And now with all the lead poisoning there will be more people with disabilities
in Flint, more need for special educational services, more need for independent
living services, and more need for vocational rehabilitation services. Problem
is they are all screwed up too and got even more screwed up under Snyder.
Joe Harcz
Citizen Advocate with Disabilities from Genesee County
Advocates sue after Flint students 'pushed out' Jennifer Chambers, The Detroit
News Flint The calls came almost every day, while Marisa Sands was at work:
her son Jea'len had misbehaved, disrupting the class, Flint school officials
said. He had to be picked up. Mother Rachael Kirksey got the same calls, too,
starting on the first day of kindergarten in Flint Community Schools for son
Dakota, a bright, playful boy diagnosed with autism. Dakota, 5 at the time
in 2014, was not permitted to come back to school, school officials told
Kirksey. He was not allowed to return to the district for four months, she said.
He sat home where Kirksey, who is visually disabled, made attempts to teach
him. "He is disrupting the other children from learning, banging chairs against
the table," the voicemail from school said on Rachel's phone. "You need to come
pick him up so other children can learn. Both Kirksey and Sands, whose
son has Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, which can spur trouble with
attention and impulse control, had sought and obtained individualized
specialized
education plans for their sons to help each child learn and cope with their
symptoms. The district approved the plans and promised to use the techniques
and procedures in them, both women said. But when they asked for school records
to better understand the problems in class and what teachers and aides
were doing to address them, they said school officials in Flint refused to
provide the documentation. "They made me feel he wasn't disabled," Sands said
of her son. "He was on the higher end of work, but when he is in a large
classroom setting, he is not able to concentrate and do the work. A federal
lawsuit
has been filed against the school district on behalf of both families by the
Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service agency, a nonprofit that advocates
on behalf of the mentally ill, physically disabled and developmentally disabled
students. One of the agency's roles and legal rights under the law is to
request records on behalf of families who are concerned their child's
educational needs are not being met by a public school. As families with young
children
deal with the effects of lead from Flint's contaminated water, obtaining
student records is critical to the agency's legally mandated role of advocating
for disabled students, MPAS lead attorney Brad Dembs said. "With the potential
increase in behavior issues and developmental delays in Flint schoolchildren
as a result of the exposure to toxins in their water, it is important that we
be able to provide our services with as little encumbrance or delay as
possible,"
Dembs said. "More students in Flint are going to need our assistance ... and
resolving the records access issue now will allow us to serve more clients
than we would otherwise be able to if required to wait months or more for
records and spend our limited resources repeatedly following up with the
district
to get students' complete files," he said. When the agency requested records
for Dakota and Jea'len in 2014 and early 2015, they were ignored, MPAS officials
said. They asked for them again and did the same for several other Flint
students whose families had contacted them. After two years of asking for
student
records and either getting no response or limited information from the
district, MPAS sued Flint Public Schools in federal court on July 10 to get the
records and enforce its authority under the law to inspect the records of
students with disabilities whose parents have asked for help. "It just reached
a tipping point," Dembs said. "We would send a records request and not receive
any response. We sent our records request by fax or mail receipt. No matter
what communication we used we can confirm it. ... We send a follow-up. Those
were ignored as well, or records were sent and they were incomplete. On Nov.
23, a federal judge in Detroit ordered Flint Community Schools to provide
copies of school records to parents of students with disabilities and Michigan's
protection and advocacy agency promptly upon request. In his opinion, U.S.
District Judge David M. Lawson wrote: "the school district repeatedly and
persistently
has failed or refused to disclose records requested by the plaintiff within the
time required under the applicable statutes and regulations. Lawson granted
a preliminary injunction, ordering the district to provide records within 3-5
business days of a request. The district is appealing that decision. Calls
to Flint Superintendent Bilal Tawwab and a board of education member seeking
comment were not returned. In court records, the district alleges it has
provided
all the records requested by the agency, that MPAS' requests were too broad and
must be obtained from several departments, and that there was a delay because
of inadequate staffing. The district also blames a fax machine that did not
work, IT server problems in the district and a former employee who was unable
to do the job. As for the judge's order that the district comply within five
days of a request for student records, the district says in a court filing
that such an order "would wreak havoc on the district in having to reallocate
its own staff in perilous financial times. Statewide, about 13 percent of
Michigan's K-12 student population received special education services. MPAS
receives 1,000 to 2,000 calls per year from parents who are concerned about
their child's educational rights. From 2012 through 2015, MPAS said it has been
contacted by numerous families of children with disabilities who attend
school in Flint, raising concerns that the school district was violating their
children's rights under federal and state law. During both of the previous
two years, data shows MPAS has received more calls from parents of students
enrolled in Flint Community Schools than any other school district in the state,
with the exception of Detroit Public Schools. The survey data for the past two
years also shows that the percentage of parent callers in Flint reporting
significant use of practices associated with "push out" has been among the
highest in the state, Dembs said. The term is used to describe a variety of
ways that school districts remove students with challenging disability-related
behaviors from school such as suspension, expulsion or informal removal.
Kirksey says she is not surprised at all to hear that. With a 4-foot tall stack
of water bottles behind her needed because of the lead that's contaminating
city water the Flint mother says her son needs compassionate and highly trained
teachers to deal with his highs and lows at school. "This has been very
depressing and stressful. A parent should not have to worry about their child's
education and whether they are learning. I have to worry about whether
he is being taught or treated well," she said. "He's good and smart and they
turn on him when he is autistic. jchambers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
