Stung by a series of reversals in the troubled special education system, school officials are revising the standards and rules for the officials who hear grievances of special ed parents, internal documents show.
Under new rules proposed by State Superintendent Deborah Gist, special ed hearing officers will have to have at least five years of legal experience and can’t work for any school while they perform their duties, according to a memo obtained by The Examiner.
Gist is proposing to relax rules, however, that require officers to be members of the D.C. Bar. Instead, they can be members of other state bars who have applied to the D.C. Bar.
Hearing officers have broad authority over the education of mentally ill or disabled children. Federal law sets rigid deadlines for schools to test and serve kids for an array of learning disabilities. When schools blow the deadlines – and D.C. routinely does so – parents can file a due process suit with the school hearings office.
There hundreds of such complaints filed in D.C. every month. The city has more special education due process hearings than all the 50 states combined.
Federal law also allows parents to have their children sent to private schools at public expense if they can prove that the public schools aren’t up to the job. Some 2,000 D.C. children are shipped to private schools around the country – often in schools with long records of complaints for abuse or neglect. It’s a program that costs about $210 million every year.
For years, special education experts have complained that hearing officers weren’t up to the job and are easily buffaloed by parents’ lawyers.
Last month, federal court monitor Amy Totenberg filed a scathing report of the city’s special education system, blasting the Fenty administration for losing focus and allowing conditions to lapse.
