It may be a while before thousands of Milwaukee Public School students denied special education services will be compensated. That’s because MPS plans to appeal a recent ruling in the case. WUWM’s Marti Mikkelson has more.
In 2007, a federal magistrate ruled that MPS and the State Department of Public Instruction failed to accommodate some students who needed special education services. Last month, the judge ordered the district to come up with a plan for compensating the students who attended MPS between 2000 and 2005. The proposal is due July 24.
School Board President Michael Bonds says the judge ordered an extremely broad pool of potential students to be compensated. He says the district would have to do an extensive amount of research identifying and locating all the students.
“The scope of the remedy is beyond the finding and it’s so broad that literally it will cost MPS millions of dollars. The finding was special ed students from 2000 to 2005 but the remedy includes regular students too,” Bonds says.
According to Bonds, the district is doing the right thing for taxpayers by appealing the ruling. He says some students may have already graduated, and the district would have to spend countless hours tracking them down. In addition, Bonds says he doesn’t know why the judge’s ruling includes regular education students, and that is the primary grounds for the appeal.
Atty. Jeffrey Spitzer-Resnick, of the group Disability Rights Wisconsin, filed the class action lawsuit in 2001. He says MPS has known all along it would have to compensate some students who should have been in special education classes, but weren’t.
“It has always included regular education children who may be eligible for special education, should have been evaluated and were not. Regular education children who have no disability, they won’t get anything,” Spitzer-Resnick says.
Spitzer-Resnick says there’s no excuse for violating the civil rights of students, and MPS should follow the judge’s order. He adds that in most class action suits, not every victim actually files for compensation. Spitzer-Resnick says the district’s appeal will only result in the case dragging on longer, costing taxpayers more money.
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