Every once in a while, parents win one. And these parents in Texas of a girl with behavioral disorders won a due process case where they were seeking reimbursement from their local school district for their daughter attending the charter school within the psychiatric hospital in which she’d been a patient.

This could indeed be the first case dealing with a new trend of establishing charter schools within psychiatric hospitals that treat children and youth.

But in some ways the bigger issue for many parents is in being able to make the case that their child’s behaviors are impeding her learning. This is important because schools don’t have to establish IEPs, offer services or individualized education to children who the evaluators determine don’t have a disability that impairs their learning. If it doesn’t stop them from learning, who cares what their behaviors are is one way to simplify that mindset.

And in all fairness to the bureaucratic gatekeepers whose job it is to deny services, the litmus test as to whether the school is responsible for serving a child’s disability is “is that disability impacting this child’s ability to learn.?” After all, if a child’s disability isn’t impeding his ability to learn, then it definitely falls out of the realm of IDEA.

But this line of distinction often gets blurry where children with mental illnesses and developmental delays are the ones in question. Does the perseveration of a child impede his ability to learn? How about verbal outbursts and chronically oppositional behavior? What about impulsivity or aggressive responses? Surely no one would argue that these things are disruptive to the classroom, and some times dangerous as well. But do they impede the child’s ability to learn?

I’d have to say a resounding “yes”. Schools will often try to dissuade parents from seeking special education for their child by administrators telling the parents that the child’s emotional or behavioral disability doesn’t affect his/her eligibility. As LuLu would say, this is “bull doo-doo”.

The following quote better captures what is the likely “real” reason that schools are so uncooperative when parents of children with these “invisible” disorders seek appropriate education for their child.:

"The school districts are sort of at a loss," said Angela Lello, public policy director of the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities. "They don't have what they need to provide the support for students that have challenging behaviors."

And that’s it in a nutshell…the schools don’t have what they need to properly educate our mentally ill or developmentally delayed children. And to get what they need is expensive…both in terms of time and money. So it’s not hard to see why school systems will go to great lengths to keep from providing services for one child, for the “fear” that all parents of special education will come to the department and start filing lawsuit after lawsuit.

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