Supreme Court Ruling re: Special Education Reimbursement

On the one hand, I believe this ruling will open the floodgates to parents to automatically enroll their special needs children into private schools, without first going through the proper channels of their local public school and giving the school the right to admit or deny the existence of a disability. In turn, there will be more lawsuits filed by both parents and schools, and more money spent on attorneys’ fees.

On the other hand, for those students who have been denied FAPE, even though their parents went through the proper channels to receive FAPE, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys’ fees, this is a victory that has been a long time coming. Personally, what burns me is Judge Souter’s comment that “it makes good sense to require parents to try to devise a satisfactory alternative within the public schools.” As if parents haven’t been doing that already for many years! Schools have a lot more money to spend on lawsuits, experts, and attorneys to fight parents, rather than providing the assistance needed by students with LD’s.

The injustice of this whole issue is, school districts would rather fight parents using the legal system, knowing the school districts have the funds for legal fees and expert fees, and the parents do not. In this case, I wonder if the parents will be reimbursed their legal fees and expert fees, as well.

Here's what WrightsLaw had to say on the subject:
www.wrightslaw.com/law/art/forestgrove.ta.analysis.htm

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