Dive Brief:

• Parents seeking special education services for their children often face anxious and costly fights with school districts about how much the district should offer for additional services. In some cases, parents see their only viable option as paying for private school placement, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
• Disagreements between parents and districts can often be solved through mediation, but some reach a form of legal proceedings that are expensive for parents and districts. Some districts will reportedly agree to a request to avoid these costs, even if they find the request unreasonable.
• The push for additional services comes after a March U.S. Supreme Court decision saying districts must provide “appropriately ambitious” goals for special education students. The Court did not offer a specific standard to meet, which leads to disagreement among parties.

Dive Insight:

Individualized Education Plans, mandated for every special education student, are a set of benchmarks and approaches to offer a positive educational experience; they remain one of the most difficult aspects of public education. Onerous rules and cumbersome administration, a lack of communication with parents and lack of funding to make the proposals reality constantly stymie parents, educators and students. The IEPs can lead to trouble for school administration, as well; as legal documents, the district is required to fulfill the services expressed in the plan, but a lack of resources can make doing so difficult. Such circumstances can make schools liable for not fulfilling plans when they never had the financial means to do so.

In light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, it is incumbent on state, local and federal government to ensure the additional resources would be available in the event of parents challenging threadbare or nonexistent IEPs for their child. The recent news that President Trump’s health care bill could conceivably cut Medicaid funding which could have an adverse affect on school districts who use Medicaid to fund costs for special education services. The proposal is a sobering indication that the resources may not be available to support the Court’s decision.