Dive Brief:
- A federal appeals court upheld an earlier ruling saying the District of Columbia’s public school system was not adequately assisting young students with special needs in their transition into K-12 schooling, and was operating in violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to the Washington Post.
- The case originated in 2005 with several parents of special needs students, who argued that part of IDEA mandated that school districts must locate special needs children in the district and offer services and programs to assist them prior to kindergarten. Earlier findings indicated D.C. schools missed between 98 and 515 such children per month.
- The D.C. government maintained that the original case was irrelevant as the students in question were now well over five years old, and it also argued that the federal government may not have jurisdiction over the process, but the appeals court decided against them in a 3-0 decision.
Dive Insight:
School districts face a myriad of challenges when trying to adhere to the mandates of IDEA, often achieving mixed success. Sometimes, the problem is that the resources to fulfill a special needs student’s Individual Education Plan is not available; in some districts, students with 12-month IEPs are not able to access the services they require during the summer months due to a lack of available staff. In some cases, parents attempt to take advantage of statewide voucher programs available to try and extricate their special needs child from public school education entirely due to their dissatisfaction with a district’s inaction on fulfilling an IEP.
District leaders in D.C. and elsewhere can face challenges in trying to assist special needs students during the transition into K-12 education, but administrators can try to use the resources at their disposal. If a district has robust early childhood education options, whether public or private, K-12 educators can partner with them to try and gauge whether students will require additional assistance — additionally, there is also evidence to indicate that more robust pre-K options can actually reduce the number of students eventually placed in special education, which can lessen the cost burden on schools and states over time. The earlier a school district can understand the additional responsibilities that may be required in the education of a special needs child, the better it can prepare to support that student.