Endless rounds of tests and meetings ordered by city hearing officers are blocking special education students from needed help and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, The Examiner has learned.
About 1,400 children asked the hearing officers for help getting services for their disabilities between November 2006 and October 2007, according to a court-appointed monitor’s analysis obtained by The Examiner. But in 72 percent of those cases, school hearing officers putoff a decision and instead ordered new rounds of tests or meetings, the analysis showed.
The delays dragged out conflicts over students’ needs for weeks and months and allowed the students’ lawyers to run up their bills despite congressionally mandated fee caps.
The current cap for legal fees is $4,000 per case, but each new missed deadline for a meeting or test — and D.C. has admitted in court that it routinely misses such deadlines — counts as a separate due process case.
Since fiscal 2001, the District has spent at least $52 million in court costs from special education litigation, and some public leaders are beginning to despair of ever fixing D.C.’s broken special education system.
“I don’t know whether we can ever get our heads above water,” said Council Member Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3. “At some point, school officials have to come forward and give us some sort of specific plan on what they’re going to do. Why are they dilly-dallying?”
Federal law gives special education students the right to challenge their schools to provide better care. It has created a lucrative niche for some lawyers.
The leader in the field is the law firm of James E. Brown & Associates. Founded by a former schools hearing officer, Brown & Associates represent about half of the children who file special-ed complaints.
Since 2001, the District has paid the firm more than $15.5 million, finance office records show.
Brown & Associates’ manager Domiento C.R. Hill told The Examiner in an e-mail his firm is following the letter of the law when it files multiple complaints for individual children.
“It is a right given by Congress,” he said.
Cheh said school officials wouldn’t have to worry about private lawyers if they simply did their jobs.
“They’re basically nonexistent,” she said. “It’s unforgivable.”
Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has promised to make special education her top priority and has been given a nearly unlimited budget to do so, but the legislation that created her job shifted most of the responsibility for special education onto the state superintendent’s office, which has only a fraction of Rhee’s budget and even less of its political support.
Rhee’s spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson, declined comment for this story. State superintendent spokesman John A. Stokes didn’t respond to requests for comment.
D.C. is already under two consent decrees stemming from class-action suits. The city has admitted in court that it hasn’t kept its promises to train its hearing officers.
Got a tip on D.C. schools? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail [email protected].
