The Broward County School District is once again under attack for its handling of special needs students.
Two families are in federal court this week, arguing the school system violated federal law by refusing to consider providing the “gold standard” of therapy for four autistic children. They also say the district has a “policy of segregation” that automatically places autistic children in specialized schools.
“The school board has simply, utterly, and repeatedly failed the children,” attorney David Pyper wrote in a federal court filing.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra’s ruling in the case, held Monday and Tuesday in West Palm Beach, could impact how the district serves special needs students. Not date for his decision has been set.
The legal battle comes two weeks after activists and parents accused district administrators of failing special needs children. The group clashed with School Board Chairwoman Rosalind Osgood, who took issue with their tone and threatened to have them escorted out by security.
And, in 2014, a district-commissioned report found multiple deficiencies in the Exceptional Student Services program, which serves about 30,000 children with physical, emotional and learning disabilities. The report by Tallahassee-based Evergreen Solutions found problems including insufficiently trained staff, long bus rides and high special ed student to teacher ratios.
In the federal court case, parents said they requested their children receive Applied Behavior Analysis as part of their schooling. The data-based therapy, which the children had started at age 2, uses positive reinforcement to teach social, language and other skills.
“I had a child who went from basically not doing anything to pointing and speaking,” the mother of one of the children testified Monday. “He was making so much progress that I wanted to see that progress continue.”
But she and the other parents said school district officials would not even consider providing the therapy, saying they had their own methodology.
Michael Kelley, executive director of the Scott Center for Autism Treatment in Melbourne, testified that the therapy can have a major impact on children with autism. He said studies have shown that in 50 percent of cases, those who receive it are indistinguishable from other children by first grade.
“It’s the gold standard,” Kelley said. “It’s the thing that’s been shown to work.”
Parents said they were deprived of the ability to meaningfully participate in creating their children’s Individualized Education Programs – plans that spell out a special needs child’s learning needs and how they will be met. Additionally, according to the lawsuit, administrators recommended placing the children in private schools solely for autistic students rather than in mainstream programs.
Those actions, the parents say, constitute a violation of the childrens’ rights to a free education.
School district attorneys counter that administrators created specially designed programs for the students and that an administrative law judge sided with the district when the father of three of the children challenged the decision.
They said the therapy the parents requested is included in the district’s instructional methods. Applied Behavior Analysis should not be written into the students’ education plans because then teachers would be held to it even if they found a more effective methodology, the attorneys said.
“What the school system says is, we want to have the flexibility,” attorney Michael Burke said. “We want to have the flexibility to provide the method that works.”
bshammas@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4528 or Twitter @britsham
