"It's an Irish Tale"

In most American Fairy Tales we all live happily ever after. This is not an American tale, it's an Irish one. (My husband and I stole this line from "the Devil's Own")

Mr. and Mrs. Irish moved into a small town called Hopeless. The local district, We Could Careless about Kids (WCCLAK), was investigated by the Irish family prior to the move. The evaluations were given to them in March and the child attended summer school so services would be ready the first day of school.

Mr. and Mrs. Irish did exactly what WCCLAK asked them to do. They were happy to work with the school so the child's first day of Kindergarten went well.

Mrs. Irish applied for and was granted a position in the same school as her child attended. She was a Special Education Teacher. Each day she worked with children from her child's classroom. Her child was not receiving services as WCCLAK unilaterally and secretly decided that she did not need them.

Mr. Irish reminded WCCLAK that all of the child's scores were in the 1st and 2nd percentile. The scores had been verified by 3 different evaluators and the child had been in Special Education for 2 years. WCCLAK stated that they did not see the delay and requested further evaluation.

When the WCCLAK School Psychologist evaluated the child he agreed she needed help and should be placed in Special Education. The Director of Special Education over ruled his decision and refused placement.

The family was concerned and requested mediation.

Mrs. Irish was fired from her position as a Special education Teacher.

WCCLAK and the Irish Family went to mediation in December. It was agreed an outside evaluator would be contracted– WCCLAK determined who it would be and when it would take place.

The evaluation took place in January. The evaluation supported the child's need for services. The family stated they would agree to the changes suggested by the evaluator. WCCLAK stated they would wait for the final written report. A written report was received in February. The family requested an IEP meeting. WCCLAK refused to meet with the family until a Final report was received. The final report came in April WCCLAK refused to meet again. The family continued to request the meeting. In June WCCLAK met with the family in all 22 people attended the meeting for WCCLAK Schools. The parents attended and asked a friend to come as well. WCCLAK dismissed the child from Special Education.

The Irish Family requested Due Process Papers. WCCLAK stated there were no such papers. The family continued to request the paperwork. They finally left without it. They requested it in writing the next day. The paperwork finally came in mid June. The letter attached stated they had to file Due Process in 10 days or they would waive their right to Due Process.

The Irish family then attempted to place their child in another school district to avoid Due Process WCCLAK blocked this move. The Irish Family was forced to file Due Process. It took a few weeks to find an attorney to do this for them. The paperwork was filed the day before school started. WCCLAK stated they couldn't file Due Process and they would not be able to have stay put.

The Hearing Officer ruled WCCLAK was not correct.

The Irish Family and WCCLAK SD went to hearing. The school found that they needed to hire an outside attorney to fight the family. They also hired outside psychologist, medical doctor and all the staff at Hopeless Elementary School. Each person got on the stand and repeated word for word the same story. They stated the child was psychotic at the evaluation, the evaluation was too lengthy, too far and the evaluators were not qualified to conduct these evaluations.

Following these testimonies, they proceeded to state the family was dishonest (they tried to find proof of this by paying the attorney to fly all over another state to find any information he could about the family.

They also stated the family was dirty and that the mother had Munchausen's. The medical doctor that stated this as fact had never spoken to or even seen the family prior to his testimony. This information was not shared with the family prior to trial as is required by law.

Despite this, the family remained focused. They simply placed on the stand the very evaluators the school forced them to use and asked them to explain the results of the testing.

The Hearing Officer agreed with the family. He stated the child needed Special Education Services. He did agree with WCCLAK that possibly the child had advanced further than the Irish Family recognized but the services were in fact needed.

WCCLAK SD refused to write an IEP for the child. They tried to force the Irish family to believe that since they were appealing the decision stay put did not apply. They also stated that the family did not prevail in Due Process.

Each IEP meeting lasted no less than 4 hours. On each IEP WCCLAK wrote this IEP is written only because of Hearing Officer Orders the child will continue to work at grade level.

WCCLAK did not provide services as outlined on the IEP. The Irish Family filed a complaint with the Department of Education. WCCLAK was ordered to follow the IEP and to submit documents to support this weekly.

WCCLAK refused to provide services regularly. When the family filed another complaint the DOE stated they could not rule on this as the case was in litigation.

The outside Attorney Firm wrote numerous letters and continually requested more evaluations. They even asked the IRISH Family to travel to evaluators 9 hours away from home. They filed Due Process against the family for refusing this trip. The Irish Family stated they would only do this if the way were paid and the evaluations were spread out over several days to avoid the accusations they were invalid as was stated in court. WCCLAK refused to allow this to happen.

Almost 2 years later WCCLAK finally conducted the evaluations. They scheduled all evaluations for the same week. It was 9/11/01. There was also a hurricane that week in the same county. Yes you guessed it, Floriduh. The Irish family allowed the psychologist who testified against them at Due Process to conduct his evaluation. Mrs. Irish was called by her attorney one afternoon. He asked her about her refusal to allow evaluations to be conducted. She was unsure about this information as she had not refused any evaluations. When she called Hopeless Elementary she discovered that in fact another evaluation was scheduled for the next day. That would mean her child had missed 4 out of 5 days of school. At that point she stated she would like the evaluation to be rescheduled and refused to allow it to be conducted.

When Mr. and Mrs. Irish arrived at school the next day they discovered the evaluation had been conducted. The child ran to them and said look Mommy Look what the stranger gave me for taking my clothes off for her. (It was an OT eval) Mrs. Irish was QUITE upset. She immediately went into the office to find out who decided this evaluation should take place despite 3 written and 2 verbal refusals. She was not allowed to speak with the evaluator or the Special Education Director who was at the school at the time. She later found out the evaluator asked to speak to her. She was told the family refused to speak to her.

The Family Irish filed police charges against WCCLAK SD. Nothing was done.

The appeal remained in the court system for 2 more years. Numerous letters were received from the outside attorney group.

Finally the appeal was read by the court. WCCLAK SD prevailed in this case. The family Irish appealed. The Supreme Court Determined WCCLAK was the prevailing party as well. It appeared that since the case had begun when the child was in Kindergarten and she was now in 5th grade that it just didn't apply anymore.

The result of this decision not only removed the child from services but also determined that, despite the Due Process Victory the family Irish did not receive any attorney fees back.

In all the case took 6 years to complete. The Family Irish incurred Attorney fees and expenses of $150,000.00 or more. The Family Irish had an attorney that refused to accept all of his fees.

The WCCLAK SD had 5 Attorneys working on this case on a daily basis. The attorney fees after one year were over $150,000.00. Multiply that by 6 years and the expenses of the Administrator and Teacher time and you would be well over $900,000.00.

The average teacher salary in Hopeless is $30,000. $900,000 would be 30 teacher's salaries or 60 Paraprofessionals salaries.

At what point would most districts stop and say we will give your child 60 mins. of Speech weekly and 30 min of Math Assistance daily? What was won?