The federally mandated education plans of thousands of ill and disabled District of Columbia children are about to lapse, leaving officials scrambling to close the gap and keep the city’s special education crisis from worsening, The Examiner has learned.
Internal school documents obtained by The Examiner show that 2,019 special education students will have to be re-evaluated between Feb. 4 and April 30. Federal law requires that every special education student be given an “individual education plan,” or IEP and that it be renewed yearly.
D.C. officials have acknowledged publicly that they routinely miss these federal deadlines. The U.S. Department of Education has put the District on its “high-risk” list and threatened to pull its funds — largely because of the collapse of the special education system.
The schools’ failure to address its special education crisis prevents thousands of children from receiving basic services to help them overcome their disabilities. Even so, city and federal taxpayers were billed more than $100 million on special education needs last year.
The city is already under a consent decree stemming from a class-action lawsuit filed over its failure to test and to treat children within federal deadlines. But the District hasn’t met any of the modest goals set in the consent decree, either.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman castigated city education officials for ducking their responsibilities by farming out the work to consultants.
Peter Nickles, D.C.’s acting attorney general, told The Examiner that things were different in the schools and that education officials would handle the plan renewals on time.
“We are going to turn the corner,” Nickles said. “We will not be able to deal with it perfectly, but I think we’ll well ahead of our game by April.”
Source: U.S. Department of Education
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