State Officials Mull Difficulties In Educating Disabled Students

The threat of lawsuits has led to almost unlimited expansion of federally required public school programs for disabled students, and there seems to be little the state can do about it.

Kirby Nelson, deputy attorney general for the state Board of Education, told an interim legislative committee considering the issue Tuesday that rather than face costly legal battles, school districts usually agree to provide whatever educational services parents of disabled students demand.

The six-member legislative panel has conducted sessions throughout Idaho, gathering information from teachers, school administrators, legal experts and parents about how best to implement the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It requires that students with physical and mental disabilities receive a “free appropriate public education” in the “least restrictive environment” appropriate.

Nelson said that concept of “inclusion” has been expanding steadily since the program began.

In the 1970s, the idea essentially was to provide mainstream educational opportunities for mentally retarded, deaf and blind students.

“Now, there’s no limit,” he told legislators. “I hate to sound so hopeless, but I’m not sure you can put a corral around it.”

State Rep. Ron Black, R-Twin Falls, the committee’s co-chairman, said he is concerned about the potential liability faced by teachers unable or unwilling to perform such services as catheterizing or giving injections to disabled students with special medical needs.

Without training or assistance, many teachers find themselves in situations they never anticipated, Black said. And too often, classroom teachers are not adequately included in development of so-called “individual education plans” required by law for each disabled student.

State Sen. Tim Tucker, D-Porthill, said the answer may be improving procedures for the development of individual education plans, which essentially are contracts between parents and the local school district, to require more participation by the classroom teachers who have to implement the plans.

Taking steps to protect teachers from liability and to ensure that they have the help they need to perform required tasks also is a possibility.

Nelson said that while it is possible - though difficult - to avoid having some disabled students in regular classrooms, public schools still are required to provide some kind of educational opportunity for them.

“There’s very little you as legislators can do about these rules because they’re federal. Not only is there little you can do about them, but it also is hard to understand them,” he said.