Posted on: Thursday, May 24, 2001
State seeks more time to improve special education
By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer
The state is asking a federal court judge for another six months to improve special eduction services, saying the teachers strike derailed efforts to meet a December deadline.
Yesterday, an attorney in the Felix consent decree said the state has had plenty of time to meet the requirements of the court order and has consistently failed to do so.
But the court-appointed monitor said he will recommend that the request be approved.
The request for an extension, filed late Tuesday, comes after a series of hearings in which U.S. District Judge David Ezra has warned that he is running out of options in the long-running consent decree.
It also comes just one month after Ezra warned that the state faced fines of $100,000 a day and a possible takeover of the education system if the Legislature did not find the money that the departments of education and health said they needed to comply with the consent decree.
Gov. Ben Cayetano has now assured the departments that they can use the $29 million the state saved in teachers salaries during the strike. Nevertheless, the attorney general's office argues that the three-week teachers strike means the state cannot meet Ezra's December deadline and needs an extension to June 2002.
One of the plaintiff attorneys in the Felix case said that while the state has made significant progress, he is "very disturbed" by the request.
"We are very unhappy that they are coming back and asking for another extension of time," said Eric Seitz. "We think this whole process has been taking much too long."
The departments of education and health were falling behind even before the strike, he said, and some are skeptical that they can meet even a June 2002 deadline.
The state's special education system is under federal court oversight as the result of a 1993 class-action lawsuit that claimed the state's treatment of children with mental disabilities was woefully inadequate.
The state signed the consent decree in 1994, agreeing to improve services.
Ezra last year found the state in contempt for not meeting an earlier deadline, but granted it a second chance by extending the deadline to December.
Seitz said the question now is not if a receiver should be placed over the school system, but when.
"It ranges, basically, from wanting to appoint a receiver at this point because enough is enough," he said, "and they've had lots of extensions and they've failed lots of times for whatever reasons to basically saying that if you do give them a chance, Judge, that next time there shouldn't even be a discussion, there should be a receiver appointed."
However, Ivor Groves, the court-appointed monitor who oversees the state's progress in the case, said he will recommend the court grant the extension.
Groves believes the extension is warranted because of time lost to the strike and also because of teacher recruitment delays that were beyond the departments' control. One of the biggest casualties to the strike was the testing of schools to determine compliance. Testing had to be canceled and will not resume until the next school year, which puts the December deadline out of reach, he said.
However, "the odds are pretty good" that the state can meet a June 2002 deadline, he said.
The departments have made progress, particularly in hiring personnel needed to run the system, Groves said. For example, the Department of Education will have about 80 percent certified special education teachers next year, up from 68 percent this year, he said. The request for an extension is scheduled for a hearing on June 22.
