Leading members of the D.C. Council on Monday expressed outrage over the state of the Dictrict’s special education system, with the members hinting that public hearings may be necessary to help root out the rot in the system.
“We’re wasting money, our children are being harmed and now we have lawyers who have gone on to exploit our incompetence,” said Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3. “Unless I see some quick action from the school system, I think we should find out what it is we’re paying and whether our
children are being put in harm’s way.”
Marion Barry, D-Ward 8, went further than his colleague and said he would ask D.C. Council Chair Vincent C. Gray to call oversight hearings on special ed.
“It’s a real mess,” Barry told The Examiner.
The Examiner has reported extensively on the beleaguered special education system, which annually spends hundreds of millions of public dollars to ship some of the District’s most vulnerable children to outside schools with little regard to their health and safety. Some of the schools have been the subjects of abuse and neglect complaints for years.
New schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and State Superintendent Deborah Gist have opened wide-ranging investigations into the special education system, including invitations to the D.C. Inspector General’s office to look for evidence of fraud.
Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, a former member of the D.C. Board of Education, said hearings were inevitable, but he wanted to ensure the internal reviews were under way before banging a public gavel.
“We have to give the chancellor time to be able to get a good grasp of special ed for the hearings to be meaningful,” Wells said. “We have to manage costs, build capacity and restore the trust of our parents.”
