Lawsuit seeks public school classroom for disabled

BREMERTON – A plan to educate a handful of developmentally disabled students at the state-run center where they live, rather than in public school classrooms, has drawn a lawsuit from an advocacy group.

Disability Rights Washington contends the planned change, due to take effect at the end of this month, violates state and federal laws against discrimination.

This year the Bremerton School District apparently decided it no longer had the classroom space to accommodate the students, who range in age from 13 to 20.

The district reached agreement with the state Department of Social and Health Services, which runs the Frances Haddon Morgan Center here, to open a classroom on the center’s grounds.

The junior high building the students have been using sits next to Mountain View Middle School.

“These children are being denied access to school, purely because they have disabilities and live at an institution,” said David Carlson, a lawyer for the advocacy group.

He said the decision, if allowed to stand, would erase “decades’ worth of work to get children with disabilities the education services they need to develop and flourish just like any other students in the public school system.”

Carlson said the goal of the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Thurston County Superior Court, is to maintain the current situation.

The suit names the Bremerton School District, the state public schools agency and DSHS as defendants, saying each played a role in the decision.

In a brief statement, the school district said DSHS is responsible for the decision. The statement also said the district is closing the junior high building that the disabled students now use. Sixth-graders who were also in that building have been moved to other Bremerton classrooms.

DSHS said the school district forced its hand, and that keeping the students in public school is its preference.

“We’ve had an ongoing contract with Bremerton for some time where we did pay rent for school classrooms,” said Linda Rolfe, director of the state’s Division of Developmental Disabilities. “They’re saying they don’t have any room available for us to rent.”

The situation in Bremerton echoes that in the Shoreline School District, which pressed DSHS earlier this year to provide classroom space for a dozen youths living at the Fircrest School.

The changes in both the Bremerton and Shoreline school districts are the result of a larger problem, Rolfe said.

In the past year or so, there has been an increase in the number of young people living in the two state institutions. At the time of the Shoreline decision, there were 18 youths living at Fircrest; 11 youths live at the Morgan Center.