• Support Us
  • Tales from the Meeting
facebook
rss
twitter
youtube
email
pinterest
  • Home
  • District Sites
  • Categories
    • Advocacy
    • Data and Accountability Center
    • Family-School Partnerships
    • Funding and Finance
    • School Policy and Procedure
    • Special Education
    • Standards
  • Glossary
  • Special Reports
    • Alabama Accountability Act (AAA)
    • Bullying Forum Resources
    • The Hidden Cost of Public Education
    • Student Harassment Prevention Act
    • Transparency Projects – 2010 and 2009
    • Reports and Stuff
  • About
    • About Us
    • Business Documents
    • Ethics Policy
    • Fundraising Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Our Supporters
  • 2016 Legislative Session
    • 2015 Legislative Summary
    • 2014 Legislative Summary
    • 2013 Legislative Summary
    • 2012 Legislative Summary
    • 2011 Legislative Summary
  • Support Us
Latest News
Goodbye. But only for a moment
Special Education Services Division Complaint Resolved
Enrollment Opens for Alabama’s Non-Traditional High School Diploma
Some Answers About the Alabama Accountability Act from New Reports Mandated by Law
State Department Violated Federal Disability Laws, Test Accommodation Policy Must Be Rewritten
What the Annual Alabama “School Incident Report” Shows
Alabama’s A-F School Grading System Is Almost Ready
Wanna Know More About Who Gets Paddled in Alabama’s Schools?
More Than 90,000 Alabama Students and Nearly 15,000 Teachers Missed a LOT of School – Look Up Your School
How Alabama Compares in the Latest ACT College and Career Readiness Report

Parents and Advocates Push Back Against Proposed Special Education Changes

Posted On Apr 16 2015
By : Trisha Powell Crain
Comments: 4
Tag: due process, due process hearing, special education

Push BackSpecial education advocates are pushing back against the Alabama State Department of Education’s (ALSDE) proposed changes to the special education complaint process.

In early April, a draft of the proposed changes circulated among parents and special education advocates, setting off a firestorm of concern that resulted in one advocacy group starting an online petition to force the ALSDE to hear their concerns.

At this time, the petition has nearly 1,800 signatures.

It appears that the collective voice of special education advocates prompted the ALSDE to postpone a meeting this past Monday with a group of attorneys who wanted to voice their concerns directly to the ALSDE, though the ALSDE has not provided a reason for postponing that meeting.

Malissa Valdes-Hubert, spokesperson for the ALSDE, said that a larger group of stakeholders, including due process hearing officers, advocates and parent attorneys, will be consulted in small groups about these changes. She emphasized that the revisions “are not final and were not ready to be reviewed in a public forum and setting, as we were awaiting much more analysis and input by the primary stakeholders before public dissemination and comment”.

Valdes-Hubert anticipates the Special Education Advisory Panel (SEAP) will have an opportunity to review the proposed changes at their regular meeting in June.

After the SEAP reviews the changes, a period of public comment would be conducted. [Note: the original version of this article stated that the public would not have an opportunity to comment until after the SBOE had approved the changes, but that is not the case. My apologies for any confusion. Updated 8:30 p.m. 04/17/15]

After public comment is taken, a presentation would be made to the SBOE, which could happen as early as this summer.

Appropriate procedures would then be followed to make changes to the Alabama Administrative Code, where these regulations are housed.

Implementation of the final changes could begin in the fall.

James Gallini has a child with autism and knows first-hand the difficulty parents encounter when they are dissatisfied with the special education services provided by a school district.

Gallini is the founder of The Gallini Group, Alabama’s only law firm focused exclusively on serving families of children with special needs, which allows him an additional lens through which to view the draft proposed changes. He also participates in the Alabama Autism and Asperger Info and Support Network’s “Ask a Special Ed Attorney” forum.

He and his partner, Gina Lowe, spend much of their time educating parents and families about special education regulations, and he believes these changes are unnecessary and will create burdens for families that will prevent families from being able to effectively advocate for their child with special needs.

The Changes

Gallini prepared a thorough review of the proposed changes, which was shared widely through social media.

Most of the proposed changes affect the complaint process, known as “due process”. Additional barriers would be erected that could keep parents from being able to navigate the process without the help of an attorney, according to Gallini.

While the ALSDE can create rules to administer the federal law regulating special education, known as IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act), those rules cannot conflict with the actual federal law.

Gallini believes these rules violate IDEA in many ways, all of which are delineated in the review linked above. If these changes were enacted as written, he anticipates a higher court challenge.

Some of the more controversial of the proposed changes to current rules are as follows:

Shrinking the statute of limitations for requesting a hearing to one year, instead of two.

No hearing can be conducted until the parent has filed a complaint that sufficiently describes how the school district has deprived the child of a free appropriate public education, known as FAPE. Gallini contends this would be very difficult for a parent to do without the assistance of an attorney.

The addition of a step in the process called “summary determination”, which reduces all fact-gathering to an affidavit submitted by the parties. Gallini claims this limits the discovery process because “we can’t cross-examine an ‘affidavit'”.

Creating an “evidentiary submission format” which means no live testimony, unless both the school district and the parent agree, or the hearing officer determines that live testimony is necessary. Gallini maintains this violates the parent’s “rightful opportunity” to call witnesses as spelled out in the IDEA.

Within the “evidentiary submission format”, parents have only 30 days from the day the complaint is filed to produce evidence, which Gallini says is exceedingly difficult due in part to school officials’ lack of cooperation in providing a child’s full educational record for the parent or the attorney to review.

In one part of the review, Gallini states that the process is “overly complicated to understand as a parent,” and that parents are denied the “right to a simple process of advocacy by inserting an extraordinarily high amount of work and documentation without ever having access to an actual hearing”.

To be clear, those are only a few of the proposed changes in the ALSDE’s draft document.

Asked about the reason for the changes, Valdes-Hubert stated, “One main reason for (the) proposed change is that the receipt of a Due Process Hearing (DPH) request should not be the first time that an LEA (local educational agency, or school district) learns of an issue with a student.”

Gallini took issue with that statement, saying “parents are not filing due process on a level that would (1) require a need to overhaul our due process rules to add complicated and costly provisions like ‘summary judgment’ or (2) reduce the statue of limitation to one year. Our current rules are sufficient to give parents access to due process in a simplified way that doesn’t require the assistance of an attorney.”

Gallini believes fewer than 200 complaints are filed in a given year, which amounts to one-quarter of 1% of the 80,000 children receiving special education services in Alabama. Data from 2013 indicates 141 due process complaints were filed that year.

A review of recent due process hearing results provided to the Alabama School Connection by attorneys representing families in prior disputes showed that school officials are well aware of the issues long before a parent files a request for a hearing.

These due process decisions posted on the ALSDE’s web site also document the many ways parents attempt to resolve concerns prior to requesting a hearing.

The hearings are disruptive, according to Valdes-Hubert, and “we would like to see teachers teaching, psychologists/psychometrists testing, and coordinators of special education coordinating services instead of significant disruptions to school administration and the classroom environment. These disruptions can include scheduling conflicts, hiring substitute teachers and related personnel to cover school personnel absent in order to spend countless hours of wait time at a Due Process Hearing. Currently, only a few of the due process hearing participants benefit in this scenario and it is not the school district, parents, and students.”

In response, Gallini contends that the hearings would not be necessary if there were no disputes, suggesting that state efforts would be better spent training those serving special education students in school rather than making the complaint process overly difficult for parents to resolve concerns.

With advocates getting themselves informed, and with children’s futures in the balance, there promises to be much debate about these proposed changes. Stay tuned.

 

For more information about the special education conflict resolution process, here is the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP) publication “Special Education: A Right, Not a Favor”. The chapter on conflict resolution begins on page 56.

 

Share this

  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
About the Author
    Previous Story

    How Much for That Cap and Gown??

    Next Story

    The Alabama Accountability Act – More Changes

    Related Posts

    0

    Special Education Services Division Complaint Resolved

    Posted On Oct 14 2016
    , By Trisha Powell Crain
    0

    Special Education Community Alliance Will Hold First Meeting Wednesday, August 3

    Posted On Jul 31 2016
    , By Trisha Powell Crain
    0

    Alabama State Department of Education Confirms Review of Concerns in Special Education Services Division

    Posted On Jun 16 2016
    , By Trisha Powell Crain
    2

    Special Education Advisory Panel Meeting Scheduled for June 15

    Posted On Jun 07 2016
    , By Trisha Powell Crain

    Alabama School Connection Tweets

    Tweets by @ALSchoolConnect

    School Tweets – direct from Twitter

    Tweets from https://twitter.com/ALSchoolConnect/lists/al-k-12-twitter
    Creative Commons License
    This work by Alabama School Connection is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

    Terms of Use
    Privacy Policy

    Past Editions of K-12 Must-Read News

    August 29 to September 25, 2016
    July 25 to August 28, 2016
    June 24 to July 24, 2016
    May 23 to June 23, 2016
    May 2 to May 22, 2016
    April 18 to May 1, 2016
    March 16 to April 17, 2016
    February 23 to March 15, 2016
    February 1 to February 22, 2016
    January 11 to January 31, 2016
    December 21, 2015, thru January 10, 2016
    November 30 thru December 20
    November 11 thru November 30
    October 21 thru November 10
    October 6 thru October 20
    September 14 thru October 5
    August 24 thru September 13
    August 3 thru August 23
    July 16 thru August 2
    June 18 thru July 13
    May 19 thru June 17, 2015
    May 18, 2015
    April 27, 2015
    March 30, 2015
    March 11, 2015
    February 2, 2015
    January 5, 2015
    December 16, 2014

    All past editions available on Storify at https://storify.com/ALSchoolConnect

    This website is intended for informational purposes only. The ASC is a nonprofit news organization and exists only to keep the public informed of issues as they relate to the K-12 education system in Alabama. In the event you feel an error has been made, please contact us immediately at the e-mail link below. The ASC does not maintain offices nor a working telephone number dedicated for the organization. Links are provided as a courtesy, not as an endorsement.
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.