August 2016
Oversight of private special education schools begins at Oakland Unified
e federal investigation involved one school district, one private special education subcontractor and one student. But advocates say they are hoping that the probe of the Oakland Unified School District, the Anova Center for Education Contra Costa and the education of 9-year-old Stuart Candell – which included a finding that Oakland Unified violated federal education law – will prompt districts everywhere to think twice before outsourcing the education of students with disabilities to private schools that routinely use harsh behavior control techniques.
“We know many of the abuses take place in the private schools,” Arlene Mayerson, directing attorney at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said, referring to the repeated, non-emergency use of physical restraints by some schools to control students with special needs, as well as the practice of secluding students in rooms they cannot leave. “We will be paying close attention to this case to see how to pursue the issue in other districts.”
In California, private special education schools publicly state one of two things: that they don’t physically restrain students at all or that they comply with the state Education Code and restrain students only in emergencies when students are at risk of harming themselves or others. Yet the schools, which operate under publicly funded contracts to serve students that districts say they can’t, are not required under federal or state law to report publicly on their use of physical restraint or seclusion, Mayerson said.
investigators with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights determined that Stuart’s home district, Oakland Unified, denied him an education by allowing the Anova Center for Education Contra Costa to routinely pin him to the floor in a face-down “prone” restraint that caused him to “scream and cry with physical pain” and miss hours of instruction and speech, language and occupational services.
In a violation of federal civil rights protections for students with disabilities, investigators found that Oakland Unified failed to intervene even as its staff members sat through meetings where serious concerns about Stuart’s progress were raised. On more than one occasion, Stuart’s mother said that her son was so distraught about being repeatedly restrained that merely driving up to Anova would trigger his disruptive behaviors; he also had expressed thoughts of suicide, she said. At another meeting, instructors in speech and language reported that they couldn’t provide services to Stuart because he spent so much time being restrained or recovering. Nearly a year passed before Oakland Unified took action to schedule an evaluation of Stuart’s behavior, investigators said.
Now the compliance clock is ticking. Although the resolution agreement with the Office for Civil Rights was announced just this month, Oakland Superintendent of Schools Antwan Wilson signed the agreement June 20 – which means the district is due to submit its first compliance report next week, according to John Sasaki, a spokesman for Oakland Unified.
https://edsource.org/2016/oversight-of-private-special-education-schools-begins-at-oakland-unified/568041
