Judge sides with parent in tuition lawsuit
Grafton Schools must pay private school cost
The Grafton School District must reimburse a mother who spent $78,000 a year in tuition, plus expenses, for her son to attend a private boarding school that specializes in learning disabilities, a federal judge in Milwaukee said Wednesday.
In issuing the order, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman upheld a 2019 decision by Administrative Law Judge Sally Pederson who ruled the district had failed to provide a now-18-year-old student with the free and appropriate public education required by state and federal law.
“We’re thrilled,” said Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick, a longtime civil and disability rights attorney, who represented the family. “My client is looking forward to being reimbursed.”
He said the district owes the mother at least $260,000 for tuition, travel expenses, attorney’s fees and interest.
The mother who, like her son, is identified in the court records only by initials, said they were pleased with the decision and hope it improves services for other students with disabilities.
“I didn’t just do it for my son. I did it for all the kids,” she said. “The sad part is instead of seeing they have problems and fixing them, they denied them.”
Efforts to reach Grafton Superintendent Jeff Nelson and the district’s attorney, Andrew Phillips, were not immediately successful Wednesday.
Adelman’s ruling stems from a yearslong battle between the district and the teen’s mother over her son’s education. In recent years, she accused his high school teachers of completing assignments for him, lying about his progress and passing him in classes when he hadn’t done the work.
The teen had struggled over the years with attention deficit, anxiety, dyslexia and other disorders, according to the mother. She did not believe the district was adequately meeting its obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
In August 2018, the mother 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 last July that the district failed to provide a free and appropriate public education in the 201718 school year and to offer an individual education plan, or IEP, reasonably calculated to do so for the 2018-19 year. She ordered Grafton to reimburse the family for tuition and travel costs for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.
Grafton filed suit in federal court seeking a review of Pederson’s decision. The district argued, 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 was not an appropriate placement because it does not offer instruction in core subjects such as science and social studies.
Federal law requires public schools to provide special education students a “free and appropriate public education” and, depending on the disability, develop an individualized education plan that maps out how it will serve the student’s needs.
Adelman upheld Pederson’s decision on every point but one, saying she should have given weight to the district’s agreement to pay $12,500 for services by Lindamood-Bell, a private tutoring program, in 2018. He also said the mother’s refusal to take part in the IEP process after that “smacks of bad faith,” but that those were not enough for him to overturn Pederson’s decision.
Adelman did, however, deduct the cost of the tutoring program from the reimbursement order.