Changes In Education Laws Could Hurt Disabled Kids Parents Fear Programs Will Be Diluted
Cerebral palsy has not kept 15-year-old Jody Matz of Sandpoint from working her way to the eighth grade, often in the same classrooms as kids without disabilities.
The result - according to Matz’s mother, Doris - is a better education than she would have gotten in a classroom full of disabled students.
Matz and other parents with disabled children now worry that changes in a federal and state law will dilute programs designed to help the disabled. They’re fighting to preserve a federal program - the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act - and state compliance with that program.
“If we lose these programs, what will guarantee our kids’ rights to go to school?” said Cheryl Hamilton of Sandpoint, whose eighth-grade boy suffers from an attention deficit disorder.
The federal program may be hurt by a proposed law that would ban unfunded federal mandates to the states. Parents like Michelle Arnold of Coeur d’Alene also worry that political changes at the state Department of Education do not bode well for disabled kids.
New state schools superintendent Anne Fox recently fired special education supervisor Fred Balcom, whose work was applauded by parents with disabled children. Fox also has said that assigning disabled children to regular classrooms should not be required.
The Education Department plans a public hearing Monday in Moscow, Idaho. Department officials are reviewing the state’s plan for complying with the federal disabilities education act.
That hearing is expected to draw parents with disabled children, but also those who disagree with including those children in mainstream classrooms.
Jody Matz has benefited from the federal education act, primarily because it required her school to team up with her parents in tailoring a detailed education plan for her.
The Idaho parents’ lobbying efforts are supported by the Learning Disabilities Association of America.
“The threat is that if the law is dramatically changed, students with learning disabilities will fall through the cracks,” said Jean Petersen, the association’s executive director. “It could mean that special education is put back 20 years, when these kids were just pushed into the closet.”
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