We’ve been scooped! On the day this newsletter was set to go out, the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools. The justices voted unanimously in favor of the student and his right to sue under the ADA — without exhausting his IDEA claims.
Read MoreBack in July, I wrote about a case prior to its going to the Office of State Review. Through the twists and turns of the process, the State Review Officer (“SRO”) reduced our complex appeal to a single question: We were, in essence, asked to prove that remote, video educational programming was equal in quality to live classroom instruction.
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The “school-to-prison pipeline” is a phenomenon where children of vulnerable populations are improperly educated and disciplined, quit — or get forced out of — school, and end up incarcerated. In essence, failing students, often males of color who are learning disabled, are channeled into the juvenile discipline or criminal justice system.
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Recently, I had the privilege of presenting on the topic of special education law to a group of school teachers and administrators. It is important to approach this topic with the following foundational understanding:
General education is not mutually exclusive from special education. Many children with disabilities go through school with their disabilities undiagnosed or improperly identified. These children might simply present as students who struggle to self-organize. Their grades might slip without them ever failing enough to be noticed. They may develop anxiety or oppositional behaviors as adolescents, stemming from their difficulty with seemingly simple academic tasks.
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