Parents Say Special Ed Being Unfairly Targeted
By Daniel deVise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Parents and school board members are lining up against a proposal to close Stephen Knolls School in Kensington, which serves severely disabled students.
Alert parents discovered an item, deep within capital budget documents released last week, stating that school system staff members will "review options to collocate" the program with a regular elementary school, meaning that the 125 Knolls students and services would move to a different location. No date is mentioned.
Parents of special-needs children have rallied and view the proposal as part of an ongoing campaign to discontinue special education programs. Last winter, parents demonstrated at the school system headquarters to oppose the closure of Secondary Learning Centers that serve special-needs students within regular middle and high schools. They succeeded in slowing -- but not reversing -- the closure.
"This latest attempt to dismantle another special education program cannot stand," Lyda Astrove, a special education advocate, wrote in a widely circulated memo to parents and others.
Board president Nancy Navarro (Northeastern County) said she and fellow board members had been inundated with complaints from parents and questioned the seeming lack of notice to the school community, the same issue raised with the learning centers.
"In general, I must say that I am concerned, as are other board members, about communications issues regarding this project," Navarro wrote in a memo dated Oct. 30.
School system officials maintain their goal is to house the Knolls program, which serves students from ages 5 to 21, in a new, state-of-the-art facility. Placing the program on the campus of an elementary school meets the state and federal goal of inclusion: that special-needs students should generally study alongside other students rather than be segregated into isolated centers.
"It would be a real improvement," said Brian Edwards, chief of staff to Weast. Edwards stressed that no decision had been made or would be made "for several years."
Parents and school system officials differ in their interpretation of state law. The proposal to close Knolls states that the Maryland State Education Department "is opposed to the delivery of special education services to students in a separate facility." In his subsequent memo, Weast described the state goal as mainstreaming students "to the maximum extent appropriate." Parents say that school leaders routinely overstate the requirements of the special education law.
They say they are also concerned about a memorial garden, on the Stephen Knolls campus, dedicated to students who have died. The memorial, dedicated Oct. 18, was undertaken only after organizers were assured there were no plans to close the facility.
The juxtaposition of events suggests that "the decision to close the school was put in writing before any of the memorial bricks for the garden were laid," Gerald Heupel Jr., former president of the school Parent-Staff Association, wrote in a widely disseminated e-mail.
In an Oct. 30 memo to the school board, Weast pledged that "if we were to move the Stephen Knolls program, we would commit to move the new memorial garden."
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