The wheels on the bus are late

January 6, 2015 – Philadelphia Daily News – by Ronnie Polaneczky

IN PHILLY, if your child is late to school often enough, you may be hauled into Truancy Court to explain why your kid isn’t in class when he should be.

If only the absences were taken as seriously when the lateness is caused by the Philadelphia School District.

Since September, Monica Klimas’ son Danny Gallagher has been late to Gen. Philip Kearny School countless times. That’s because the bus that picks him up at home in Bridesburg can’t reliably get him to Kearny, in Northern Liberties, in time for the morning bell.

“Look at this,” Klimas says, opening the log she has kept of Danny’s tardy pickups. Except for October, when the bus miraculously arrived within minutes of its scheduled time, Danny’s transportation has been as unreliable as a Comcast service call.

On two back-to-back days in December, the bus never came at all.

Some days, sixth-grader Danny, 11, has been as late getting home. One time, he didn’t walk through the door until 5:30 p.m. He was famished and rattled from the two-hour bus ride.

“His day was longer than mine,” says Klimas, an optician who works in East Falls. She doesn’t drive, so if the bus is running really late, it costs her $30 in cab fare to get Danny to school.

She has endlessly e-mailed the district and left unanswered voice mails. She’s also routinely hung up in frustration when the voice-mail box was full.

Klimas worries that Danny, who has Down syndrome and is enrolled with six other intellectually disabled kids in Kearny’s terrific new life-skills program, has missed out on critical class time.

Despite continual reporting of her transit problems to the district, including calls and emails on her behalf made by Kearny principal Daniel Kurtz and his staff, the unpredictability has persisted, Klimas says.

As I listen to this very good mom’s tale of torment, I think, “Man, someone really needs to talk to the Pennsylvania Department of Education about this kind of stupidity.”

Except someone already did.

Last year, the local Coalition of Special Education Advocates filed a formal complaint with the department on behalf of special-ed students whose education plans call for district transportation to and from school.

For years, parents had complained that buses were frequently late. Routes were changed with little warning. Drivers and bus aides were poorly trained to deal with special-needs kids. And parents couldn’t get through to the district for help.

So the state investigated, sending surveys to 254 schools to inquire about transportation services to special-ed students in the 2014-15 school year.

Among the 93 schools that responded, 26 had no issues. The remaining 67 reported that buses had failed 10 times to pick up a student and had been late to school 392 times.

Yep, those are real numbers.

The state has since expanded its survey to monitor transportation services to any school that provides instruction to any district special-ed student.

Meanwhile, the state has concluded that special-ed students who miss instruction or therapies because of transportation problems are entitled to “compensatory education services” to make up for the times they were denied a “free and appropriate public education” as required by law.

Last month, a letter was to have been sent to parents of all special-ed students to tell them that.

District spokesman Fernando Gallard was not aware of the state’s action, but conceded that the district’s goal is always to get kids to school on schedule.

“We’re definitely not meeting that [obligation] all the time,” he says. “The expectation is on us to get it right.”

Still, he says, “we’re dealing with a very large urban transportation system, almost like SEPTA, with 1,600 routes. There are going to be problems with traffic and bus breakdowns that cause late arrivals for students.”

Of the district’s 280 buses, 160 have GPS systems that track in real time a vehicle’s whereabouts, he says; buses provided by private transportation companies to the district are already equipped with the devices.

They don’t appear to have helped special-ed student Terrell Ward, an eighth-grader at Morris E. Leeds Middle School in Mount Airy. His bus service was so erratic that his mom, Tamika Ward-Andrew, was summoned to Truancy Court last fall for his alleged massive absences.

In truth, she says, he was routinely dropped off at school after roll was taken.

“One time,” says Ward-Andrew, “the bus didn’t show up for two weeks in a row; the third week, it was late every day.”

She contacted the Education Law Center for help, and senior staff attorney Maura McInerney was able to get the truancy case dismissed. But Terrell’s record still shows 88 late days and 25 absences – most of them filed in error.

“Our next step is to get the record corrected,” says McInerney.

Hearing these tales, I am floored.

Children thrive on routine and structure. And parents – especially those working outside the home – need a degree of reliability to keep family life from flying off the rails.

And for special-needs kids, says McInerney, the need for predictability is even greater.

“When a child’s class day is disrupted, they can miss more than instruction,” says McInerney. “For children with emotional-support needs, predictability is a critical issue.”

Lateness throws them a curve ball they can’t handle.

Monica Klimas and Tamika Ward-Andrew say their sons love school. And both moms are impressed by the quality and commitment of the special-ed teachers at their kids’ schools.

If only they could say the same about the bus service they rely upon to get them there.

Parents having problems with district-provided transportation can call 215-400-4350, a hotline established as a result of the state investigation. For help securing compensatory services for a child’s missed instruction, contact the Education Law Center at 215-238-6970 or go to https://elc-pa.org.

http://mobile.philly.com/beta?wss=/philly/news&id=364329951

Civil and Disability Rights Activists Watch Philadelphia Class Action Suit Closely

September 1, 2015 – Nonprofit Quarterly (blog) – by Patricia Schaefer

Barbara Galarza, a mother with a daughter in the School District of Philadelphia, knew her daughter had learning issues. In 2013, the charter school she had attended since 2010 evaluated her, giving her a classification of ADHD and an individualized education plan (IEP) that would serve as a roadmap for her educational goals through the coming year.

Before she began receiving services, however, she had to transfer back into a public school in the district, which decided to conduct its own evaluation. Ms. Galarza, who has limited English skills, signed a bilingual consent form. What she did not realize at the time was that unlike the previous evaluation, which had been conducted in her daughter’s first language, Spanish, the district’s evaluation was conducted with a non-bilingual psychologist.

When the re-evaluation report was sent to Ms. Galarza, it was entirely in English. Thinking that it was the same diagnosis and recommendation as the previous evaluation, which she had read and understood thoroughly, she went in to a meeting with her daughter’s high school psychologist, a meeting that took place entirely in English. Expecting to talk about her daughter’s ADHD, what she found out instead was that the re-evaluation classified her daughter with an intellectual disability, a significantly more involved diagnosis requiring an entirely different set of services. Moreover, according to what she told writer Regina Medina of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the psychologist went on to reassure Ms. Galarza that “it’s better this way,” because her daughter would “get a lot more benefits.”

Ms. Galarza is now one of the lead plaintiffs in a federal class action lawsuit alleging that thousands of similarly situated families were denied the opportunity to fully participate in the special education process on behalf of their children because of limited English language skills. As one of the plaintiffs’ representatives, attorney Michael Churchill with the Public Interest Law Center described Ms. Galarza’s experience: “She has never seen the document, has no way of comprehending what the full scope of the meeting is. And she breaks out in tears at this information that is being given to her for the very first time.”

The issue is not an isolated or new one. According to the complaint, the School District of Philadelphia routinely refuses to provide parents with translated documents in a timely manner or provide sufficient translation, effectively preventing them from making informed decisions about their children’s education. Another of the plaintiffs’ representatives, Maura McInerney of the Education Law Center, claims the problem has persisted for many years. “After years of trying to address this issue with the District, we felt that the matter needed to be addressed by the courts.”

More than 70 percent of the nearly 26,000 families in the school district who do not speak English as a first language have requested documents in their native language. According to the complaint, in the 2013-14 school year, there were close to 2,000 students with IEPs whose home language was not English.

In 1975, Congress passed federal legislation that came to be known as the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). The law, which has been revised many times over the years, guarantees a free and appropriate education to all students with disabilities, ages 3–21. It specifically delineates the rights of children with disabilities—and their parents—in the special education IEP process, requiring that all decisions relative to a child’s evaluation, education plan and placement be made with the parents’ meaningful involvement. The law lays out procedural safeguards to ensure parent involvement, which include explicit requirements that all relevant information be presented to parents in their native language.

What this means in Ms. Galarza’s case is that, by law, she had the right to receive her daughter’s re-evaluation in Spanish in a sufficient amount of time (at least ten days) prior to an in-person meeting to discuss it. In her meeting with the school psychologist, she had a right to an interpreter so that she could have a meaningful and productive conversation about her daughter’s new diagnosis and IEP.

Another of the lead plaintiffs, “A.G.,” was born in the Dominican Republic and was enrolled in the ninth grade there when his mother passed away suddenly. After moving to Philadelphia to live with his extended family, he was placed in ninth grade for two more years until his aunt requested that he be evaluated for special education services. Despite requesting language assistance (and despite A.G.’s enrollment in ESL classes), the District failed to provide the appropriate documents in Spanish. Even after his aunt filed a due process complaint, all subsequent documents were barely translated and after receiving an IEP with only the section headings written in Spanish, she had nothing to read at the meeting or take home to review.

The special education process can be an arduous journey for families in the best of circumstances. It is a complex, multi-tiered process, requiring numerous IEP, placement and follow-up meetings with school staff, psychologists, therapists, and teachers. While Ms. Galarza and A.G.’s aunt, Margarita Peralta, had the knowledge and self-assurance to advocate for their children, despite the language barrier, many others in their situations are unaware of the laws protecting them or are too fearful to ask for what they need.

“Federal disability and civil rights laws mandate meaningful participation by parents in the special education process,” says Attorney McInerny. “When parents are shut out, students suffer and are denied access to critical services they need to make progress. This is why our disability laws are so clear on the obligations of schools to provide language assistance.”

Ms. Galarza is more adamant. Reflecting back on the school psychologist’s insistence that her daughter’s new diagnosis was “better,” she said, “Nobody would want news like that, it’s not logical. For me that’s not normal, to be happy to get more benefits.”

http://nonprofitquarterly.org/2015/09/01/civil-and-disability-rights-activists-watch-philadelphia-class-action-suit-closely/