Special Education Law Blog
A special education legal resource discussing case law, news, practical advocacy advice, and developments in state and federal laws, statutes and regulations. Postings include insight and sometimes humor from Charles P. Fox, a Chicago, Illinois attorney who is also a parent of child with special needs, and other guest authors.
While I am still digesting the report that just came out, I wanted to share it more broadly. CPS is one of the biggest district's in the US and has huge problems that I see everyday far beyond the parameters of this report. Download Public_Inquiry_Final_Report. I most appreciate the fact that this report puts the problems and obstacles that CPS's computer system creates for parents and students. Another main focus are some of the issues with transportation in Chicago. The issue almost immediately becomes what happens in Phase II of this process which is remediation. Stay tuned.
While I do not represent families through the maze of social security benefits, it is an important issue that needs to be a factor in transition planning. Navigating the world of such social security entitlement programs as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is a byzantine process for parents of children and adults with disabilities. It is challenging even for sophisticated or highly educated parents and requires tremendous amounts of time, patience, and fortitude. Yet, parents shouldn’t have to re-invent wheels as they enter this labyrinth and try to comprehend the variety of regulations that may or may not apply to their child. School IEP teams can provide a tremendous amount of support to both the student and the family by developing meaningful transition plans and goals that help shepherd the family through the process. In particular, schools must be actively involved early in the transition process in identifying and assisting students who are or may become eligible for SSI or SSDI.
Women across the world are embracing the hashtag #MeToo to publicly share their own experiences with sexual abuse and assault and to seek empowerment. The result of this movement has sent shock waves through our society as powerful figures in politics, journalism, and entertainment have been identified as abusers and suffered consequences. Yet one group has been conspicuously absent from this conversation—the disabled. And unfortunately, the disabled are among the most vulnerable in our society to sexual abuse and assault. Nancy Thaler, deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, said, “If this were any other population, the world would be up in arms. We would be irate and it would be the No. 1 health crisis in this country.”
The current round of tax "overhaul" legislation and repeal of net neutrality rules will have wide ranging and mostly negative effective on students with disabilities. This blog is the first in a series of blogs on the effects of these legal changes on students and others with disabilities. On December 14, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal an Obama-era regulation that ensured net neutrality. The Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which had been implemented in 2015 to prevent the blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization of content on the internet, was designed to ensure that use of the internet was a right and not a privilege. The effects of the net neutrality repeal have left many educators and advocates deeply concerned about its impact on education, both at the K-12 level as well as higher level education. Shockingly, the FCC itself appeared to have not weighed these considerations. Several senators noted by letter prior to the December 14th vote that the 210-page proposal from the FCC never even mentioned the word “student” or “students.”
Mass shootings keep happening. Mental illness is the easy answer but not the cause. Almost monthly we read about horrific shootings in Las Vegas, Orlando, or small towns in Texas and California. The subsequent finger pointing continues as to why these shocking killings keep occurring. Whether you are for additional gun control laws or against, we clearly need to have a reasoned discussion about the root causes of these shootings. These discussions need to be predicated on one fact: we must not equate these shootings with mental illness. It is too facile to claim as did the President that “mental health is your problem here,” or that “Guns don’t kill people—the mentally ill do,” as did Ann Coulter. These statements are inaccurate and fail to recognize how complicated and nuanced the intersection between gun violence and mental illness is, because data show that the nexus is actually quite small. Although the image of a lone psychopathic mass shooter is an easy narrative to adapt to understand gun violence, the reality is that persons with mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, persons with severe mental illness […]
Special education advocates were excited with last March’s Supreme Court ruling on Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District and its determination that students must make “appropriately ambitious” progress in their special education programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Cases are now coming up that will hopefully begin to flesh out the pararmeters of Endrew F and give more defintion to the term "meaningful progress". The Rowley case, which was decided in 1982, provided some guidance on what constitutes progress, but Endrew further refines it and raises the standards of special education for students. This past October, referencing the Endrew case, the Supreme Court remanded a special education case (E.F. v. Newport Mesa Unified School District) back to the lower court not because of the arguments in the case put forth by the parents, but because the Supreme Court wanted the district court to reconsider the case using the new Endrew standard.
Milestones; what are they? We hear about them from the moment our children are diagnosed, for some, born. For most of us, they're not even mile"stones"; they're pebbles, fragments, grains of sand, achievements so small, so tiny, so minuscule that only we notice them. And we keep them to ourselves, afraid some "professional" "paraprofessional," "pseudoprofessional," or interfering busybody might discount them into oblivion. I myself, have given credence to too many naysayers, too often, for too much. I've wallowed in the aftermath of the dream-stealers, driven to sitting in the corner with a can of Reddi Whip, jar of fudge, half-gallon of low-fat ice cream, a serving spoon, and no bowl, recalling the compilation of shortfalls, failures, and stagnations, silently crumbling. I have been robbed of the "bragging rights" so richly enjoyed by parents of the Gymboree, beauty pageant, geniuses, only to be replaced by a pity party award, from a contest I refuse to enter. Raising a child with a disability can be fraught with seemingly endless periods of hopelessness. You bargain away abilities, offering them up to the Universe, in exchange for some other certainty, only to realize there is no certainty in disability — except for […]
Hurricanes hit the most vulnerable the hardest and that applies without a doubt to people with disabilities. The death of Benilda Caixeta, of New Orleans tragically underscores this point. Ms. Caixeta was found drowned in her apartment, next to her wheelchair, despite her repeated calls to 911 pleading for help. Ms. Caixeta’s death served to emphasize one of the many terrible lessons we learned from Hurricane Katrina.
The Trump Administration’s February 2017 reversal of an earlier Obama decision ensuring that transgender students under Title IX should be allowed to use the school restrooms of the gender to which they identify has thrown school policies with regards to gender identify into flux. The February 22, 2017 “Dear Colleague Letter” stated that the earlier Obama position had wrested the primary responsibility of devising education policy from the states and local school districts. Despite its unhappy conclusion, the letter reiterated the need for protecting transgendered students from both bullying and harassment. It is highly questionable, however, if those words have any actionable meaning.