the bill to their local public school district.

Similar stories are playing out up and down California as more parents of special education students seek extra-special education at public expense: private day schools, boarding schools, summer camps, aqua therapy, horseback therapy, travel costs, personal aides and more.

Dissatisfied with -- or unwilling to consider -- classes and therapies offered by public schools, growing numbers of parents have learned that demanding more can yield striking benefits, especially when they threaten to sue.

And an expensive legal battle is the last thing district administrators want. So they often give in.

Legal proceedings "are a huge time drain on your administration and your teachers," said Karen Mates, special education director for the Tampalpais Union High School District in Marin County. "You don't want to spend precious dollars on this, so districts will settle a case to avoid it."

The result: Expensive legal judgments and confidential settlements add hundreds of millions of dollars to already soaring special education costs across California, while taxpayers are kept in the dark about how the money is spent.

Meanwhile, California school districts shift more than a billion dollars a year out of their regular school budgets to pay for it all.

"This is not sustainable," said Paul Goldfinger, a California school finance expert. "Special education is a growing portion of budgets in many districts, squeezing out services for other pupils.

Yet to many parents whose children need help, nothing seems more justified than seeking the best.

In the Woodside case, the boy was still a year from finishing middle school when his parents hired a consultant to find them an alternative to Woodside High.

The consultant, Miriam Bodin, suggested several private schools, all outside of California. The parents chose Kents Hill, a bucolic boarding school with one-tenth the enrollment of Woodside High -- and no special education program.

"I didn't care if they had special education," said the boy's mother, who agreed to discuss the case if the family were not identified. "He needed a small classroom on a small campus. This was a very good situation."

He enrolled at Kents Hill in 2000.

Records show the parents had previously gotten their elementary district, Portola Valley, to pay half the tuition of a small private middle school in Vermont for students with learning disabilities.

Now they hoped to get the Sequoia Union High School District, which includes Woodside High, to pay for Kents Hill.

The family hired attorney Kathryn Dobel, an expert in special education cases. She filed papers in 2002 demanding that Sequoia Union pay four years of tuition and the family's costs for travel between Maine and California.

And by the time the boy graduated from high school in 2004, the Woodside case would stand as an icon of the troubled state of special education: parents and educators at odds, inequity in a system meant to equalize, and myriad rules so esoteric they've spawned a new specialty field for lawyers.

"Special ed," as it's widely known, is a hard-won civil right born in the 1970s and designed to correct years of discrimination by giving children with special needs an equal opportunity to learn. When it works as it should, special ed offers a lifeline to kids with a range of disabilities, from speech impairments to brain injuries.

Each child receives an "individualized education plan" specifying the type and amount of extra help they'll get. A team of parents, teachers, therapists -- and, increasingly, lawyers -- meets to update the plan.

The bedrock of the federal law is a "free and appropriate public education" for anyone with disabilities, from birth to age 22.

But the law doesn't define "appropriate" -- an omission that has led to escalating disputes about what public schools must pay for.

Special ed serves nearly 700,000 students in California, and the program appears to be working for most of them. Yet complaints are rising, and fast.

Last year, 3,763 children with disabilities were the subject of formal complaints over educational services, triple what it was a decade ago. Parents open the vast majority of cases, and districts have a built-in financial incentive to settle them because it can cost up to $40,000 to go to a hearing. And then there's the possibility of an expensive judgment against the district.

So districts try not to let a case go that far. Last year, districts participated in 386 full hearings -- just 10 percent of cases opened.

The rest -- 90 percent -- were resolved through secret settlements.

"They really don't want parents out saying, 'Oh, if you just sue this district, you'll get whatever I got,' '' said Elizabeth Estes, an attorney with Miller, Brown, & Dannis, which represents districts.

It's an equation that virtually ensures some children will receive benefits unavailable to those whose parents do not file complaints.

Examples include "dolphin therapy and horseback riding," said Johnny Welton, a special ed coordinator for Contra Costa County. "Things that are beneficial to kids but are not an education-related service."

Welton said such programs cost tens of thousands of dollars and lure parents in with the promise of outstanding results. When parents ask for them, educators are forced to do "risk management."

"Why not pay for a few hours of horseback riding instead of spending $50,000 on attorneys at a hearing?" he said. "In a practical sense, the schools have to pay it."

In recent years, private education at public expense has become a sought-after benefit for children with a wide range of disabilities. The practice of "unilateral placement" -- enrolling a child in a private school, then billing a district for tuition -- is gaining ground, say educators.

In California, private enrollment for students with disabilities has risen nearly five times faster than the overall increase in special ed students, state records show.

Since 1993, the number of students in public special ed programs rose 27 percent, to 681,969 from 539,073. But special ed students placed in private schools at public expense rose nearly five times faster -- 128 percent, to 15,926 from 6,994.

As costs soar, many educators paint a picture of a system financially out of control and increasingly unfair to students who families can't afford lawyers to win them extra-special education at public expense.

In Sonoma County, for example, a family recently enrolled their child in an out-of-state boarding school, then billed their district not only for tuition, but airfare, car rental, hotel, cell phone calls, meals, tailoring, new clothes, an iBook computer, stamps, tolls, gas and 13 future round-trip visits. Total tab: $67,949.

The district paid "a portion," said a school official who revealed the bill on condition of anonymity.

"Special education is a huge industry now," said Joyce Willett, the Sequoia Union High School District's special ed director. "I don't think the average person realizes what's going on."

Mates, the special education director for the Tampalpais Union High School District, agreed.

"We're looking at a huge crisis heading into our schools," she said. "At a time when education dollars are scarce, my district alone spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to pay for private placements for the children of Marin families, where schools often become the enemy. I want to expand our special education programs, but I can't even bring that up."

And as the demands on special education rise, experts say the financial consequences for public schools are staggering. All California students, disabled or not, feel the impact of rising special ed costs.

In 2004, for example, California schools received $4.1 billion from federal, state and local sources for special education.It wasn't enough. So districts took $1.6 billion more from regular class funds -- double what they took a decade earlier -- according to an analysis by School Services of California, a financial consulting firm.

In all, 28 percent of special ed expenditures in California came from regular education budgets in 2004.

"It's a blank check," said Goldfinger, vice president of School Services. "The system is stacked so that one segment of the population -- disabled children -- has first call on funding, and the others get whatever's left."

If there's one thing parents, lawyers and educators agree on, it's that special education law is about as complicated as it gets.
The rest of the article is here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/19/SPED.TMP

I find this a little exasperating. When I was in public school, my mother had to fight for special education services. When I was doing practicums in the school system, I would hear about special education students and the issues that they faced and the problems of not having enough money to address and help them to the fullest. As a in service teacher, I have to deal with a school system that lacks special education services and what that means to my students who are mainstreamed without any support.

Then I hear about this.

Why is it that there's always someone willing to screw things up in a much needed program?
Sarkhaan
19-02-2006, 22:33
...I don't even know what to say.:headbang:

you want your kid to go to a private school? You want them to swim with FUCKING DOLPHINS?! fine. but you can pay for it.

Now I support improvements in sped resources. They aren't doing enough, and that does need to be fixed...but why be selfish and force schools to pay for these things and punish every other child, sped and not, in the district? I'm sorry...if my parents sent me to a private school, they would have had to pay for it. If they wanted me to have small campus and class sizes, they would have had to pay. I don't care what your child has, you still have to pay. out of your own pocket. you aren't going to get pity and sympathy by being a jackass.
AnarchyeL
19-02-2006, 22:36
This is pretty disgusting.

I would like to highlight a facet of the problem that the article mentions, but barely glosses: the benefits, as usual, accumulate to the students whose parents already have wealth.

So, rather than improve special education programs that benefit ALL children with special needs, public schools are forced to pay for "extra-special" schooling for the wealthy? That is just plain wrong.

Obviously, special education and the funding that goes with it is good to have in our schools. But I mean, in our schools. The law should be re-written, as soon as possible, to remove the ambiguities that wealthy parents are taking advantage of. It should specify that the money goes to services provided by the schools, and it should allow schools to balance the needs of all special education students when deciding what services to provide or what specialists to hire.
Anti-Social Darwinism
19-02-2006, 22:37
If my tax dollars are going to private schools, then I need to have something to say about what is taught in private schools. If a Catholic school gets public money, then it has to limit it's teaching of Catholic dogma, because it has, in essence become a public school. The same should hold true of all private schools receiving public money.
Teh_pantless_hero
19-02-2006, 22:47
This is bullshit. The introduction case sepcially. He was remvoed from a program that we wished existed here, and then expects the schoo lto foot the bill for ridiculous extraneous schooling? That is bullshit. If they want their children going to extra special schooling programs, they can pay for it their damn selves. if they can't afford it and the school system is making an effort, they can shut the fuck up.