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CPS students denied special education services amid 'cycle of chaos,' parents say

Chicago Tribune - 6/19/2018

June 19--Students with special needs in Chicago scored a major victory last month when the state Board of Education ordered dramatic changes in the way Chicago Public Schools offers special-education services to students.

After emotional testimony from parents, teachers and advocates across Chicago during the Illinois State Board of Education's first-ever public inquiry, the state found CPS to be in violation of multiple state and federal special-education laws -- from requiring overly complicated forms that shut out many qualifying students simply because of paperwork problems, to denying transportation citing arbitrary reasons, to failing to get struggling or students with mental illness into therapeutic schools during crises.

In announcing the corrective recommendations May 16, the state board promised to appoint -- and pay for -- a special monitor to work with CPS over the next three years. State school officials have also recommended that CPS work with them to identify students whose services were delayed or denied in recent years, so their parents or guardians may pursue corrective action.

As the school year draws to a close, state officials are still in the process of hiring the monitor and hope to have one in place by August, said ISBE spokeswoman Jackie Matthews. In the meantime, advocates say that most of the same problems that led to the inquiry still exist and worry that a single monitor -- overseeing 50,000 CPS students with IEPs -- won't be enough to fix them. They also point out that corrective action will do little to undo the harm to students who were turned away without services for years.

"We remain concerned that things aren't being done fast enough and CPS is still continuing to have these things happening," said Margie Wakelin, a supervising attorney for the special education clinic at Equip for Equality, a nonprofit organization that is working with more than 500 Chicago families who have been denied CPS special needs services since 2016.

"It's just a difficult situation, and there's a lot of work to be done," Wakelin said.

In a statement provided to the Tribune, CPS press secretary Emily Bolton said the school district has implemented several changes in recent months to improve special education services. The changes, which include budget and staffing improvements, efforts to enhance community and parent engagement, and streamlining data requirements, are expected to continue in the coming months, Bolton said.

"CPS is committed to improving the district's special education programs, and we are dedicated to working in conjunction with ISBE and the special monitor to ensure Chicago students have access to the high quality special education programming they deserve," Bolton said.

Beyond the policy discussions are real children who have been denied services, missed opportunities and fallen behind while parents and advocates have tried to navigate what they call a confusing and chaotic system. Here are three of their stories.

'Cycle of chaos': Jordin Parker Wilson, 6

At 4 years old, Jordin Parker Wilson seemed to be falling behind her peers developmentally. She struggled to recognize numbers and to count to 20. She had a hard time staying attentive and retaining information, recalled her mother, Nakia Young.

Worried but determined to be proactive, Young approached leaders at her daughter's school, the Barbara Vick Early Childhood and Family Center on the city's Southwest Side about having Jordin evaluated for an individualized educational program at the start of the 2016-2017 school year. School officials told the mother that Jordin first had to be observed for 10 weeks by school officials who would complete documentation.

The single mother, who works full time as a safety auditor for a utility company, trusted that CPS would help her daughter. She also hired outside occupational and speech therapists to work with Jordin, Young said.

"You do what you're supposed to do; you follow the recipe, and the cake will come out as it's supposed to," Young recalled thinking.

But even after the observation period, as Jordin continued to struggle to grasp basic lessons -- and the private service providers recommended special education services at CPS -- Jordin was denied a full evaluation for the IEP, Young said.

Her daughter remained enrolled in mainstream classes, where she repeatedly came home crying because classmates called her "stupid" and "dumb" for not recognizing her numbers, Young said.

The following school year, Young insisted that her daughter be evaluated again for an IEP, this time at Suder Montessouri Magnet School. Again, school officials said Jordin first had to be observed, this time for six weeks. Unwilling to wait that long, Young began an email campaign to the school's principal, teachers and school counselor, attaching findings from outside occupational and speech therapists to prove her daughter's need, she said.

CPS declined to comment on specific students' cases, citing privacy laws, but noted that school officials are prepared to work with families who believe they were denied services.

"As part of this process, ISBE will establish a protocol for families to submit specific cases for review to determine if additional steps need to be taken in order to support students," Bolton said.

Eventually, CPS officials agreed to offer Jordin an evaluation in a meeting with a social worker, psychologist, occupational therapist, school nurse and teacher, Young said. But during that meeting, CPS staff told Young she had not prepared the right documentation for her daughter to be considered.

"I believe that's their goal: to confuse you. And after you get through one round of confusion and disappointment and almost questioning yourself as a parent, you're bouncing from place to place," said Young. "They keep putting you in the cycle of chaos."

Young said she spent the next several weeks sending in all the documentation needed -- and more.

In a February 2018 meeting in which CPS staff cycled in and out of the room, Jordin was given an IEP a year and a half after Young had first asked for it. By then, her daughter had lost many of the skills she'd had just a year earlier and hated school, her mother said.

The recommendations made in the state board's corrective actions last month address several of the difficulties Jordin and Young encountered in the process. The state board has ordered CPS to: simplify data forms, work with the board to develop a data-driven approach to decision-making that will allow students to receive services quickly, and ensure that members of a student's IEP team are present at every meeting.

In recent months, CPS has hired parent involvement specialists to help families navigate the IEP process at their schools. It has established a Parent Advisory Council to advise the district on policies, systems and communication. And this school year, CPS held 24 trainings for families of students with disabilities, Bolton said.

In response to feedback from educators and parents, CPS has streamlined data collection requirements to give IEP teams more flexibility to make decisions and allow services to be authorized more quickly, Bolton said.

But Young said she is still battling CPS officials about getting transportation for her daughter to school each day. Working with Equip for Equality, Young said she knows that her daughter qualifies for transportation to school because of a physical disability in which one leg is longer than the other, and the child walks using orthotics. Jordin has repeatedly been denied transportation -- because of lack of documentation -- in several meetings on the issue, said Jackie Ross, an attorney for Equip for Equality.

Another corrective action recommended by the state board suggests that CPS teams determine paraprofessional support, summer class eligibility and transportation at IEP meetings.

Ross estimates that hundreds of students with special needs and their parents have had similar frustrations, without the ability to fight back.

"Fortunately, Ms. Young could advocate," Ross said. "There are so many parents out there who don't have the ability to advocate for themselves," Ross said.

'The system has failed us': Tikeo Rich, 12

The calls from Tikeo Rich's teachers started when he was in kindergarten.

They told his mother, Tequila Williams, that the boy was not staying focused. He couldn't sit still. He was getting into fights with other students, Williams said.

CPS staff worked with the family to develop an IEP for Tikeo, and through the years, psychologists diagnosed him with a list of problems, including oppositional defiant disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to psychological evaluation documents provided by his attorney, Margie Wakelin.

As the fights and suspensions from school persisted, Rich bounced from one CPS school to another, often causing Williams to lose jobs as she left work unexpectedly and repeatedly to help her son. Tikeo was admitted several times into psychiatric hospitals, including Chicago Lakeshore Hospital in October 2015, Garfield Park Hospital in January 2016 and Garfield Park Hospital again in February 2018. Doctors diagnosed him with generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, according to the documents.

When Tikeo was released from the psychiatric hospitals in both 2016 and 2017, doctors recommended the teen be placed in a therapeutic school designed for students with emotional, behavioral or psychological challenges. But each time Williams met with CPS officials to request such a placement for Tikeo, they told her they didn't have enough data to make the recommendation, she said.

"I think the system has failed us as a whole because I just felt like I was getting the runaround," Williams said. "They've got more than enough data -- we've been going through this for years."

In its inquiry, ISBE concluded the district's electronic system that manages legally required student special education plans keeps educators from properly documenting decisions, while limiting staffers' ability to place students in therapeutic schools or summer programs.

To address complaints, CPS in recent months has added 65 new positions to support special education students. CPS budgets for the upcoming school year include $29 million more in special education funding than the schools received in fall 2017.

Wakelin, of Equip for Equality, said that while the city and state may have been -- and continue to be -- in a budget crisis, getting students with severe behavioral problems the special education services they need must remain a priority at a time when young people are in crises too.

"Students with disabilities, they are entitled to these services, but also, as a community, as a state, we should be providing them with an appropriate education because it's not like when they leave school they are no longer our problem," she said. "We should be able to get them help. This is the time that really will make or break that."

'Children need our support': Julia Bulski, 12

Because public schools receive state and federal funding, they are legally required to evaluate and identify students with disabilities -- even if those students attend private schools. Once a student has an IEP in place, CPS is required to re-evaluate every three years.

Julia Bulski, 12, who attends St. Ferdinand School in Chicago'sBelmont Cragin neighborhood and had an IEP in place, was due to be re-evaluated May 9. On that morning, her mother, Margarita Cruz, dressed the girl comfortably for a day full of tests. Pushing Julia's baby sister in a stroller and carrying a blue folder filled with hundreds of papers showcasing her work over the last three years, the mother recalled bringing the girl to her appointment, knowing how important the CPS team's evaluation was for her daughter's success.

But when they arrived in the evaluation room, CPS officials told the mother that Julia could not be evaluated because her teachers had failed to provide 10 weeks of collected data required for the meeting, said Jackie Ross, an attorney for Equip for Equality who has provided legal advice to Julia's family.

"I started tearing up," Cruz said. "I said, 'Wait, what paperwork? I can call the teachers from the school; I can get what you need. Can you write exactly what they need? I will get it.' I was trying my best to fix it -- whatever they needed in that moment."

Cruz later learned from Julia's teachers that CPS' request for 10 weeks of paperwork came just two days before Julia's scheduled appointment.

A similar complaint was repeated dozens of times during the state board inquiry and resulted in the corrective action that orders CPS to simplify data collection forms.

In recent months, CPS has removed the need for principal observations and cut the time period for data collection in half, Bolton said.

Although CPS officials agreed to conduct a partial evaluation for Julia on May 9 without all the data, they ultimately said the girl would not qualify for an IEP without further documentation, according to her mother and her attorney.

With the help of Equip for Equality, Cruz requested mediation to ensure that Julia did not lose her current IEP as they worked through the documentation problems. After Ross accompanied Cruz to a meeting with CPS staff, Julia was granted an IEP last week.

Cruz said her daughter struggled to maintain a third-grade reading level in sixth grade -- even with special needs services.

"Children need our support -- and they don't always have a voice of their own -- so they don't get left behind," she said. "Now, I know, with my experiences how important it is to be that voice for that child because no one else is."

vortiz@chicagotribune.com

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