At the regular board
trustee meeting on October 20, the Mendocino Unified School District board
members issued a formal, written response to the Mendocino County Grand Jury’s
assessment of the district’s Special Education program for K-8.
The district’s 102-page
response disagreed with most of the findings and recommendations in the August
2022 Grand Jury report and included reasons and evidentiary support to present
the board’s position.
The Grand Jury’s summary
stated that their investigation had been initiated by “multiple citizen
allegations of denial of special education (SpEd) services within the Mendocino
Unified School District (MUSD).”
Given the testimony by
“several families,” the Grand Jury investigation found that “the school
district failed to properly identify and provide mandated SpEd services to
several students, which resulted in California Office of Administrative
Hearings lawsuits compelling the district to offer additional student services
to correct their practices.”
In the body of the report,
the Grand Jury listed ten findings that described “the problems” in the MUSD
program for SpEd. The first four findings focus on weaknesses in the county’s
Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA). By law, every school district is
part of a regional system of districts that is guided by a Master Plan to
provide a quality education program for students identified with special needs.
The other six findings
focus specifically on MUSD’s educational philosophy for SpEd, its
administrative oversight system, and its alleged quick willingness to
financially settle with parent complaints rather than address the root causes
of a student’s lack of progress.
The MUSD board trustees
response to those six findings found fault with the Grand Jury’s reasoning, its
failure to request essential records from the district, and its incomplete
interview process which did not include many persons directly involved in the
complaint cases the Grand Jury referenced.
The board’s strongest
rebuttal addressed the Grand Jury’s misuse of the term “lawsuit” when noting
parents’ legal actions against the district. Parent filings, the school
trustees noted, that are adjudicated by an Administrative Law Judge for the
Office of Administrative Hearings, are not “lawsuits.” The filed paperwork is a
“due process complaint” concerning an unresolved disagreement between parents
and a school district.
Any parent of a SpEd
student may legally file a due process complaint at any time. In fact, this
procedure can be quite common in public school districts. Since confidentiality
is mandated to protect a student’s privacy, it is not unusual for the parent
population in a school district to have no personal knowledge of a filing or
its outcome.
The trustees also stressed
that no parent had ever been “forced” to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA).
All parties simply agree to a routine confidentiality clause in the student
plan paperwork to ensure family privacy regarding a student’s particular
educational needs.
The school board’s
response noted that the Grand Jury had subpoena power to obtain confidential
records of the students in question. The trustees included a thorough list of
documents that the Grand Jury should have requested in order to obtain a more
complete picture beyond the interviews they conducted. The trustees also
included several written testimonials by parents of SpEd students who are
supportive of the district’s program.
The district trustees
reported that in the past ten years there has been a total of four due process
complaints filed against the district. Furthermore, there have been no
lawsuits. Their response also asserted that transferring students to a SpEd
program in another school district “is not inappropriate.”
Of equal importance, the
district pointed out that the State of California routinely expects SpEd
unresolved disagreements and allots some funds for those situations. The
trustees also added that SpEd history in California shows settlements with
parents are the rule, not the exception.
Creating an education plan
for a SpEd student is a collaborative process involving many educational
professionals and the student’s parents. Some parents also bring in a SpEd
advocate to support their interests.
The guiding principle of a
SpEd student plan is to provide “a free and appropriate public education” for
identified students. The vague wording itself opens the door to
misunderstanding and promotion of opinions rather than data-driven evidence.
The opportunity for adversarial gridlock seems inadvertently built into the
process.
While most of these
meetings result in approval of educational plans by all parties, occasionally
parents may object strongly enough that no plan for the student is agreed upon.
These situations are usually resolved with more discussion, or parents file a
due process complaint. Only very few situations ever lead to actual lawsuits
against a school district.
In regards to the Grand
Jury’s assessment that the MUSD budget was not transparent enough for public
review of SpEd settlement costs, the trustees maintained that the budget is a
matter of public record. Settlements are reported out by the school board, but
no budget line item would list a family’s name in reference to a settlement.
The trustees agreed that
some of the school district’s general funds were applied to SpEd costs. Funds
provided by the state and federal agencies never cover the complete costs of
SpEd students’ needs. However, school districts are required by law to fulfill
a SpEd student’s needs regardless of cost and use some general funds to finance
SpEd services needed by students.
The Grand Jury report also
presented six recommendations linked to the numbered findings. The first three
are directed to the county’s SELPA.
The other three
recommendations targeted the district’s perceived biased disregard for
delivering “early intervention” services for SpEd students and its failure to
ensure parents’ understanding of SpEd students’ rights. Other recommendations
addressed the district’s unspecific professional training program for staff.
The board trustees
described the Grand Jury’s opinions about the district’s lack of early
intervention policies as “indefensible,” and the trustees claimed no knowledge
of the North Coast Diagnostic Center, identified in the Grand Jury report,
which provides SpEd testing, training, and technical services.
Most likely, the Grand
Jury report was referring to the regional center located in Fremont which is
one of three that serve the state’s school districts, students, and their
families. Assessments are free, but requests for services must be made by
school districts.
The trustees reported that
MUSD has approved, specific professional training plans in place. They also
conceded that the parent seats on the county’s SELPA committee were vacant, but
added that SELPA bore the responsibility to fill those seats. However, the
trustees stated that the district would hold informational meeting nights
whenever SELPA scheduled its county meetings within the MUSD borders.
Grand Jury recommendations
are not legally binding. The viewpoint of MUSD trustees is that the
recommendations will not be followed “because they are not warranted and/or not
deemed reasonable.”
Fort Bragg Advocate-News
By Mary Benjamin
November 3, 2022
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