Dive Brief:
- A U.S. district court judge has ended an 18-year special education lawsuit against the District of Columbia's public school system, in turn halting the use of judicial monitors to keep tabs on how the district's schools address families seeking special education services.
- The ruling allows schools to provide special education services without having to deal with court-assigned monitors, who, in the past, would stop by schools for regular check-ups and performance reviews.
- At a news conference, Mayor Vincent C. Gray highlighted the district's speedy special ed services, decrease in formal complaints from families, and the drop in the number of special education students who elected to attend private schools at the expense of taxpayers.
Dive Insight:
According to the Washington Post, the suit in question, Blackman-Jones, was a hybrid of two class-action lawsuit that were filed against D.C. Public Schools in 1997. The Blackman case was filed on behalf of students with disabilities, alleging that the district mishandled due-process hearings for parents requesting adequate services for their children, while the Jones case claimed the district wasn't responding to the needs of families quick enough, failing to show any order in the way it came up with specialized plans for disabled students. When plans were created, they didn't necessarily move past the theoretical.
In 2006, when the schools still hadn't shaped up, the courts ordered the use of monitors to check in on the systems in place.