http://www.pitch.com/2008-07-10/news/angry-parents-say-the-lee-s-summit-school-district-leaves-its-autistic-students-behind/
If you have an advanced kid, this is the best place in the world to be," Sherri Tucker says of the Lee's Summit School District. "But if your kid isn't going to help win at football or get a high ACT score, if they're just special-ed kids, the feeling is, they don't deserve anything."
Tucker, whose 15-year-old son, Jake, attends Lee's Summit High School, narrowly lost a campaign for a seat on the Lee's Summit School Board in April.
Two years ago, Tucker founded the Lee's Summit Autism Support Group with another mother, Deb Shaumeyer. Both had moved to Lee's Summit for its reputedly impressive special-education services, and both had filed complaints over the district's handling of their autistic children.
Shaumeyer filed for due process, claiming that the district had refused to provide her son with required services. She eventually dropped her case, partly because the mounting legal fees had forced her to refinance her home but also because of her sense that she could not get a fair hearing.
DESE regulations for due process specify that a case be chaired by three hearing officers — one chosen by the school, one by the parent and one assigned by DESE. The regulations mandate that the hearing officers be chosen from a list of approximately 70 officers designated by DESE. Almost everyone on that list is a school administrator, a teacher or a lawyer retained by a Missouri school district.
Only two have backgrounds as advocates for special-needs children.
"When my hearing chair is a school district attorney, the school's representative is a school administrator, and the one I get is a parent advocate — and on the whole list, only two are parent advocates — what chance do I have?" Shaumeyer says. "The odds were stacked against me, and I was out of money, so we ended up settling."
According to Wanda Allen, a secretary with the DESE's Division of Special Education, the people listed as hearing officers are qualified people who apply to DESE for the position every 18 months. But it's been years since anyone new was considered for the positions. "Last year, we just updated the list of people we already had," Allen says.
The Division of Special Education does not track statistics comparing how many due-process complaints are filed against a particular school or district or the results of those complaints.
Keimig's name is on the list of hearing officers. He believes that DESE has set up a fair system. "The thing I like about the formalized complaint process is that you have people looking at it who are not tied up in the emotional aspect, because obviously the parents feel strongly about it, as they should," he says.
Rather than filing a due-process suit, Tucker complained to DESE's Office of Civil Rights in 2005, when she believed that Jake's teachers were not following his IEP as mandated by state law for special-needs children. The civil rights office determined that the district had violated the law but imposed no penalties after determining that damage to his education had been minimal.
Tucker's Autism Support Group now includes approximately 40 members who meet once a month to discuss their children's progress and the effectiveness of the district's special-education programs.
She decided to run for the school board, she says, because the growing number of parents with autistic children needed some representation.
At the first debate, on March 28, Tucker was the only candidate who wasn't an incumbent. She arrived at the Lee's Summit Performing Arts Building unsure of what to expect, then spent the night scrambling to collect her thoughts as the candidates were questioned.
After incumbent Jack Wiley suggested that he understood her feelings about her son because his wife taught special ed and they'd baby-sat autistic children, Tucker replied in her closing, "Saying that is like me going to a male gynecologist and him trying to tell me he understands what labor pains are. Unless he's ever had them, he doesn't know."
For the next night's forum at Lee's Summit West High School, Tucker was prepared. With the members of her support group in the audience, Tucker argued with the three incumbents. During closing statements, Jon Plaas, a board member seeking his third term, labeled the district's disabled children as a special-interest group.
"I have a great deal of empathy for Ms. Tucker and her situation," Plaas said, according to the Lee's Summit Journal. "If we set aside a board seat for this special-interest group with 300 students, then we have another six special-interest groups (that want a board seat), pretty soon we have seven seats set aside and 2,100 kids covered. What about the other 15,000 students? And, by the way, what about the other stakeholders — the parents, taxpayers, teachers, administrators?"
In her closing, Tucker shot back: "I don't want you to give me a board seat, Mr. Plaas. I just want the people to vote me into it."
Tucker almost unseated Plaas, coming within 386 votes of her closest competitor's 5,065. (All of the board members ran against one another for the top three positions.)
Martin, the district's autism education specialist, says the close election results aren't cause to believe that other parents are as upset as Tucker.
"I can't say why anyone voted the way they did," Martin says. "Some may have voted for her because of her issue, but some might've done it because she was the last name on the ballot, and some may have done it because she's a female."
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