Category: Updates

The pandemic has given us all a taste of forced isolation. We’ve seen how it can leave individuals feeling lonely, scared and depressed.

Imagine if that was your permanent experience.

For many students with disabilities, isolation is the standard practice, as they are routinely educated in settings away from their nondisabled peers with little regard for the detrimental outcomes.

When Daniel Castellanos was a young child, a psychiatrist predicted that he would “likely never learn to talk, let alone read and write”. Two decades later, Daniel received the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association employee of the year award for his work as a prep cook at a popular Lancaster restaurant – beating 20 other nominees from across the state. 

Meseret Haile had run out of choices. Her 12-year-old son, Leoul, who’s autistic and nonverbal, was stuck in Seattle Children’s Hospital for nearly eight months. After several violent episodes at home, he couldn’t safely return to his school, and no other facilities would take him.

Except for one — halfway across the country, in Wichita, Kansas. It was called Heartspring, a residential facility and school for kids with developmental disabilities. The Bellevue School District, where Haile’s son previously attended, would pay roughly $300,000 a year to send him there.

Science teacher Lisa Ross taps a walnut on the desk of one of her high school students. She taps a pecan on the desk of the next student and an almond on the next. One by one, she guides them to wrap their nuts in a napkin and bash them open with a mallet to see what’s inside. “What part of the plant is this?” she asks. “The seed!” they answer in unison.

The U.S. Department of Education’s (Department) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issues this fact sheet to remind elementary and secondary public schools of their obligations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to provide appropriate evaluations and services to students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, including schools’ responsibility to provide compensatory services.

Join Washington CASE and Pacifica Law Group’s Carlos Chavez, on March 24 from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM, for a lunch & learn hot topic session about Dyslexia, recent decisions affecting case law, and Dyslexia in the state of Washington. This lunch & learn session will include a presentation of information and an opportunity to pose questions to Mr. Chavez.

In an effort to get more accurate data on restraint and seclusion practices in schools, the U.S. Department of Education is proposing revised definitions for Civil Rights Data Collection reporting. 

The revisions come after education organizations, disability and civil rights advocacy groups, and the Government Accountability Office raised concerns about misreporting and problematic data in past CRDC collections, including some very large districts reporting very low rates of restraint and seclusion. 

This resource from the National Center for Systemic Improvement provides guiding questions regarding equity and systems of coherence.

Pacifica attorneys Carlos Chavez and Sarah Johnson successfully represented the Issaquah School District before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a dispute involving the appropriateness of a special education evaluation and the resulting educational programming for a student with suspected dyslexia. The Ninth Circuit rejected the parents’ argument that the District was obligated to formally evaluate the student at issue for dyslexia. Instead, the Court found that the District appropriately evaluated the student in all areas of suspected disability when it evaluated her for a “specific learning disability” in the areas of reading and writing. The Court concluded that the District did not violate the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) when it found the student eligible for language-related services as a student with a specific learning disability, rather than using the parents’ preferred term of dyslexia.

Perry Zirkel is a professor emeritus of education and law at Lehigh University. He has more than 35 years of experience as an impartial specialist in education law, with a sub-specialty in special education law. Mr. Zirkel reviews legal cases and provides updates on a monthly basis.