Winkleman cases and Public Schools

[Guest guest]

- I do not have all the answers for your questions below but I do have

some places to start looking and information to share.

First off, the system is wholly unfair. When you call OSEP and speak to anyone

on the Texas monitoring team the first thi ng they will tell you is that parents

do have help - the federal government has set up a resource for parents and in

Texas they are small groups of highly dedicated individuals like at the

Pathproject. I do not want to criticize groups like the Path project because

they are doing all that they can with the limited resources given, but they are

not attorneys and can not attend ARDs and really can only disperse information.

Certainly not anything helpful against the large law firms that school districts

hire. I have repeatedly talked to Mr. , Mr. Schneer and Mr. Corr

- most of the Texas monitoring committee about this issue. They have told lme

that they are NOT hearing from parents about the inequities in the system nor

are they NOT hearing from parents about the problems parents are facing in

Texas. So first off,

we need to make our voices heard at the federal level. (After they refer you to

these offices they will then refer you to Advocacy, Inc. who suffers from the

similar problems - lack of staff and resources!!) I think a sustained e-mail and

fax blitz to everyone on the Texas monitoring team would have some impact to

atleast start focusing people on the situation here in Texas.

I personally do think this is a public trust issue as they are utilizing Tax

payer dollars to defend themselves in these cases and, therefore, should be held

accountable. Sometimes the money is legitimately spent as not every case they

defend against has merit, but we all know how broken the system is and how

unresponsive our districts are and, I would hazard to guess, that more often

than not the money is being used to stall or prevent school districts from doing

what they should be doing. There are several places in the US that are

exploring this issue - California and Long Island, NY. In addition, several

texas childrens advocacy groups are looking into this issue as well. I would

imagine that a FOI request can be made to get this information. I think that is

what Long Island parents did as well as the newspaper Newsday. What is happening

there and the exposure of corruption is really illuminating.

I am not aware of any " Parent Union " unfortunately, the best we could possibly

come up with is try to encourage all our state law schools to establish a

disabilities law clinic... Syracuse has an effective one as does the Univ. of

Washington, we need something like that and I have called around to every law

school in Texas and no one has this!! Another way is to try to get large law

firms - much larger than the Walsh 's of the world, I mean the National

Law Firms with local offices here to start taking cases pro bono. An enormous

national law firm just won an award from a major learning disabilities group for

doing precisely this. Quite frankly, I do not necessarily need nor am I

optimistic that we would be able to establish a viable " parents union " to make

effective change, I think it would take a few well publicized cases that are

selected based on the facts that they present to bring around some effective

change.

JMO and hope that helps...

Mara

Question: Winkleman cases and Public Schools

Mark or anyone ---

I know this is probably a stupid question -- but do you know how the process

works for schools paying attorneys? What " fund " does that come out of? Like

through an insuranse policy for lawsuits, some line item budget amount they

have, etc? Like with the Winkleman case - that is a relatively small school

district. Surely in their " Special Education " budget they don't have a million

dollars set aside for legal defense -- so where does that money come from?

Do they use funding from school board unions? Teacher unions?

My point being - would there be a possible legislative action to limit or halt

the amount of funds, or sources of fundings, the schools could use in paying

attorney's?

Parents don't have unions backing them - but how might something like that work

or be set up?

From a Legislative standpoint, I guess I'm not seeing the equity in the system

of Due Process at that level. Even criminals have defense attorneys hired on

their behalf paid by the public. There is no limit to that defense.

How would one get at the source of school funding for attorney fee's - and have

some sort of regulation. Yes, they have a right to defend themselves, but there

is a limit like if the cost of litigation is 3 times what the amount would be

that the parent is requesting, you can no longer use public funds, etc.

Probably stupid - but more than that - how might a " Parent Union " be set up? I

guess like the legal defense fund question...

mark colditz <markdebctx (DOT) rr.com> wrote:

M. Guppy

Autism is a very silent world; but the potential in that world speaks

volumes.... Texas Autism Advocacy: www.TexasAutismAdvo cacy.org

" There are some aspects of a person's life that we have no right to compromise.

We cannot negotiate the size of an institution. No one should live in one. We

cannot debate who should get an inclusive education. Everyone should. We cannot

determine who does and who does not get the right to make their own choices and

forge their own futures. All must. "