Don’t shortchange special-needs kids

It was a group of special-needs public school students who were deprived of the educational services due them, according to federal court rulings and the ultimate settlement.

But there’s a lesson here for state leaders, too, and for elected lawmakers in particular: Don’t discriminate against disabled students. The distressing part of all this is policymakers should have learned that lesson by now, given Hawaii’s checkered history with serving special-education kids adequately in public schools.

The recent agreement in question was the result of a legal challenge filed by the Hawaii Disability Rights Center and parents and legal guardians of 495 students. The issue was a 2010 state law that barred the enrollment of any student in a public school after age 20.

That law, Act 163, created a condition of unequal treatment for special needs students, said Meredith Miller, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the settlement negotiations, an agreement announced last week.

The state will pay $10.25 million; after court costs and fees for administrative support for the education fund, that leaves $8.2 million for the beneficiaries to receive services that they missed.

The 2010 legislation bars public-school enrollment to any student over 20 on the first day of the school year. Miller acknowledged that federal law did allow a state to restrict enrollment below the federal limit of 22 if it was set out in statute.

However, non-disabled students who age out have another option: They can attend one of the state’s Community Schools for Adults. Special-needs students had no equivalent course, Miller said.

“The bottom line is that if the state offers educational services, they cannot discriminate by giving non-disabled students something not available to those with special needs,” she said.

This rather obvious principle should have been clear to Hawaii’s elected and education officials, with the help of legal advisers, assuming all of them were familiar with the Felix Consent Decree.

That 1994 decree was the agreement that changed special-needs services by the state Department of Education; it, too, resulted from a a federal case. The legal fight originated as a complaint seeking educational parity for a school child, Jennifer Felix. That culminated in a class-action suit sparking special-education reforms and costing the state $1 billion.

A 2013 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals established that Act 163 violated the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The settlement stemmed from a subsequent U.S. District Court ruling in 2014, in which Judge Susan Oki Mollway found the students entitled to free services as compensation for what they had been denied.

The plaintiffs have until December 2020 to spend the funds. The negotiators determined that services for plaintiffs with the most intensive needs would cost about $20,000, so that has been set as a maximum benefit per beneficiary.

The negotiators wisely directed that the fund administrator be the one to direct payment to service providers rather than issue the money directly to the adult students and their families.

The Hawaii Disability Rights Center will assist in identifying qualified providers of eligible uses for the money, such as occupational services and therapy, adaptive equipment, support in earning a diploma, community college classes and job and independent life skills training and education.

Hawaii has an admittedly heavy burden delivering education statewide to all its public school population, one that treats special-needs students fairly.

But what’s illustrated once again in this case is that trying to get around that fundamental requirement is a penny-wise, pound-foolish strategy that’s bound to fail. Further legislative maneuvers of this kind must end now.