School Districts' Attorneys Living Large At Public Expense

Well the San Francisco Chronicle is at it again. Not satisfied with the vile falsehoods it disseminated as "news" in Nanette Asimov's article, it has now published a lengthy op-ed piece from a California school administrator; the point of this piece is that parents' lawyers are draining school coffers in a relentless pursuit of special education cases.  She apparently has not read the recent articles of school district's attorneys receiving blockbuster fees in losing cases that should have never gone to court, except for the bad judgment of the school administration and bad advice of the school district's attorneys.

In Oak Park, Illinois the local newspaper upbraided the school district for wasting taxpayer money at the rate of $350 per hour. The school district has spent thousands of dollars each year to fight unrepresented parents over mundane matters, racking up time fighting informal complaints and generally draining public coffers for matters that should not be controversial but became a struggle well out of proportion to any cost-benefit analysis.

In Baltimore where the school administration is facing jail for contempt of court and students are going without mandated services; the school district's attorneys have received over a million dollars in fees for a losing multi-decade  long struggle to fight against the interests of students with special needs. [Download Baltimore School Legal Fees.doc ]  Students lose, school district loses, but these large law firms who represent school district's prosper anyway. 

The Deal case in Tennessee which went on for years at a cost of over $2 million in fees to the Weatherly Law Firm from Atlanta to fight a family's request for an aide for their child with autism. There was no possible justification for these expenditures of fees for this case where the school district lost again.  The case ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court mercifully denied an appeal. Why should the Weatherly firm stop fighting, they get paid regardless, and sooner or later the parents are bound to go broke, or their lawyer will end  up like John Travolta in "A Civil Action" sitting on the floor with no furniture and only a telephone.

The school district in Westport Connecticut, a very affluent community near New York City, has spent over $2 million in 6 years to fight parents of children with special needs, as reprinted in the Disability Law Blog. The New York Times described the town as metaphorically having a sign that reads "If You Have Special Needs Do Not Move Here." At the other end of the economic spectrum, the Ravenswood school district, in East Palo Alto California, one of the very poorest districts in the state, spent over $2 million on the Weatherly law firm, the same firm that had fattened itself on the losing Deal case above. The expenditures included first class travel and lavish accommodations while in town from Georgia. The Mercury News reported:

"that the Weatherly Law Firm, hired last year to defend Ravenswood in a special education lawsuit, charged the district serving the Peninsula's poorest children what amounts to $420 per student -- 5.5 percent of its annual budget. A new school board replaced the firm in December with county counsel charging $30,000 a year."

So now ask, who is living large at the public's expense ?  The San Fransisco Chronicle needs to return to journalism premised on fact, not a jaundiced view of reality that is based on unfortunate fictions.

 

Comments

[Rachel Norton]

To be fair, they ran the administrator's piece alongside a much more balanced piece from two local fathers, who (quite reasonably) argued that the answer to problems within the special ed system could largely be solved by fully funding IDEA.

Further, the fathers argued that the world before IDEA was a much more grim place for children with disabilities.

[Charles Fox]

This link from SF Schools blog presents the opposite side of the op-ed piece presented in the posting and referenced in the last comment. http://www.sfschools.org/2006/03/still-talking-about-special-ed.html