Special Ed Woes at BCTHS

From this morning's BCCT

School facing special education legal challenges
Such challenges are typically resolved by offering additional education to special education students as compensation, an administrator said.
By JOAN HELLYER

Two legal challenges have prompted Bucks County Technical High School administrators this summer to review their procedures for handling special education students, an official said.

The challenges, which will be handled by a hearing officer, are common in every school district, said Kevin Gentilcore, the school’s supervisor of pupil services. However, they are the first to be filed against the tech school in its 50-year history, he said.

“We’re not happy that we have a couple cases. We’re looking at all of our procedures and those of our sending districts to make sure we are all legally sound and have processes in place to continue to have positive relationships with our students and parents,” Gentilcore said.

He would not identify the students involved in the due process cases, citing confidentiality restrictions, and declined comment on the cases.

But generally speaking, Gentilcore said, due process cases come about after a parent, guardian or other party connected to the student “feels that his or her Individual Education Plan was not appropriately implemented.” The interested party could claim that since the IEP was not properly implemented, the student did not learn and achieve as much as expected, he said.

The IEP is developed in a joint effort by public school officials, the student, and his or her guardian as required of public schools by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It is designed to meet the unique educational needs of a child, taking into consideration how the disability affects the student’s learning, education department officials said.

The IEP describes how the student learns, how he or she best demonstrates that learning, and what teachers and service providers are required to do to help the student learn more effectively, officials said.

The cost to implement an IEP depends on the student’s individual disability, they said, and can range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Typically such challenges to IEP implementation are resolved by offering the student additional education as compensation, Gentilcore said.

The comprehensive technical high school off Wistar Road in Bristol Township already has procedures in place to ensure that a student’s IEP is being followed, the supervisor said.

Initially, when a special education student is accepted into the school that serves the Bensalem, Bristol, Bristol Township, Morrisville, Neshaminy and Pennsbury school districts, the sending school reviews the student’s IEP.

Then, representatives from the sending school and BCTHS meet with the student and his or her parent or guardian to make sure the IEP is appropriate in a technological setting, Gentilcore said. It is adjusted as needed to accommodate the technical environment.

It’s also reviewed by representatives of the home school and the tech school, as well as the student and parent or guardian, on an annual basis, he said.

School officials now are in the process of doing “preventive maintenance” by making sure they are handling the IEP cases correctly in light of the legal challenges, Gentilcore said.

“We figure let’s be ahead of the curve here. There’s probably nothing more to do than we are already doing, but we are in a heightened sense of awareness,” the administrator said.

Gentilcore believes the cases can be tentatively resolved by the time the school’s joint board committee meets again in late August. The board will have to approve the settlements before they can be enacted, he said.