Breaking: Supreme Court To Hear Special Ed Case #SupremeCourt #ServiceDog #Exhaustion

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear Fry v Napoleon Community Schools, #15-497.  It is a service dog case. Unfortunately, however, the issue before the court has very little to do with service dogs and the rights of kids with disabilities to have service dogs in school. Instead the issue is the more legalistic one of exhaustion of administrative remedies. 

The parent brought the case under §504 and ADA. The District Court dismissed the complaint because the parents had not exhausted administrative remedies by first having an IDEA hearing. The Sixth Circuit affirmed by a 2-1 vote.  After requesting a brief from the Solicitor General, the Supremes granted certiorari yesterday. The Court will hear argument on the case in the fall term.

Here is a news report about the case. This is the case page on the SCOTUS blog.  Here is our previous post on this case. Stay tuned.

Weekly Question!

What questions about special education should we ask the major party candidates for President? #Education Politics

Procedural Safeguards Under IDEA #ProceduralSafeguards

What mechanisms does the special education law have for parents who disagree with decisions by a school district about the education of a child with a disability? Are there procedural safeguards that protect a school district?

Procedural safeguards are at the heart of the system established by the special education law. The philosophy underlying the Act is that parents and school districts will work together collaboratively to ensure an appropriate education for children with disabilities. Schaffer v. Weast 546 U.S. 49, 126 S.Ct. 528, 44 IDELR 150 (11/14/2005). But the law also recognizes that there must be procedural safeguards to ensure that the important public policies established by the Act will be achieved when the parents and school officials cannot agree.

So we will once again run a series on the various procedural safeguards that are established by IDEA. Procedural Safeguards - The Series will begin next week. As always we appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Also your comments concerning how the procedural safeguards are working in practice may be useful to our readers. Let us know.

Breaking: Departments of Education and HHS Release New Guidance on Foster Children #FosterCare

The U. S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today released guidance to states, school districts and child welfare agencies on the new provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for supporting children in foster care. The guidance aims to assist state and local partners in understanding and implementing the new law, and to inform state and local collaboration between educational and child welfare agencies across the nation for the well-being of children in foster care. The guidance is the first the Department of Education is releasing regarding provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act, in the coming weeks and months to help states, districts and schools as the implement the new law. In addition, the Education Department is also releasing a letter to states and districts stressing the importance and utility of stakeholder engagement as they begin to transition to ESSA.

Of the approximately 400,000 children and youth in foster care, nearly 270,000 children in foster care are school-aged. Data show that foster youth are more likely than their peers to experience a host of barriers that lead to troubling outcomes, including low academic achievement, grade retention and lower high school graduation rates. Children in foster care often face steep challenges to school success, including high rates of mobility. The new protections for children in foster care under ESSA will apply to all children in foster care enrolled in public schools.

The guidance released today builds upon a new focus in ESSA on the unique needs of foster youth and will equip local partners with an essential tool for implementing the new foster care provisions in ESSA successfully by December 10, 2016.

The guidance, which is not binding and doesn’t impose any new requirements beyond those in the law and regulations, provides clarity in the form of detailed frequently asked questions and answers, touching upon the following key features:

• The importance of the new educational stability requirements;
• The statutory requirement that a child in foster care remains in his or her original school, if it’s in his or her best interest;
• Procedures for jointly determining with the child welfare agency which school is in a child’s best interest to attend;
• Procedures for resolving disputes that may arise over the best interest determination and school placement;
• Transportation procedures developed jointly to maintain children in foster care in their original schools;
• The transfer of relevant records;
• Foster care points of contact for states, districts and child welfare agencies
• Protecting student data and privacy; and
• Best practices and suggestions for interagency collaboration on these issues

You can read the guidance document here.  The press release is available here.

Weekly Question!

What questions about special education should we ask the major party candidates for President? #Education Politics

CADRE Hiring Policy Analyst #CADRE

Our friends at CADRE are hiring a policy analyst. They asked if we could help spread the word, and because we love CADRE, we are happy to do so.

CADRE is the federal special education dispute resolution center. Their website is a great resource and is linked on the lefthand side of this blog. If you are involved in special ed dispute resolution, you should investigate their many resources.

If you might be interested in working for CADRE as a Policy Analyst, the job announcement is available here.

New Weekly Question!

What questions about special education should we ask the major party candidates for President? #Education Politics

The Other Supreme Court Case: Service Dogs, Exhaustion and IDEA #ServiceDog #exhaustion

Last week we discussed the pending supreme court case involving the standard for FAPE and the question of meaningful vs some educational benefit. You can read the post here.

There is one other special ed case pending before the Supremes. Fry v Napoleon Community Schs No. 15-497.  It is a service dog case, an issue mentioned many times in this blog. (the dog is named "Wonder.") Unfortunately, however, the issue before the court has very little to do with service dogs and the rights of kids with disabilities to have service dogs in school. Instead the issue is the more legalistic one of exhaustion of administrative remedies. 

The parent brought the case under §504 and ADA. The District Court dismissed the complaint because the parents had not exhausted administrative remedies by first having an IDEA hearing. The Sixth Circuit affirmed by a 2-1 vote. The Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General to file a brief giving the opinion of the United States. The Solicitor General filed a brief agreeing with the parents. You can read the Solicitor General's brief here. Here is the case page for this case on the SCOTUS blog.

Readers of this blog know that the Supreme Court reviews only a small number of the cases filed with it, so it is possible that neither of the two pending cases will result in a decision. Also complicating the matter is the fact that Justice Scalia still has not been replaced because of the failure of the  Congress to act, so even if they accept the case, another 4-4 non-decision may result. ( A 4-4 tie affirms the lower court decision without a precedential decision by the high court.)

But there are only ten U S Supreme Court decisions in special ed law so the possibility of another one, or two, is something to watch.

Weekly Question!

Can a child be too bad for FAPE? See our ongoing series of posts on this blog. #IncarceratedStudents

NCES Publishes a Report on School Crime and Safety #School Discipline #Incarcerated Students

The national Center for Education Statistics of the Institute of Education Sciences has released a report entitled Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2015. The report includes a wealth of school safety information for both K-12 and post-secondary education. Topics include victimization, school conditions, discipline, safety and security measures, and criminal incidents.

You can read the entire 246 page report here. Here is an article on the report by our friends at the Council for Exceptional Children.

The report includes a chapter on Bullying.

Concerning special education and discipline, I particularly call your attention to Tables 19.1 and 19.2 on pages 177-178 of the report.  Here are a few statistics from the report all numbers are for the 2011-2012 school year: 0.42%  of students with disabilities received corporal punishment as compared to 0.36% of students in general.11.84% of students with disabilities received out-of-school suspensions vs. 6.4% of all students. 0.38% of students with disabilities were expelled vs. 0.22% of all students. 0.27% of students with disabilities were arrested at school vs. 0.13% of all students. 

Check out this large compilation of data on school crime and safety.

Breaking: Supreme Court Requests Brief From Solicitor General in IDEA Case #SupremeCourt #IDEA

The Supreme Court of the United States requested a brief yesterday from the Solicitor General on behalf of the federal government in the case of Endrew F v Douglas County Sch Dist RE-1, Case # 15-827. If this case name sounds familiar, you may recall our previous post on this case. In this case, the parents urged the Court to adopt the "higher" meaningful benefit standard. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals analyzed the issue and decided to apply the some educational benefit standard.

Here is a copy of the Court's Order. This is the case page from the SCOTUS blog.

There are only ten special education decisions by the Supreme Court, so we should all pay attention to how this one plays out. As you know, most cases do not result in a supreme court decision, but ten have made it that far. Will this one be number eleven?