Our school district sued my son. He has autism.

Our school district sued my son. He has autism.

The Alta Loma School District is suing my six year old son who has autism and needs special education classes. They are also suing my husband and me.

I got the notice a few weeks ago. The school district wants a judge to declare that the district offered my son what federal law says it must provide him: a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.

One of the difficulties you run into when writing about the education rights of disabled children is that the real importance of these issues can get lost in all the official language and alphabet soup.

So I’ll try to explain as simply as I can:

Federal law says a child in special education is to be provided a free and appropriate public education. This education should be in the least restrictive environment. There are a lot of rules that determine what’s free, appropriate and least restrictive. That last term generally means that a child in special education should have the chance to learn alongside his non disabled peers to the greatest extent possible.  

Next step: When a child is in special education they are supposed to get an Individualized Education Plan each year.

The plan is both a legal document as well as a blueprint for the services the special education child will receive, and where and with whom the child will go to school. The plan is supposed to be written with contributions from all the planning team members. That team is normally comprised of parents, a general and special education teacher, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a special education director, a psychologist and sometimes others.

But these plans become the subjects of disputes between school districts that want to minimize their spending, and parents, who want an appropriate educational opportunity for their children, without going broke providing it.

When my son’s plan was presented in April, the district’s special education director made an offer for a school placement which she considered to be both a free and appropriate placement in the least restrictive environment.  Rather than signing the plan at the meeting I always go home and after rest re read it.

All parents should as well. The parent has the ultimate power to sign the plan and with some options: The parent may agree wholly to the plan; agree somewhat to the plan, taking certain services and agreeing to them and not others (like an a la carte’ menu) or disagree with the plan.

My husband and I agreed somewhat to the plan agreeing to one service and not agreeing to the rest of the offer.  We agreed to a service of Applied Behavior Analysis. We did not agree to placing him at a county school because we do not feel it is appropriate for our son, nor do we feel he is likely to receive any meaningful educational benefit in that placement. 

We currently have our son in a non public school. Here he has daily interactions with children who do not have autism from local charter and home schools, he uses touch screen computers, assistive technology, and highly educated people work with him one-on-one, which is something he requires. We are not asking our son’s school district to pay for this school. We have written to the district letting them know that our son was at this school.

On May 19, 2010 we received legal papers in the mail. It was a due process filing from the school district’s attorney, evidently to obtain a judge’s declaration that the school district’s offer was sufficient – that is, that it was free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.

Our reaction to this is frustration and anxiety.  If we want to attend the hearing with an attorney we must spend money to retain one and this is money that we obviously haven’t budgeted for. Life with a child with special needs is already filled with complications and adding harassment and retaliation from a school district would obviously increase stress for a family.

So the district is choosing to file against my family and spend money on attorneys to sue us rather than to wait up to two years to see if we will file due process against the district.

And here’s what hurts all of us whose children need special education: The money that is used on attorneys to sue a family comes out of special education funds. 

This means that in the district’s quest to make certain that they can cover themselves against a potential future due process filing by my family they are, in essence, taking away taxpayer dollars designed for special education programs and services and using these dollars instead on law firms and attorneys to sue a family such as mine.

What are your thoughts on this? If you are going through this, or have questions about this process, I’d be pleased to chat with you here on The Freeway.