From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

As school districts across the nation spend their federal stimulus money, some disability advocates say a loophole in the federal law has allowed districts to cheat students out of the very special education services the money was meant to bolster.

A federal rule allows districts to use their stimulus dollars to reduce the amount of local money a district spends on special education, allowing districts to use special ed funding to reduce other costs. Districts say the provision allows them to improve education for all students, but advocates worry the districts may be setting a precedent that could jeopardize special education allocations in the future.

“It’s an atrocity,” said Laura Kaloi, public policy director for the National Center for Learning Disabilities. The money was meant for students receiving special education, not as a way for districts to cut back on how much they spend on those students, she said.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Actor Ed Asner was among a group of 200 parents and advocates who turned out at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters this week to criticize expected cuts to special education programs. The cuts will reverse progress for students with disabilities, they said.

Asner, whose grandchild receives special education services in Los Angeles, said

students were at risk of being relegated to “a barebones education that essentially dooms their future.” He added: “Moving down this dangerous path will doom many of these children to prisons and homes costing much more money than the education that we have promised them.”

Parents raised concerns about a consolidation plan that could lead to larger class sizes, and the possible channeling of students away from inclusive classrooms to more segregated settings.

From the New York Times:

New York City’s Bloomberg administration has announced plans to overhaul the city’s special education system, seeking to include more students with disabilities in neighborhood schools. The city has traditionally concentrated students with disabilities in schools that have specific special education programs.

Starting this fall, more than 250 schools will be asked to accept more students with disabilities. It is anticipated that all of the system’s 1,500 schools will be expected to enroll all but the most severely disabled students by Sept. 2011.

Officials say the intent of the shift is to improve results for students with disabilities, as well as bringing the city into line with the national trend toward inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classrooms. But some disability advocates and educators worry that students will be harmed if changes are introduced too quickly, or without adequate preparation.

“This is fundamentally looking to change the way kids with special needs are treated in the city – they’re talking about changing the culture of all the schools in the city so that they can serve students that many of them were previously shipping out,” said Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, which helps parents navigate the special education system. “This could easily fall flat if it’s not done right.

“If kids are stuck in schools that don’t have the capacity to serve them and are denied requests to move elsewhere, that would be falling worse than flat.”

Special education enrollment in New York amounts to 177,000 students, or 17 percent of the system’s total, up from about 13 percent seven years ago. The city’s annual pricetag for special education is about $4.8 billion annually, with $1.2 billion of that going to send students to private schools.

From the Montreal Gazette and CBC News, with earlier story from the Montreal Gazette:

Responding to complaints by teachers that they were being overwhelmed, the Quebec government has agreed to rethink the way it integrates students with disabilities in general education classrooms.

Teachers’ unions negotiating for a new contract have been demanding a limit of 10 percent on the number of students with disabilities included in each general education classroom.

Education Minister Michelle Courchesne doesn’t want integration at any cost, said her spokesperson, Tamara Davis. “We’re going to re-examine our admissibility criteria in (regular) courses,” Davis said.

The government isn’t turning away from integration, she said. “We’re going to be modifying it.

“It is to help the teachers’ workloads and also all students in their learning,” Davis said.

“We’re not excluding everybody and we’re not including everybody,” said Davis, adding the details still have to be worked out.

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Charter schools in New Orleans educate about 60 percent of the city’s public school children — a higher percentage than in any major American city. But they serve a much smaller percentage of children with disabilities than traditional schools. The gap raises questions about how charters can assure equal access to students who have been historically underserved and excluded.

According to state data, New Orleans’ charters serve only 38 percent of students with autism, 37 percent of those with an emotional disturbance, and about 23 percent of students with multiple disabilities. Parents of kids with disabilities describe heartbreaking school searches, rejection and isolation for their children.

… sometimes, new charter leaders may be hesitant to take on the most challenging — and costly — students from day one.

“I talked to (a charter operator) who said, ‘We want to take these kids, but we’re just not ready yet,’” said Margaret Lang, director of intervention services for the Recovery School District. “My comment to him was that nobody is ready. These children are born into families who are not ready. The number of qualified staff is minimal. No one has quote, unquote, enough experience. But the kids are here.”

In a recent analysis of charter schools around the country, Harvard professor Thomas Hehir said there is significant underrepresentation of students with disabilities in charters in San Diego, Los Angeles and Massachusetts.  Hehir, who served as director of the U.S. Department of Education’s office of special education programs in the Clinton administration, said officials should develop policies to assure that charters are not discriminating against students with disabilities.

From GreenwichTime.com:

The Greenwich, Connecticut, school district has asked a group of graduate students to help it work better with parents to avoid costly litigation over special education services for children with disabilities.

The students, who are training at SUNY Oswego College to be school superintendents, will conduct case studies of 20 Greenwich families who pursued legal cases against the district last school year. The research will come at no cost to the district.

“We want to know what led parents to get to that point,” said Superintendent of Schools Sidney Freund. “What led them to go outside the district to get a resolution to a conflict?”

From WSAV TV, Savannah:

A nine-year-old Georgia girl has been closed out of participating in her local Special Olympics because the scheduling of the events clashed with her school schedule. Reagan Argo-Wilbanks, who has Down syndrome, is included in general education classes in the Liberty County School System.

“Because she has classroom subjects with regular students, instead of in all special education, she would miss too much academic instruction to participate,” [the girl's mother] said school officials told her.

Reagan meets Georgia Special Olympics rules, but each county is allowed to run their own games.

“You can’t call it the Special Olympics if you’re adding extra rules to discriminate against kids that would be allowed to participate,” said her mother.

The school district declined to comment.

(Photo from WSAV-TV)