Special Ed Lawsuit

Original Story URL:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=671918

Special school or segregation?

Some with disabilities favor Walworth's site; others object

By AMY HETZNER
ahetzner@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Oct. 7, 2007

Elkhorn - The law may have one definition for what constitutes the
"least restrictive environment" for educating students with
disabilities, but parent Julie Witt says she has another after
enrolling two of her children in Walworth County's school specializing
in such pupils.

At Lakeland School, Witt's 11-year-old son Cole is not tied to an
aide, nor does he have to leave his classroom to receive different
lessons from the rest of his peers, as he did in the Illinois school
he attended with non-disabled students.

"Here, he is totally independent," said Witt, whose family moved to
LaGrange a year ago. "He just fits, and he's loving that."

Witt's interpretation bumps up against a more traditional definition
of special-education law that, for the last three decades, has caused
massive changes in how students with disabilities are educated,
including the setting where they receive their instruction.

It's that definition, which contends that disabled students should
learn alongside non-disabled classmates as often as possible, that has
prompted an ongoing lawsuit challenging the future of Lakeland School.

Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick, managing attorney for Disability Rights
Wisconsin, casts his group's case against the school as a modern-day
Brown vs. Board of Education. "Separate is not equal, and it certainly
is not better," said Spitzer-Resnick, whose group sued the Walworth
County Board of Supervisors to prevent a new, larger home for
Lakeland.

Students with disabilities who are taught separately miss the kind of
social networking that helps them land jobs and become full members of
their communities, Spitzer-Resnick said.

"When you segregate kids, they don't get those opportunities like
everybody else," he said. "And kids with disabilities need even more
than that."

Walworth County has served disabled students in a separate facility
for nearly 60 years, starting with a leased basement in the Elkhorn
VFW building.

Today, Lakeland School hosts more than 250 students ages 3 to 21 in a
building alongside single-family homes in Elkhorn down the street from
the grounds of the Walworth County Fair. Lakeland students largely
come from the county's 15 school districts, with disabilities ranging
from behavioral disorders that caused them to act out in their home to
cognitive deficiencies and multiple physical handicaps.

Class sizes at the school are small so teachers can give more
individual attention to their pupils. But Lakeland students also get
opportunities their peers might in any other school: playing on a
Special Olympics basketball team, attending prom and participating in
school-to-work activities to help them get ready for life after
school.

New teacher Justin Hamilton added an art class this year to appeal to
the creative impulses of his students.

Hamilton, who is certified to teach students with cognitive, learning
and behavioral disabilities, said he decided to work at Lakeland
partly to avoid the resource battles typical between regular and
special-education teachers. At Lakeland, everyone is focused on the
students, and it works, he said.

"The only thing that doesn't work well is the current school
(facility)," Hamilton said.

Space is a concern. Lakeland has been forced to move its library and
its collections into a hallway that also is utilized for indoor
recess. Many of the school's narrow hallways aren't wide enough for
more than one wheelchair at a time.

And then there are issues with its physical operations. Water leaks
have left brown streaks running along the walls. The school is no
longer compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. A device
once used to lower students into the school swimming pool has been
abandoned, leaving it to staff members to help carry students down the
steps into the water.

But when the Walworth County Board tried to address the issues posed
by the physical structure, voting in April 2006 to build a new
Lakeland in the Town of Geneva for $22 million, it was hit with the
lawsuit by Disability Rights Wisconsin.

The group contended that an expanded facility could lead the county's
school districts to send even more students through its doors -
already an issue, according to state statistics.

Statewide, one of every 68 students with disabilities between ages 6
and 21 was educated in a segregated setting in the 2005-'06 school
year. Even in the Elmbrook School District, which supports a separate
high school for students with significant disabilities, one of every
60 students is taught in a separate facility.

In contrast, about 1 of every 10 students with disabilities in
Walworth County attends Lakeland.

But Disability Rights Wisconsin also has a problem with its lawsuit:
It was unable to find a single parent with a child in the school to
sign on as a plaintiff.

Earlier this year, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying the
group had not shown it or any of its members had been injured by the
decision to build a new school building for Lakeland. An appeal of
that dismissal is pending, with oral arguments scheduled for next
month.

Meanwhile, Lakeland parents filed a complaint with the U.S. Department
of Education's Office for Civil Rights contending that
Spitzer-Resnick's organization, which last month won a
special-education lawsuit against Milwaukee Public Schools, was not
representing the students for which it receives funding.

Like other parents with children at Lakeland, Barb McComb says
enrollment in the school is a choice, one of many allowed for students
with disabilities under the law. Other counties might not have as many
students educated outside integrated settings because the option has
become less available in the move to fully include all students in the
regular education classrooms, she said.

Choice is a key word that many of those connected to Lakeland use in
talking about the school.

Andrew Schindler, a 17-year-old sophomore who attended Burlington and
Elkhorn high schools, said he was allowed to pick what school to
attend when his family moved back to the area, and he chose Lakeland.

"I just missed coming here because I like all the teachers," said
Schindler, who attended Lakeland from kindergarten through middle
school. "The kids at the high school, they're not as decent as the
kids here. They're mean and pushy, and I don't want to be around
them."

If Disability Rights Wisconsin's lawsuit is successful, students'
options in Walworth County will be just as limited as they are for
students in other counties, McComb said. That would be a loss for
Walworth County, she said.

"I think we're doing incredible things," said McComb, who also works
as an aide in the school, which her son Tom has attended since he was
18 months old. "My son is learning to read at 20. . . . They never
quit. He's 20 years old and they're still working on those basics. I
would have given up."

But Delavan parent Cassie Hartogh said she felt like she was given
little choice other than Lakeland when school officials first
recommended it for her son Benjamin, who was born with cerebral palsy.
She said she had to fight to keep Benjamin out of Lakeland.

"I don't regret it for one moment because my son has done so well in a
regular environment, you know, a typical school," Hartogh said of her
decision to enroll him at Darien Elementary School. "Not only does my
son benefit, but the other children benefit as well because they learn
compassion of children who are different."