All You Need is a Lawyer: New York magazine on autism education
October 23, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
The Autism Clause is the title of an article about autism schools in New York City in the October 30th issue of New York Magazine. The new schools include the Rebecca School, which will enroll 200 students in two years and has a tuition of $72,5000, and which is being launched by Manhattan-based MetSchools, Inc. Its CEO, Michael Koffler, is “not an educator himself but a graduate of suny–Buffalo who majored in accounting and business administration.”
And money is the main focus of The Autism Clause, which suggests that anyone with the right lawyer can “get” New York City to pay tuitions up to $140,000 per year for an autistic child to attend a private school.
New York is renowned as one of the only places in the country where parents who buy legal help can count on winning. Usually, lawyers never even have to prove the failings of the schools themselves, because the Board of Ed has missed some basic step, like putting together an education plan for the child (also required by law). Skyer ticks off a few other typical bureaucratic screwups: “They don’t hold meetings, they lose files, they don’t have mandated people at meetings, placements are not made in suitable groups.” Usually the educators who attend the legal hearings have never met the children.
In the past two years, the city has opted to pay 50 settlements of over $100,000 apiece—almost all for autistic kids—instead of fighting to the death in court. The city comptroller’s office rejected just one: a settlement of $387,400, for one year of therapy. “It’s not just ‘Hire a lawyer and win,’” says John Farago, a hearing officer who issues decisions on autism cases. “It’s ‘Ask for a hearing and win.’ ”
Indeed, parents are autistic children are portrayed as siphoning off funds from NYC’s Department of Education:
[The] McCarton [School; tuition $84,000/year] has a waiting list 127 names long; one family moved to the East Side from eastern Connecticut just to attend the school. Others have relocated from England, Colorado, and Texas. All can now get the city’s Department of Education to pay the bill.
As if “getting” an education for one’s autistic child is such an easy thing to do.
This is sad. I’m a public school teacher and a mother of a child with Aspergers. It is sad that parents have to sue to get their children educated. It is equally sad that the district is so careless with its procedures that it loses cases routinely.
And, the New York magazine article does not make it clear why it is so important—so necessary—that our kids get the best education and the chances that they can.