IN 1997, THE parents of Brian Schaffer, then a seventh-grader, attempted to enroll their son in a special education program at a Montgomery County middle school. Brian, who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, had been enrolled in a private school that did not offer special education. In conjunction with his parents, Martin and Jocelyn Schaffer, Montgomery County designed an individual curriculum for Brian, as it would for any disabled child, including 15.3 hours of special education and 45 minutes of speech therapy every week. The Schaffers turned it down, on the grounds that Brian's classes would be too large and the therapy insufficient. The county then offered the parents the same program, but at a different middle school with smaller classes. The parents turned that down, too, and instead enrolled Brian at another private school, which offered a program they thought more appropriate. They asked the county to reimburse the tuition. When the county refused, they sued.
The story does have a happy ending, at least for some of the protagonists: Eventually, Brian graduated from a Montgomery high school, and he is now a college student. But in the meantime, the case wound its way through the court system, and last month the Supreme Court agreed to hear it. At stake is a seemingly narrow legal issue: Who ought to bear the burden of proof in a case like this, the parents or the school system? If the parents do, that means they would have to pay a lawyer to prove to a judge that the county's offer was inadequate -- something, the Schaffers' attorney points out, few families could afford.
_____Today's Post Editorials_____
|
| |
|
If the burden of proof is on the school system, Montgomery County would be obligated to pay its lawyers to prove to a judge that its own program is adequate. Under those circumstances, school officials say, parents would have every incentive to keep challenging the school system. That would clearly be to the advantage of less wealthy parents or of those more dissatisfied with public school offerings. But over time the price of such a change to school systems could be extraordinarily high.
Part of what is at stake here, as in all disputes over special education, is that different experts can have different opinions about a particular child. But the more delicate issue of costs and trade-offs looms even larger. Montgomery's current budget already contains $312 million for special education, including transportation and special teachers, as well as some $32 million for private tuition for the 650 students whose disabilities cannot be accommodated by the system. By contrast, the operating costs (not including new buildings) of the county's much-heralded plan to extend full-day kindergarten to 93 schools and 7,000 kindergartners in the coming year comes to some $25 million.
Congress has decreed that disabled students must receive "enhanced attention." But when that results in reduced attention -- larger classes, fewer teachers -- for everyone else, school superintendents have a right to try to reduce the price. Jerry D. Weast, Montgomery's superintendent, says the county has been trying to reduce the number of students it sends out of the system every year, precisely in order to cut costs. If the Schaffer case goes against him, the numbers could rise again, in Montgomery County and everywhere else.
As things stand, parents have ways to express their disagreement with school conclusions. Some experts think that the recently reauthorized version of the special education law, which takes effect in July, will make the relationships between parents and schools less confrontational. Given the escalating costs of special education, it therefore seems logical to let parents bear the burden of proof. What- ever the court decides, lawmakers should keep a close eye on this issue and ensure that the final decision protects the rights of all children to an adequate education without creating an exponential growth in legal expenses for the nation's schools.
