Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
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February 21, 1999, Sunday, TWO STAR EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. C-1
LENGTH: 1969 words
HEADLINE:
SPECIAL ED OR SPECIAL PRIVILEGE?
BYLINE: ELEANOR CHUTE,
POST-GAZETTE EDUCATION WRITER
BODY:
When two students fight at school, the outcome in the principal's
office can depend more on whether the students are in special
education than on who threw the first punch.
A
"regular" student likely would be suspended for fighting.
But if the
culprit is a special education student, federal and state laws
limit the punishment.
Discipline is the "most
contentious issue" that districts deal with in special
education, said Kaye Cupples, coordinator of programs for
students with exceptionalities for the city public schools.
By law,
schools must ensure that children aren't punished for their
disabilities. At the same time, they must provide safe and
orderly schools for all children. And they must find the time and money to do
it. All the while, they must negotiate myriad rules in a 143-page federal law
that applies to only students with disabilities. The rules are
dense and detailed and sometimes starkly different from rules that apply to
regular students.
For instance, a kindergartner in Deer Lakes School
District was suspended when he wore a tiny, plastic toy ax on his firefighter's
costume on Halloween. That violated the school's "zero-tolerance" weapons
policy, school officials said.
But under federal guidelines, a real
knife carried by a special education student wouldn't be
considered a weapon unless the blade was more than 2.5 inches long.
Federal laws also state that special education students
can't be suspended for more than 10 days. And state rules include the
restriction that mentally retarded students cannot be suspended for any time
without parental permission.
Laws to protect special
education students were enacted decades ago after schools
routinely excluded disabled students.
That changed in Pennsylvania in
1972, when the state signed a consent decree with the Pennsylvania Association
for Retarded Citizens. As a result of that suit, those with other
disabilities also won rights to education.
The most recent federal law is the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act amendments, signed into law in June 1997. It covers
special education rules ranging from individualized
education programs to discipline. While the
old IDEA already guaranteed an education, this one spells out
more rules on discipline.
Of all the rules in IDEA '
97, said William Penn, director of the state Bureau of Special
Education, "discipline has been the focal point. It ran up a
red flag in terms of the emphasis on safety in schools."
Schools vary in
how they interpret the federal laws because the U.S. Department of
Education still hasn't issued the final regulations. Department
spokesman Jim Bradshaw said the final regulations - expected by March 5 will be
about 1,500 typewritten pages long, counting the responses to more than 6,000
comments.
The federal law covers a wide range of
disabilities, from speech impairment to physical
disabilities to emotional disturbances. Each special
education student has an individualized
education program, known as an IEP. Sometimes that program
includes a behavior plan with specific strategies for helping the student to
learn good behavior.
Some students with disabilities
would lose much of their education if they were suspended for
every offense.
Le Verta Davis of the North Side said her adopted
daughter, La Toyah, 6, who has fetal alcohol syndrome and is in emotional
support kindergarten at Martin Luther King Elementary School on the North Side,
needs special rules.
"She's disruptive. She throws chairs or throws
stuff off the table. She screams, hollers, kicks," her mother said.
Davis agreed with school officials when they sent La Toyah home for the
day recently after she hit the teaching assistant with two sticks. The girl also
threw dirt and tried to kick other children.
"I thought she needed to
know that her behavior was not appropriate. If that's the only way we can get
the message through, it was fine with me," said Davis, who emphasized the point
by removing videos, television and other privileges that day at home.
"She was so glad to get back to school," said Davis.
The federal
law covers not only students whose disabilities have been
identified, but also those who the school should have recognized needed to be
evaluated for special education.
Here are some of the
federal rules for special ed students:
* If a student brings a weapon to
school or "knowingly possesses or uses illegal drugs or sells or solicits the
sale of a controlled substance" at school, school personnel can send the child
to an alternative program for up to 45 days - even if the parent disagrees.
* If a student's presence in school is "substantially likely to result
in injury to the child or to others," a hearing officer can place the student in
an alternative setting for up to 45 days.
* If school officials want a
longer alternative placement, they can ask a hearing officer for another 45 days
if there is a substantial likelihood of injury.
* Schools can suspend
special education students no more than 10 days without
providing a "free ap propriate education."
* If school
officials want to give a suspension longer than 10 days, they still must
continue to provide the child with education during that
period. And, school officials must get parental approval or follow a detailed
process, including considering whether the behavior was caused by the
disability. If it was, then a longer suspension can't be given.
School districts vary as to whether they interpret the federal
restriction to 10 consecutive school days or a total of 10 days in a school
year.
But state law limits suspensions to 10 consecutive days and 15
cumulative days. Unlike the federal law, state law covers gifted students as
well as students with disabilities, in cases of suspensions and
program changes.
Regular students also have due process rights, but the
procedures and lengths of suspensions and expulsions are different.
Under state law, for example, students who don't have
disabilities including the gifted - can be expelled for a year
or more for bringing weapons to school, compared with the 45-day alternative
placement for other special ed students.
While the special ed student
continues to receive an education in the alternative placement,
districts don't have to provide other students who are expelled with an
education for 30 days, and the districts can decide how much of
a program to offer after that.
Some differences in treatment frustrate
school administrators.
Woodland Hills Superintendent Stanley Herman
said: "In a lot of cases, the [special education] youngsters
are aware of the consequences of their behavior. I've even had principals who
have attempted to get youngsters under control who have been told by the kids, '
My mom told me you couldn't do anything about this.'
"Not only is the
youngster aware of the consequences, but the youngster is aware of the
regulations enough to be able to use them in a very premeditated way.
Debra Rucki, principal of Arsenal Middle School in Lawrenceville, said
it sent the wrong message to other students, too. "My problem is that
[nondisabled] kids see that behavior. Rucki said the two sets of rules didn't
prepare the special education students for the outside world,
where they have to follow the same rules and consequences as others.
"We
allow the child to even internalize the fact, ' I can do this because I have a
disability.' I'm not so certain we're servicing the child.
Rucki said she'd like to see more alternative facilities available for students
who are chronically disruptive. Those placements sometimes are hard to find.
One local family is awaiting a placement in a private school for their
child whose disabilities include oppositional defiant disorder
(or ODD, a pattern of hostile behavior.) But an opening probably won't be
available until the next school year, said Stephanie Tecza, an
education advocate for ARC Allegheny, co-chair of the city
schools' right-to-education task force and the mother of a
14-year-old girl with Down syndrome.
If a parent doesn't agree with the
school's discipline or placement recommendation, then there are
more steps required by federal law. Except in cases involving weapons, drugs or
the likelihood of serious injury, the student stays in the current placement
while the appeals continue.
Herman recalled a Woodland Hills case in
which a special ed student "could not control his hands," including sticking his
hands down girls' blouses. The district wanted to place the student in an
approved private school that could deal with that behavior, but the parent
refused.
One of the girls pressed criminal charges, and the special ed
student ended up in both Shuman Juvenile Detention Center and an approved
private school, Herman said.
The federal law makes it clear that special
education students may be prosecuted in the courts for criminal
behavior in school, something both schools and victims do in some cases.
In assault cases where the school is unable to work with the student and
family, Herman said: "We're always encouraging the parents to file charges
through the district justice. The youngster gets into the juvenile system, and
it's very amazing how quickly both the parents and the youngster get more
serious about what you're doing. There you don't have a dual system of dealing
with the kids."
But Evalynn Welling , staff attorney at the Pittsburgh
office of the Education Law Center, said she had received
complaints from parents in some districts in which the special ed students are
sent to a district justice for "disorderly conduct" instead of the school
buckling down to turn the child around.
"Oftentimes, the program a
student has is not appropriate, and that's the reason you're seeing behavior go
bad. Something's missing. Or maybe the child really needed smaller classes and
was in large classes, or ... needed a protected time at lunch instead of being
thrown out into the main cafeteria," Welling said.
School administrators
acknowledge that some parents of nondisabled students wondered why all students
weren't treated alike. Sometimes, parents aren't aware that students are
disabled, and the school must keep that information confidential.
"There
is a misconception that nothing happens. That's not true," said Jan Richard
Garda, principal of Baldwin High School. "It's a different set of consequences
and procedurally takes longer to get there. Something happens.
Still,
schools don't always use all of the available tools, said Virginia Roach, deputy
executive director of the National Association of State Boards of
Education.
"There are a lot of misperceptions about
what local districts can and can't do. One of the concerns is because special
education is highly litigious, local districts are very gun-shy
of it. It doesn't mean they can't do anything. The children can be removed if
they need to be removed," she said.
Aurelia Carter, co-chair of the city
schools' right-to-education task force and the mother of a
10-year-old with Down syndrome, said special education children
weren't the root of all discipline problems in the schools.
"Discipline as a whole needs to be looked at in the
public schools - not just special ed, but for all children. I just feel that
instead of it being us-versus-them, we really should be trying to work together
to make things right."
The state Board of Education has
scheduled public roundtable discussions at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday
in the Carnegie Science Center, to discuss changes needed in state law as a
result of IDEA ' 97. Topics range from suspensions to class size. Though
participation is limited to 15 people, anyone else may observe or send in
written comments. For more information, call 717-787-3787.
LOAD-DATE: February 23, 1999 
