Oakland Schools Helps Girl, but Disability Policy Not Clear

The Oakland Press

By Jerry Wolffe
Monday, February 7, 2011

A physician who feared his disabled 6-year-old daughter was not going to receive the accommodations she needs from Oakland Schools is at ease after meeting with officials.

“I went in there prepared to do whatever I had to do for my daughter’s rights,” said Dr. Ralph Scolari of Lake Orion of a meeting to determine his daughter’s individual goals and accommodations for the 2011-2012 school year.

After being assured recently that his kindergartner was going to receive the accommodations she needs to compensate for her low vision, Scolari said he “walked out of the meeting with a good feeling.”

Scolari said he was ready to fight Oakland Schools if the intermediate school district tried to deny Alana the assistive technology she is entitled to under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Rehabilitation Act.

Alana, who attends St. Joseph Catholic School in Lake Orion, uses a monocular telescope, magnifier and a video camera so she can see all over her classroom, he said.

Scolari, 42, said school officials told him “she was going to get what she needed next year.”

However, several parents of children with disabilities who attend parochial or private schools are fearful that Oakland Schools planned to eliminate assistive technology next year because of a sharp drop in property tax revenue.

School officials have not specified the assistive technology devices disabled students will need in Individualized Education Plans, they say. Such technology must be detailed in an IEP for a student to receive it in the classroom.

Kathy Barker, the director of Special Education for Oakland Schools, was to meet with a reporter from Oakland Press to confirm the district will continue to provide accommodations but canceled due to illness.

The issue of the district providing assistive technology began in December when the mother of Sean Valliencourt, who is legally blind, notified a reporter her son was not receiving large-print books for his classes at Guardian Angel Catholic School in Clawson.

Sean’s mother, Dina, was concerned her eighth-grader would not be able to keep up with other students because they were spending up to five hours a night doing homework using normal print books.

Within days of Sean’s story being published in The Oakland Press, Oakland Schools Superintendent Vickie L. Markavitch sent the newspaper an e-mail saying it would “conduct a further review” of whether it had to provide accommodations under federal laws to non-public disabled students in the district.

There are 22,000 disabled students in Oakland County.

At first, Oakland Schools said a lawyer told the district it was not required to provide large-print textbooks for Sean.

However, a second opinion by Birmingham attorney Clark Hill said that Oakland Schools was required to provide the large-print textbooks under the IDEA and the Rehabilitation Act.

Oakland School officials have indicated they intend to fulfill the federal civil rights laws for disabled children but are under a financial crunch and are trying to make sure they follow the letter of the law, a district spokeswoman said.

If accommodations are denied disabled students in parochial or private schools, the district will be sued in U.S. District Court, attorney Richard Bernstein has vowed.

“All we are asking for to avoid federal litigation is that Oakland Schools reassure families with special needs children who have come to rely on assistive technology that it will not be removed at the end of the current school year,” said Bernstein of Farmington Hills.

“Should Oakland Schools follow through on its apparent plan to violate long-standing law, we will ask a federal judge to uphold the rights for accommodation for these disabled students,” he added.

Bernstein said taking necessary adaptive technology out of the hands of disabled students who have used and relied upon it since they started school is “not only illegal but it is cruel.”

Contact Jerry Wolffe at 248-745-4612 or jerry.wolffe@ oakpress.com follow him on Twitter @JerryWolffe1 or on Facebook.