EBD Blog

According to a story in the Richmond (VA, US) Times-Dispatch, the Richmond Public Schools have collaborated with a statewide legal-aid group called JustChildren to address problems arising when discipline rules conflict with the right to an education under US and VA laws that is due to students with disabilities. In the article, Olympia Meola describes efforts to ensure that children with disabilities who are subject to disciplinary rules because of misconduct are not suspended or expelled inappropriately.

This week, JustChildren and Richmond schools entered a broad agreement aimed at improving services for all special-education students who are disciplined for violating the student code of conduct in school.

“There was good will, there were good people, and the teachers would rally around that individual child, but we were fishing kids out of the stream one at a time,” she said. “We needed to step back and make the system as a whole better.”

The agreement with Richmond schools is a first for JustChildren, and it’s intended to help the schools boost services for students who are facing a disciplinary hearing or have been suspended or expelled. During the 2006-07 school year, 166 exceptional-education students in Richmond schools had a disciplinary hearing.

JustChildren approached the Richmond school system with the partnership idea about nine months ago. The move was spurred not by one particularly egregious case, but rather by the cumulative effect of many cases, and the fact that JustChildren’s growth has allowed the organization to do more expansive work, said Andrew Block, the program’s legal director.

The intersection of disciplinary rules and disabilities has been a lightening rod in special educational policy. Why, some people wonder, aren’t rules applied equitably regardless of whether students have disabilities? Why, some other people wonder, should a problem that is manifestation of a student’s disability cause her or him to lose access to educational services? I’m very glad to see advocates and a local education agency addressing this issue in a positive and reasoned manner.

Link to Ms. Meola’s story. Learn more about JustChildren, which is one of several programs of the Legal Aid Justice Center.