Suit on educating disabled about fairness, not privacy

We all want to trust our public schools to protect our children and provide them with a fair and appropriate education. But when you are the parent of a special needs learner, you soon learn yourself that the system is unfair and the treatment of your child often inappropriate.

No one can speak more forcefully and painfully to this than the parents of the Morgan Hill Unified School District who have sued the California Department of Education. This lawsuit touches all students in California. It alleges that the state has failed to allocate and monitor the use of federal dollars earmarked to ensure that California public school students with disabilities are being provided services as required by federal law.

The state, and a few in the media, want you to believe the release of public student information to the plaintiffs in this case, the Morgan Hill parents, is a privacy issue. This is a smokescreen and simply not true.

The judge said the objections she received to the release of information may mean that parents are not fully informed. These objections may refine, but will not block, the legal discovery process. In other words, the Morgan Hill parents are likely going to get the academic records they requested without the personal information they never wanted.

Not surprisingly, the state wants to ignite a privacy issue so their widespread systematic failures are not publicly uncovered after decades of abuse.

The parents’ complaint lists the experiences of six Morgan Hill students. Each account is more heartbreaking then the next. Visibly disabled students were refused assessment tests and denied services. The district refused disabled students “assistive technology” and wouldn’t let one student participate in a group photo or attend the year- end field trip. When challenged, district staff threatened the parents.

The state claims it is not its job to monitor school districts so, left without proper checks and balances in place, districts are failing its most vulnerable students and misappropriating the use of your federal tax dollars.

The state has been well aware of the Morgan Hill school district’s unwillingness to provide services to disabled children. It even conducted reports, which concluded that the district “was systemically noncompliant ( with federal law) in no fewer than 30 areas.” Despite this smoking gun, the state listed “corrective actions” on paper, but never enforced actions to correct these violations.

The Morgan Hill Parents seek no monetary award. It is their belief that the “deficiencies set forth in the complaint are reflective of statewide failure to provide ( fair appropriate public education) and therefore seek a remedy fashioned so as to benefit all children with disabilities within the State of California.”

California’s own 2015 task force on special education issued this: “Mechanisms for delivering special education supports in California are severely hampered by inadequate services. ... There is a severe over- representation of students with disabilities among California’s high school dropouts and among incarcerated youth. ... One need look no further than the prison system to be convinced of the real human cost of the system’s failures.”

Education funding has increased substantially in recent years at all levels of government yet student achievement remains the lowest. As a taxpayer, do you feel you’ve gotten your money’s worth?

Imagine if this were about your child. Not until every student is offered and provided a free appropriate public education will each of our students have the full and meaningful school experience they are entitled to receive.