Tell me about suing DCPS for private placement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your horror stories…your triumphs…what you wish you’d known beforehand if you’ve done it. Tell me everything.

Son is ASD, 5. Advocate has recommended paying for 1 year at school we want him at in the future (Ivy) to avoid DCPS shopping his file around if we secure funding in the future. Then we would sue DCPS next spring for funding going forward.

How likely are we to get funding if no ID or severe behaviors? Any tips? Lawyers you like? Child has only ever gotten private services so has no IEP. How soon would I need to begin that process of suing for next year?

I’m not looking for why I should consider public. I do not have confidence in DCPS for a host of reasons that are irrelevant to the matter at hand. Appreciate your wisdom.

Most people I know who have won cases have been through the school system for years and the system failed them.

Is there a reason your child does not have an IEP or go through the Early Stages process? Talk to a lawyer, but I would think it is hard to make a case that DCPS was not providing an appropriate placement if your child is not in the system.
We have gone through the process - it is exhausting. I do not wish it on anyone. DCPS will say anything for the purpose of winning the case. They will have experts who have never met your child and parade them in front of the hearing officer testifying to substantiate what ever their case is. You will sit their in awe as they make your child out to be someone they are not. It is not easy to sit there and hear this about your child - especially when you know it is all made up.

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do. It is not an easy path.

Talk to a lawyer who has experience suing dcps (consultation) and start the Early Stages evaluation which is step one for a kid of yours age. I won a settlement with the city for private placement. Much of the advice you get on DCUM is based on general or outdated info.

[Anonymous]

Enrich the advocates, enrich the lawyers, impoverish the school system…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your horror stories…your triumphs…what you wish you’d known beforehand if you’ve done it. Tell me everything.

Son is ASD, 5. Advocate has recommended paying for 1 year at school we want him at in the future (Ivy) to avoid DCPS shopping his file around if we secure funding in the future. Then we would sue DCPS next spring for funding going forward.

How likely are we to get funding if no ID or severe behaviors? Any tips? Lawyers you like? Child has only ever gotten private services so has no IEP. How soon would I need to begin that process of suing for next year?

I’m not looking for why I should consider public. I do not have confidence in DCPS for a host of reasons that are irrelevant to the matter at hand. Appreciate your wisdom.

Most people I know who have won cases have been through the school system for years and the system failed them.

Is there a reason your child does not have an IEP or go through the Early Stages process? Talk to a lawyer, but I would think it is hard to make a case that DCPS was not providing an appropriate placement if your child is not in the system.
We have gone through the process - it is exhausting. I do not wish it on anyone. DCPS will say anything for the purpose of winning the case. They will have experts who have never met your child and parade them in front of the hearing officer testifying to substantiate what ever their case is. You will sit their in awe as they make your child out to be someone they are not. It is not easy to sit there and hear this about your child - especially when you know it is all made up.

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do. It is not an easy path.

Talk to a lawyer who has experience suing dcps (consultation) and start the Early Stages evaluation which is step one for a kid of yours age. I won a settlement with the city for private placement. Much of the advice you get on DCUM is based on general or outdated info.

Did your child ever attend the DCPS school or did you get the placement without attending?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Enrich the advocates, enrich the lawyers, impoverish the school system…

This is BS. Sorry. If you have a kid not being educated, and the school system is failing your kid (literally and figuratively) with no solutions and only hostility, what are you supposed to do. And the attorneys and advocates in this space do not make huge amounts like many other areas of the field. Mine capped fees even. And regardless, the school is still spending a huge amount per kid for in the system special needs kids - but they just are paying for things like aides who aren't trained or ways to warehouse your kid. This is a totally bogus and uninformed response.

[Anonymous]

OP, I think you need to be realistic and any advocate who is telling you you'll be able to get funding for private placement without ever having an IEP or being in DCPS first also has a bridge to sell you... somewhere.

There are a number of "prominent" advocates who are scammers. We've worked with three of them and 2/3 were awful and did not know what they were talking about and we felt they were taking advantage of desperate parents. The third was nice and honest, a special needs parent, just not worth the money and could barely be bothered to know our child's name. She sat through the IEP meeting with no comments at all. Again, she was nice though and didn't try to sell me any bridges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think you need to be realistic and any advocate who is telling you you'll be able to get funding for private placement without ever having an IEP or being in DCPS first also has a bridge to sell you... somewhere.

There are a number of "prominent" advocates who are scammers. We've worked with three of them and 2/3 were awful and did not know what they were talking about and we felt they were taking advantage of desperate parents. The third was nice and honest, a special needs parent, just not worth the money and could barely be bothered to know our child's name. She sat through the IEP meeting with no comments at all. Again, she was nice though and didn't try to sell me any bridges.

To add, educational advocacy isn't a regulated industry with standards or officially recognized training. It's hard to find a "good" one.

[Anonymous]

OP you haven't even tried with your kid at DCPS. That is a requirement before forcing them to pay for your child to be educated elsewhere. You haven't even tried. There are parents with kids in public schools who have been fighting for YEARS to get what you just wanted handed to you based on nothing but assumptions. Enroll your kid at DCPS, get an IEP, then see how he does.

[Anonymous]

OP - I think you should read through the thread on "Who should be in a self-contained classroom?" Two things you may realize is this is a parent seeking perhaps a private placement 'whose child has an IEP and who has been in school for at least a couple of years" so there are definite issues to define. Secondly, and perhaps of some interest to you if you are looking for a reasonable "back door" to a private placement is that it seems in the thread the student is in a DC Charter - and so while technically a public school option (lottery I think most are? it turns out on page 3 that a Charter School is viewed as a separate entity and can be made to pay for private placement if they are unable to serve the needs of a student. NOTE in the case referred to the student has had an IEP, has been educated in a setting offered by DC public schools (although a separate entity) and is now offering an alternative to what has been provided. There are at least three things you would need to overcome - no IEP within the DCPS system, not having any educational experience in DCPS even one semester to argue that they cannot met DC's needs, and not having had your DC fail to meet benchmarks in an educational program of DCPS or a DC Charter.

Most private placements are for students with emotional disturbance/behavior issues or multiple disabilities, including being on the autism spectrum with other modalities, but it seems that there needs to be a "track record" of service delivery and failure to meet the needs of the student to have something to sue about. I could see an advocate or lawyer advising such an approach of pay the first year and sue if there was a track record to build the basis of the suit on beyond - what you would "like" for DC and therefore how to "skip public education".

[Anonymous]

Ok, so you all are really piling on here and OP, I hope you’re still reading. I personally know three families that never tried public, hired lawyers, and went from a SN private, full pay, to being placed at another SN private funded by the county. One was in DCPS, the other two in MCPS. They had a really good lawyer and great data and the help of the SN schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok, so you all are really piling on here and OP, I hope you’re still reading. I personally know three families that never tried public, hired lawyers, and went from a SN private, full pay, to being placed at another SN private funded by the county. One was in DCPS, the other two in MCPS. They had a really good lawyer and great data and the help of the SN schools.

Just pointing out here that because they went from one SN private to another SN private that was funded by the county, the staff at the first SN private likely indicated that the child was not succeeding at their school and needed more services than they could supply.

This is not the scenario the OP wants. They are going to full pay the school they want the child to stay at in hopes that DCPS will pick up the bill in the next few years. What does the data look like? That the child is succeeding at Ivymount? Can't DCPS use that to argue that if they child is successfuly at Ivymount, it's possible/likely to be successful at one of DCPS schools. Or that the child is unsuccessful at Ivymount in which case DCPS should argue that they need to transfer child to a different school. It's unlikely for the parent to get to stay at the exact school they want. What is likely is that they'll be full pay, pay for the advocate (and lawyer,) and then end up deciding to be full pay for subsequent years.

[Anonymous]

OP, I have a child with different needs (severe language based LDs) but I definitely sympathize with you. I let the school flounder for a full year and then pulled my son because he was becoming depressed. I didn't stay and didn't sue because I didn't let him get to the point of actually failing -- so I knew I had no chance and it would be a waste of time and money. But it was going downhill.

My sister did keep her dyslexic child in FCPS, they did a pathetic horrible job, child got more and more and more behind... but the court essentially decided that FCPS met its own pathetic low standard. Even though they used a program not meant for dyslexic children etc etc.

Here is something true of all the school systems: they are not even aiming at helping your child reach his true potential. They don't have the resources and don't pretend do.

If you want that, your child to reach his potential, you are probably going to have to pay a lot of money.

I know some people do get private placement and I hate discouraging anyone from getting a county to pay for what their child absolutely deserves but all I have seen is a lot of time and money wasted going down that path.

Also, in reference to what someone else said about a child in DCPS, FCPS also does an absolutely terrible job with 2E students (unless their other need is very mild). If your child has a serious developmental or learning disability, and is very bright... well, all I can say is don't move to FCPS.

[Anonymous]

I work in a school and we can’t even usually get the county to pay for self-contained, even if the parents and sped teacher agree it’s the next step. They will just continually push back that we haven’t tried x y z even we have.

[Anonymous]

I used Jaime Seaton in Montogmery County for my DCPS for a similar issue, but she settled with DCPS before proceeding to a hearing. It happens. Goodluck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, so you all are really piling on here and OP, I hope you’re still reading. I personally know three families that never tried public, hired lawyers, and went from a SN private, full pay, to being placed at another SN private funded by the county. One was in DCPS, the other two in MCPS. They had a really good lawyer and great data and the help of the SN schools.

Just pointing out here that because they went from one SN private to another SN private that was funded by the county, the staff at the first SN private likely indicated that the child was not succeeding at their school and needed more services than they could supply.

This is not the scenario the OP wants. They are going to full pay the school they want the child to stay at in hopes that DCPS will pick up the bill in the next few years. What does the data look like? That the child is succeeding at Ivymount? Can't DCPS use that to argue that if they child is successfuly at Ivymount, it's possible/likely to be successful at one of DCPS schools. Or that the child is unsuccessful at Ivymount in which case DCPS should argue that they need to transfer child to a different school. It's unlikely for the parent to get to stay at the exact school they want. What is likely is that they'll be full pay, pay for the advocate (and lawyer,) and then end up deciding to be full pay for subsequent years.

Then OP should push her advocate on this, and try Diener or one of the others for a year, and build a case for Ivymount.

[Anonymous]

Brian Gardner is very good.