Grafton appeals ruling forcing it to pay tuition
The Grafton School District is asking a federal court to overturn a decision by a state administrative law judge that forced it to pay $78,000 a year in tuition, plus expenses, to send a student to a boarding school that specializes in learning disabilities.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee this week, argues that Judge Sally Pederson erred in July in finding that Grafton failed to provide a now 17-year-old student with the free and appropriate public education required by state and federal law.
Grafton Superintendent Jeff Nelson and the district’s attorney, Andrew Phillips, declined to discuss the case. But the attorney for the student and his mother called the appeal “foolish.”
“The judge wrote a sound decision,” said Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick, a longtime civil and disability rights attorney. “The law is very clear that courts must defer to special education administrative law judges. And this particular judge, to my knowledge, has never been overturned on appeal.”
Pederson’s ruling stems from a yearslong battle between the district and the teen’s mother over her son’s education. The teen had struggled over the years with attention deficit, anxiety, dyslexia and other disorders, according to the mother. And she did not believe the district was adequately meeting its obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
In August 2018, the mother unilaterally moved the boy to Brehm Academy, a private school in Carbondale, Illinois, that specializes in serving children with learning disabilities — borrowing against her home, she said, to cover the costs. Five months later, she sought an administrative hearing in an effort to recoup those expenses.
Pederson ruled July 1 that the district failed to provide a free and appropriate public education in the 201718 school year and to offer an individual education plan reasonably calculated to do so for the 2018-19 year. And she ordered Grafton to reimburse the family for tuition and travel costs for the 201819 and 2019-20 school years. The family is also seeking recovery of legal fees and interest, which would bring the total to about $230,000, according to the mother.
The Grafton lawsuit argues among other things that the mother failed to cooperate in developing the IEP; that Pederson made numerous errors of fact and law in reaching her decision; and that Brehm is not an appropriate placement because it does not offer instruction in core subjects such as science and social studies.