Texas Parents, Schools Spar Over Special Needs

Oct. 16, 2007, 12:12PM
Getting public funds for private help is rare in the state
By SARAH VIREN
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

At age 9, Jodie threw tantrums so violent his elementary school threatened to call the police. The next year, the special education student tried to strangle an aide on the school bus, his mom said.
Diagnosed first with bipolar disorder and more recently as having Asperger syndrome, the bespectacled Kingwood boy has a history of biting, kicking, swearing and soiling himself to get attention.
Since he was in third grade, Humble Independent School District administrators have moved Jodie to at least three different schools. At one of the latest, the district's center for children with emotional disturbances, Carol Allred found her son in a timeout room covered in his own waste.
She pushed then, as before, for taxpayer-funded private schooling.
But only this year, after Jodie had fallen behind two grades in reading and spent countless hours isolated from other students because of his outbursts, did school officials agree.
Jodie now spends every day and night at Bayes Achievement Center, a Huntsville facility that treats children with emotional or behavioral problems — at a cost of about $170,000 a year for Humble ISD.
The district hopes the boy will improve there and return to school next year. Allred, a single mother working rotating shifts as a dialysis nurse, just wishes he'd been sent sooner.
"It shouldn't be like that," she said. "It should be: We see a problem, let's nip it in the bud now and get it fixed. If we had done this two years ago, we would be in a much better place."
Education guaranteedUnder the groundbreaking Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, special education students are guaranteed an education equivalent to their non-special-needs peers. Included in IDEA is a clause: If a district can't educate a special education student, it must fork over the funds to teach that child at a private school or residential center.
But the ease with which parents get public funding for private education may vary depending on where, and by what means, they live.
In New York, where schools forced a Supreme Court ruling on the issue last week, districts funded private schooling for more than 3 percent of all special education students in 2005. In New Jersey, that figure was 5.5 percent; in Washington, D.C., 15 percent.
Texas, by contrast, paid for private education for 215 — or 0.05 percent — of the 467,169 special education students that year, ranking it near the bottom in the nation.
That's a record that makes state education officials proud. It shows schools have successfully found ways to keep and teach special education students within the public school system, said Debbie Radcliffe, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.
But some special education advocates see the opposite: stingy school districts that would rather litigate than get children the specialized help they need.
"It's near impossible," said Jimmy Kilpatrick, a special education consultant based in Sugar Land. "A kid has to go through three to four years of hell. Only once a kid is real aggressive, throwing chairs all the time, will they agree (to private placement)."
Tamala Irish, whose Hear Me Foundation teaches parents to negotiate for special education services, knows of many who just give up — and withdraw their children from public school. According to state education data, Texas students with disabilities withdraw for private or home schooling at a higher rate than the general student population.
"A lot more parents now are taking out educational loans early on to be able to pay for it," Irish said. "That way they don't have to deal with (the public schools) anymore."
That's what she did last school year with her emotionally disturbed son. When his school district wouldn't pay for a special boarding school in Utah, Irish sent her son there anyway. Now she's trying to get the district to pay her back.
Irish thinks conservative courts are a big reason for the low private placement numbers in Texas. Judges here just don't side with parents, she said.
Other reasons seenBut experts say other factors may also play a roll.
Texas likely has fewer private options or less of a tradition for using these schools to help special education students, said Tom Parrish, who studied the issue in Washington, D.C.
Wealth could also be a factor. In the District of Columbia, at least, families from richer ZIP codes disproportionately took advantage of taxpayer-funded private special education schooling, said Parrish, director of the California-based Center for Special Education Finance.
Lawyers arguing on the side of New York City schools in the Supreme Court case this month noted a similar trend.
In that case, media mogul Thomas Freston sued for public reimbursement after he enrolled his learning-disabled child in a special private school. Freston, a former Viacom executive, said the district couldn't educate his son. Split 4-4, with Justice Anthony Kennedy absent, the justices on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision, essentially ruling in Freston's favor.
But the city's education department argued that Freston never gave their schools a try. Siding with him, lawyers said, could lead to a spike in lawsuits for tuition reimbursement, predominantly from well-heeled parents who have the resources to wage a court battle.
"Private tuition reimbursement is typically sought by parents who are familiar with the intricacies of IDEA and who have the resources to pay private school tuition out-of-pocket while they are seeking reimbursement," wrote lawyers siding with the schools.
$922 million a yearAt last count, some 88,000 of the nearly 6 million special education students in the nation attended private schools on the public dime, according to an Education Next article co-written in the spring by Jay Greene, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank.
Of these, nearly half are classified as emotionally disturbed.
Greene estimates the cost of schooling these children at close to $922 million a year, or around 0.24 percent of all public school spending, although others argue the real number may be higher.
It is this price tag that drives many school district complaints about private placements. In briefs filed in the Freston lawsuit, lawyers warned of "overwhelming" and "exorbitant" costs if cases like Freston's or Allred's increase in the future.
In Humble, Jodie's schooling this year will cost nearly 18 times what the district spends on the average student, according to state data. That's one reason the district developed its Behavior Training Center in 2000, said Sally LaRue, director of educational support services. Before that, the district had several children in private placement. This year, there is only Jodie.
Allred pulled her son out of that special center, saying teachers there exacerbated his bad behavior. But LaRue believes the facility has "stabilized" many students with behavioral problems.
She and other district officials declined to comment specifically on Jodie's case, citing confidentiality issues. But LaRue defends the time her district takes in deciding the right placement for a child. Many times, she said, parents want to rush the process, but their children need time to adjust.
Allred still thinks the school lost valuable time helping Jodie. And in the weeks since he's been gone, she's started reaching out to other parents involved in similar fights. Last week she went to a special education meeting with one couple and next month she plans to attend another.
Meanwhile, she talks to Jodie when he's allowed phone calls and recently visited him in Huntsville. Although still struggling, he seems more relaxed, she said. By next August, Allred hopes her son will be home again — a happier and healthier boy.
"Other parents who don't have special needs kids think we just cause trouble," she said. "But we are only trying to get what our kids are entitled to."
sarah.viren@chron.com