Va. Tuition Help Sought For Disabled Students

Senate Panel Rejects Measure for Now

RICHMOND, Feb. 2 -- Until just this school year, 17-year-old David Rudolph was lost.

He got poor grades. He was held back twice.

In November, his parents enrolled him in Chesapeake Bay Academy, a private school designed for students with disabilities. Now, his mother said, he is thriving, making straight A's and starring on the school basketball team.

To pay for a spot at the 155-student school, Rudolph's parents, Luis and Percilla Zeno, refinanced their home and aborted plans to send his twin sister to a private college. Even so, Percilla Zeno said, she cannot afford the school's $13,000 tuition for next year.

Her story was part of an extraordinary two-hour debate before a Virginia Senate committee Thursday in which she and two children testified about their struggles with public schools.

They were speaking in support of a proposal to give families of disabled children as much as $10,000 a year for tuition at private schools if they feel public schools are not meeting their needs. School superintendents and others testified that the program amounted to a backdoor way of introducing school vouchers in Virginia.

The Senate panel rejected the proposal by one vote.

At least one senator who voted against the measure said he could support the same concept next year, with some changes, and the bill was formally carried forward for renewed discussion in 2007. Sen. Walter A. Stosch (R-Henrico), the bill's sponsor, vowed to continue efforts to give disabled children an avenue out of public schools.

"This will give us time to work on it and see if we can't dispel some of the misgivings that are either wrong, distorted or disingenuous," he said.

The measure, Senate Bill 545, would help the parents of about 175,000 Virginia schoolchildren who have an "individualized educational program" because of disability. The bill would cover at least some private school tuition at taxpayer expense. The parents also would have the option of enrolling their child at another public school.

"The issue is whether or not we want to find an alternative for these parents who are trapped into an environment where it's just not working for them," Stosch told the Education and Health Committee.

Public schools are required by federal law to provide a "free and appropriate" education to disabled children. Parents complain that when disagreements arise about what schools should provide -- as they often do -- they are at a disadvantage in dealing with a school bureaucracy that can call on lawyers and experts to prove its case.

Several senators shared stories about children or grandchildren with disabilities. Stosch told the committee about his 15-year-old granddaughter, who has a form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome. Stosch said the girl has received a proper education in her public school but only after her parents tussled with administrators in a process he termed "sordid."

Representatives of several public school organizations pleaded with senators to reject the bill. Three superintendents testified that the program could drain budgets by requiring schools to divert funds for private education.

Princess Moss, president of the Virginia Education Association, said it would be the "first voucher plan in Virginia since massive resistance," when white children received taxpayer money to attend private schools and avoid integration.

That argument swayed several members of the panel, including Sen. R. Edward Houck (D-Spotsylvania), who works as student services director in the 2,500-student Fredericksburg City school system, where he is responsible for special education.

"We can call it a scholarship. We can call it whatever we want to," Houck said. "This is a voucher, pure and simple."

Stosch said he has always opposed vouchers, and he denied that their introduction was his intention.

The bill's proponents, including Bobby Curnow, 19, a senior at a private school for disabled children in Henrico County, said they would keep fighting. "There's always a chance for next year," he said.