Helping Parents and Advocates Improve
Educational Results for Children with Disabilities
Helping Parents and Advocates Improve
Educational Results for Children with Disabilities
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently ruled in favor of a preschool child with Down Syndrome denied an inclusive placement by an Illinois school district. His parents won reimbursement for the tuition they had paid to place him in a private preschool alongside peers without disabilities. The name of the case is Board of Education of LaGrange School district No. 105 v. Illinois State Board of Education and Ryan B., 184 F. 3d 912 (7th Cir. 1999).
Ryan began attending preschool at age two, at his parents' expense. When he turned three, the local school system evaluated him for services under IDEA, and recommended placement in a self-contained classroom for children with disabilities located in an elementary school in a neighboring district. Ryan's parents rejected this placement, and asked that he be placed in a program that included nondisabled peers in either his home district (which did not currently have such a program), or a neighboring district. The school system refused, and offered to have the IEP team consider placement in a state-funded program for children at risk of academic failure. The parents rejected this option, and initiated a due process hearing.
When the parents ultimately prevailed in the administrative proceedings - obtaining a ruling that neither of the two placements offered met IDEA's least restrictive environment requirement, and an order that they be reimbursed for the private school tuition - the school system appealed into federal district court. The parents prevailed again, and the school system appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Before the Seventh Circuit, the school system argued that it's two placement offers did meet IDEA's least restrictive environment (LRE) requirements, because each one matched an example then included in comments to the IDEA regulations of the kinds of programs a school system might offer to meet preschool LRE requirements if it did not offer preschool to nondisabled children. A self-contained classroom for preschoolers with disabilities located in a regular elementary school was one example, as was a preschool program operated by another public agency, such as Head Start. The court rejected this argument, noting that the LRE decision must take into account the unique needs of the child and be based upon his IEP. Thus the school system could not meet its LRE obligation by simply selecting any placement option from the list of possible solutions noted in the IDEA regulations. (Center for Law and Education)
A complaint to the Region IV office of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) regarding discriminatory transportation arrangements for students at a middle school has triggered changes in transportation routes and schedules. The complaint against the Palm Beach County (FL) School District, reported in Individuals with Disabilities Education Law Reports at 31 IDELR 37, raised two issues: (1) longer bus rides for students with disabilities than for their nondisabled peers, and (2) shorter school days, due to the fact that buses taken by students with disabilities departed ½ hour before the end of the school day.
Before OCR completed its investigation, the school corrected both situations. First, an additional bus and bus route were added in order to reduce the amount of time students with disabilities spent in transit to an amount comparable to nondisabled students. Second, the boarding location for the trip home was relocated so that students with disabilities could be picked up at the same time as their peers. OCR then required the school system to maintain logs documenting the length, in terms of time, of morning and afternoon bus runs for students with disabilities, including the time that buses departed the school at the end of the day. OCR was to monitor compliance by reviewing these logs. (Center for Law and Education)
