FONTANA, Calif., Nov. 4, 2024 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — “When I first enrolled my children in the school district, I had no idea that merely asking for help with their education would lead me to the courtroom,” says Maria Isabel Arias, a Candidate for San Bernardino County Board of Education, Area C. The litigious road of special education is a well-kept secret, and the vast public does not know that the education tax dollars they are contributing to special education, are actually being diverted to the courtroom instead of the classroom. In many instances, the cost of the lawsuits far exceeds the cost of special education services that parents are requesting.
Image caption: Maria Isabel Arias, Candidate for San Bernardino County Board of Education, Area C.
How does a child get sued?
The law that governs special education is the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This law states that a “team”, not the parents of a child; get to make decisions about their education. The parent is one of the members of the team but is outnumbered by the majority of the team comprised of school district employees and administrators. When there is a disagreement, it is resolved through the “Due Process” system.
“Due process” in special education refers to a legal procedure that allows parents of a child with a disability to formally dispute decisions made by a school district regarding their child’s identification, evaluation, educational placement, or the provision of special education services, giving them the right to a hearing where they can present evidence and arguments to resolve disagreements with the school district about their child’s educational needs; essentially, it promises a fair process to address concerns about a child’s special education program. Since it is the child who is entitled to the educational services, the parents are only representatives of the child and the parents can either request a hearing on behalf of the child or, in many cases, it is the school district who files the legal proceedings against the child. Basically, the child gets served with a lawsuit. This happened to each one of my three children. My school board had no clue of the initiation of due process.
Your TAX dollars at work, funding lawyers
Due process has all the components of litigation. It has a judge (Office of Administrated Hearing Judge), demandant (petitioner) and respondent (defendant). This process is very expensive, it costs taxpayer thousands of dollars. The process is very unfair, school districts have a full-time legal advisor helping them with the case, advisors, etc., ALL funded by TAXPAYERS. Parents have no resources. Note, district legal counsel gets paid whether they win or lose. Again, due process is completely funded by taxpayers. On the other hand, parents must fund their own legal advisor and witnesses.
Special education in California is based on a system of unelected bureaucrats, called Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs). These are shadow entities and many taxpayers do not even know they exist. The West End Special Education Local Plan Area (Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, Chino Valley, Central, Mountain View, Mt. Baldy) has an annual budget of over $300 Million and employs multiple out of town for profit law firms who specialize in suing students with disabilities to quash parent’s requests for special education services. Untold millions of tax dollars are spent throughout San Bernardino County on these lawsuits when this money could be better spent on reading programs like Lindamood-Bell (a specialized reading service sought by families) or behavior supports rather than making lawyers rich.
For profit law firms have learned to milk the system and have become special interest groups with great influence over school district staff who simply defer to whatever the for-profit lawyers tell them to do. We have seen many examples of the injustices done to children with disabilities. Lawyers in Alta Loma, sued two brothers in a 48 hour period. They subsequently filed motions to remove the parent as the guardian. Thankfully, they failed. In Chaffey Joint, the same out of town law firms, defied the district’s own psychologist’s opinion and tried to remove a parent as the guardian for an adult with autism. They failed and the Judge found that the attorney representing the district, violated a court order. In Upland, the same lawyers went to Court to get a parent to pay $42,000 for an expert that they never used in the proceeding. They failed, but they got our tax dollars just the same.
Currently, the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, pays the lawyers for the districts. This process is done in secrecy and without approval by the local school boards, so the public never sees the lawsuits. Instead, these decisions are being made in a back room between school administrators and the lawyers who stand to make a profit from instigating disputes. Lawyers do not get paid to help children read. They get paid to go to court, so that’s what they do.
Transparency is the Solution
The lack of local control and transparency has led to abuse and misuse of public funds. Oftentimes, special education dollars are used to litigate against children to deny them needed special education services, rather than provide them with an appropriate education. Students with disabilities are being treated as second class citizens and being denied the very basic access to their elected officials (school board members). For example, in the Fontana district, the school board has washed their hands of students with disabilities and is clueless about who their district is suing. At a school board meeting, I notified the board that the district had sued my children and had to literally make a copy of the front page of the lawsuit. Board members had no idea that the lawyers working for them had sued my children, in the name of the district. Through public records requests, I found out that the Fontana SELPA approved contracts for over $600,000 to hire lawyers to sue kids with disabilities.
Elected official oversight, which is at the core of our democratic process needs to be brought into special education. Decisions to engage in litigation should be made by elected school board members, not by administrators and out of town litigators who stand to profit from suing kids.
About Maria Isabel Arias:
Maria Isabel Arias is a Candidate for San Bernardino County Board of Education, Area C (Fontana, Chino Valley, Cucamonga and portions of Ontario) she is a special education parent and advocate for students. In an effort to assist the special needs community, Arias along with other parents and students started a platform named YOUTOOMOVEMENT. In this page, they shared relevant information about education, special education, resources, etc.
Learn more: https://www.facebook.com/YOUTOOMOVEMENT101
THIS NEWS PAID FOR BY MARIA ISABEL ARIAS, San Bernardino County Board of Education, Area C – Candidate.
Verify candidate (page 27; PDF): https://uploads.rov.sbcounty.gov/rov/Elections/2024/1105/Report_CandidateList.pdf
News Source: Maria Isabel Arias