The Connecticut legislature is poised to vote on two special education bills that, if passed, will eliminate some critical rights and protections that children with disabilities currently have.
A few of the “poison pills” lurking in House Bill 7277 and the identical Senate Bill 1561:
- The bills require that the state make Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) less transparent by removing information that tells parents who is implementing the special education services. This reduces school district accountability and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for parents to contest this key piece of a child’s program. (See Lines 1503-1507 in either bill.)
- The bills penalize families who unilaterally place their kids in needed private special education schools by making due process hearings even more difficult for those families to navigate. (See Lines 1370-1377 and 1387-1390 in either bill.)
- The bills place significant obstacles in the path of PPTs and hearing officers who believe a child needs to be placed in a private special education school, seeming to require consideration of every possible public school option throughout the state’s 169 towns prior to placing the child in a private special education school. (See Lines 189-194, 1410-1412 and 1432-1440 in either bill.)
- The bills seek to force approved private special education schools to reduce their fees through a non-transparent rate-setting process, which would likely result in a reduction of the availability and quality of services for our neediest children. (See Lines 50-283 in either bill.)
As Representative Tina Courpas stated during last month’s meeting of the Select Committee, the rate-setting portion of the bills (understandably) scared a lot of people. She also noted that none of the three agencies that the bills list as being responsible for setting rates—the Connecticut State Department of Education, the Office of Policy and Management, and the Office of the Child Advocate—had “bought in” to their proposed roles in the legislation. Courpas said, “You can’t pass a bill that is dead on arrival because the people implementing it don’t agree with it.”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg–there is much more in these fast-moving bills that would be devastating for children with disabilities.
Although public testimony shows overwhelming opposition to HB-7277 and SB-1561, the bills’ authors made few changes prior to calling a vote at their April 29 committee meeting. Even then, the bills almost failed to move on–with nearly half of the Select Committee on Special Education voting against the bills moving forward. Inexplicably, the bills’ authors continue to push the proposed legislation forward with no further revisions.
Why are some well-intentioned people supporting these bills? Misinformation. For example, Representative Maryam Khan has repeatedly asserted that Connecticut parents in “many districts across the state” are sending their children with disabilities to schools like Loomis Chaffee and Choate—expensive private schools that provide no special education services—and then are suing districts to seek reimbursement. This is easy enough to dispute, as a search of Connecticut due process hearing decisionsfor the past two decades failed to identify even one case that exemplifies the problem that Khan claims is widespread. Further, a poll of Connecticut parent attorneys and advocates found that not one of us—despite having a combined experience of hundreds of years—has had even one client with disabilities placed at public expense in a private school without any special education supports. In fact, the vast majority of unilateral parent placements for which parents have sought reimbursement have been private special education schools that support children with dyslexia and schools for children with significant mental health needs. Parents typically resort to pre-paying for these special education schools out of desperation, after the public schools have failed the child for years.
Yes, educating children with disabilities does cost more, but we can either invest the money to appropriately educate them now, or we can pay exponentially more throughout their lifetimes. With the right instruction, 98% of students with disabilities are capable of becoming independent adults. Let’s prepare them to be productive taxpayers rather than setting them up to be unemployed, underemployed, incarcerated, or in need of a lifetime of public assistance.
Please email and call your state legislators today to ask them to oppose special education bills HB-7277 and SB-1561. Don’t know who your legislators are? Click here.
