By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Twelve families have appealed to the Maryland State Board of Education to reverse a decision by Montgomery County's school board to close eight secondary learning centers, part of a trend toward placing special education students in regular classrooms.

The appeal, filed in March, was publicized yesterday as special education advocates mobilized for an evening protest outside the county school-system headquarters in Rockville, which drew about 80 parents and children. "We would like it if they would come and sit and talk with us, and let's work on this together," said Karen S. Smith, a lawyer who has helped with the appeal.

Closure of the learning centers, which serve 600 students in mostly self-contained classes at five middle schools and three high schools, ranks among the most tumultuous decisions by the school board and Superintendent Jerry D. Weast in recent years. It has prompted sidewalk demonstrations, a 739-signature petition drive and concessions by the superintendent.

Before they turned against the learning centers, school system officials "touted them as highly successful, supportive and effective," the appellants wrote in a memorandum to the state filed earlier this month.

In December, Weast announced his plan to close the centers over three years and to move the students back to their home schools, where, he said, they would benefit from the more rigorous and specialized instruction afforded to regular students. The shift of students and funds was approved in February as part of the school board's $2 billion budget request for the next fiscal year.

The decision proved intensely unpopular among many parents, who said the learning center was the only academic environment that had worked with their children. The school-within-a-school format allows students to be among peers yet still receive extra academic attention. Dispersing them to their home schools risks breaking up those peer groups and diluting the extra attention, the parents say.

The parents appealed even after Weast announced in January that he would postpone closing the learning centers until every student at the eight sites has graduated, extending the three-year phaseout to six years.

The appeal claims that the county school board violated its own rules, which, parents contend, state that changes to academic programs should be presented to the board and to the public months before a formal vote. It also cites the decision to close the Kingsley Wilderness School, a work-study program for seriously disruptive and chronically truant high school students, claiming that the school board violated state regulations that require community input before a school is closed. The program was phased out in the budget for fiscal 2008.

School board attorneys say that no policy or regulation was violated. The wilderness project, they contend, is not a school but a program, one of 10 for "at-risk" students. Regarding the learning centers, they contend that the school board policy cited in the appeal has been superceded. Current rules, they say, allow lengthy "review cycles" for program changes only if they are matters of "significant policy," which, they reason, the learning centers are not.

The Maryland State Board of Education hears such appeals within a few months, spokesman Bill Reinhard said.