Thompson school district officials plan to fight a state order to reimburse a Berthoud family more than $200,000 to enroll their child in a private Massachusetts school for autistic children, the board president said Wednesday.
“We think the law was misapplied,” said Becky Jay. In a meeting Tuesday, five of the district’s seven board members agreed to challenge the state hearing officer’s July 8 ruling in favor of 10-year-old Luke Perkins, she said.
“It’s pretty much precedent-setting for the whole nation,” Jay said. “If you give one child $200,000 a year and others are getting $5,800 – that’s four teachers we could have hired.”
The federal government has never lived up to its goal of reimbursing school districts for 40 percent of the money spent on special-education students under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Jay said. Thompson serves 14,000 students with an annual budget of $100 million.
But Jeff Perkins, who enrolled his son in the Boston Higashi School in 2004 after the district’s plan for educating Luke excluded a residential placement, said it was “absurd” to call the ruling precedent-setting.
At Boston Higashi, Luke was the only student not funded by his local district, he said.
IDEA requires school districts to provide a “free appropriate public education” for disabled students.
“This is the only option we are given legally,” Perkins said.
In Colorado, which provided special-education services to roughly 83,400 students last year, districts pick up about 70 percent of the cost of educating a disabled child, a cost that districts have long complained takes funding from other programs.
Perkins, who has three other children without disabilities, said traditional students will be less profoundly affected by cuts in their services than Luke would be.
“Luke’s situation is one that if he doesn’t get this education intervention, it’s going to have a dramatic, drastic and permanent effect on his life,” he said.
At age 9, Luke was unable to eat properly, sleep in a bed, dress himself or use the toilet. School officials said he was able to master daily living skills at school, but they weren’t reinforced at home.
The family argued – and the state’s hearing officer agreed – that Luke was unable to carry over skills he learned in school to other environments, and that he needed 24-hour guidance.
Jay questioned whether public schools should be “responsible for what happens after a kid goes home.”
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
