What started as one parent’s complaint in 2009 about the treatment of their special needs child by staff in the Morgan Hill Unified School District has spurred a statewide battle against the California Department of Education and its enforcement of special education laws.
Morgan Hill parents initially complained to the CDE in 2010, alleging a 6-year-old autistic girl “was strapped to a chair because she was restless.”
The CDE ruled that MHUSD was in compliance with state laws, prompting the group of parents to file a suit against the CDE. The suit caught the attention of other parents throughout the state and prompted them to join forces against what they view as “statewide systemic violations of special education law.”
A federal district judge wants to hear more, as he ruled March 30 against the CDE’s motion to throw out the suit, which Superintendent Wes Smith said is between the parents and the CDE – not MHUSD directly. The next court date is May 17 in Sacramento.
“The suit is with the CDE, not with the district,” said Smith of the Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association v. California Department of Education case. “CDE did their due diligence and they found that we were compliant.”
Regardless, the Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association, along with a larger, statewide Concerned Parents Association, have charged the CDE with “systematically failing to assure that their children receive free appropriate public education as required by federal and state law.”
Lead counsel Rony Sagy, of San Francisco’s Sagy Law Associates, called the ruling “an important breakthrough for California children with special needs.”
“It’s the case in Morgan Hill that actually opened the door,” Sagy said.
The complaint details the experiences of numerous children who have suffered “as a result of CDE’s systematic failure to adequately monitor, investigate and enforce laws at the school district level,” according to the release.
“The stakes for these young people and their parents could not be higher,” Sagy said. “Taxpayers’ money is increasingly spent on legal fees to fight parents, rather than to provide their children with the necessary educational services.”
Smith said that MHUSD has spent no money on the litigation.
