Paybacks...

 Paybacks...

 

Last year was a totally online year for a significant number of students with disabilities.  Under federal and state law, students with disabilities are no longer entitled to services through the school year in which they turn twenty-one.  After that they are left to their eligibility for adult services.

A group of special education advocates and lawyers are now advocating to extend services to that group of students with disabilities who aged out of entitlement during this past year.  Public school officials are saying these situations need to be decided on a case-by-case basis if a parent feels the child needs more services.

The fact is that school systems really don’t know the losses that any kids have suffered during the last 16 months.  That information will become known once the students are back in school in buildings.  We won’t know that about plain kids let alone those with disabilities.

In New York City, a year’s extension has been granted to some students but not to all.  The DC public schools believe that perhaps a dozen or so students will need the extra eligibility out of hundreds who think they deserve it.  

Advocates are arguing that asking each student or the student’s family to file a request and then for the system to process that request is much more expensive than it would be to just grant the extra eligibility to all students who were impacted.   School systems do not see it that way.  They are requiring each student to file an individual appeal.  

The other approach being taken by advocates is to go to governmental legislative councils and ask them to set aside funds for the extra services.  Mostly advocates have been met with resistance to this idea.  One of the issues is that for a student with disabilities, that final year of school is often spent in on-the-job training which was next to impossible to do virtually.  So the student who worked at CVS stocking shelves and learning to have a snack in the break room with other staff, is not going to be able to learn those skills virtually.  

Of course, the real issue for all kids with disabilities (as well as plain kids) is that they were given all given less than they were promised for a school year.  Sort of like the 50-minute therapy hour.  Except for the kids who got a 20-week school year and no one wants to acknowledge that paybacks for the kids might not go as planned.