Phoenix school district investigating its special education program after years of complaints
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The Creighton Elementary School District in Phoenix is in the midst of an investigation into its special education program.
It took the combined efforts of staff members, parents and the district’s governing board to convince the administration to investigate years of complaints.
Gail Smith has spent years advocating for her now eight-year-old son who is enrolled in the Creighton Elementary School District.
“I have come to you tonight because my son’s civil rights are being repeatedly violated, not only by the school, but by the special education department,” Smith said speaking at a meeting of the district’s governing board this summer.
Her son Derek is a medically complex child who was born with a congenital heart defect.
“He’s had multiple surgeries and has been in therapy since he was about 6 months old,” Smith said, “from feeding therapy, to occupational therapy to speech and language.”
As a toddler, Derek received services through the Arizona Early Intervention Program. When he aged out of that at 3 years old, Gail had him screened by the school district, which determined that his deficits were not severe enough to qualify him for services. When Derek was 4, one of his teachers contacted Gail, asking her to reach out to the district again.
“He was avoiding writing and coloring and painting, cutting with scissors, anything that involved the fine motor process,” Smith said.
The district sent an occupational therapist to screen Derek who observed him on the playground and said he didn’t see any occupational therapy issues.
“But it wasn’t a comprehensive evaluation,” Smith said.
At that point, Derek was denied services once again. Gail even sought out a second opinion from another occupational therapist who said an evaluation was warranted. She brought that information back to the district, which still refused to evaluate her son.
“There’s a very short window of when you can fix a child’s handwriting if they have a fine motor delay and we’re quickly approaching the end of that window,” Smith said. “He still avoids writing. At one point, I was told: ‘Why does he need to write? Why can’t he just use talk to text? We live in a technology world.’”
She’s considered going to another district but their transportation is limited so getting him to school wouldn’t be easy. Gail isn’t the only person at Creighton to have complaints like this either.
Amy McSheffrey is a member of the district’s governing board who said she first heard complaints from staff members In January 2022.
“Kids were being denied screening or evaluations who perhaps shouldn't have been denied,” McSheffrey said.
Those staff members couldn’t figure out why students were being denied. McSheffrey started bringing up the issue at board meetings and asked for it to be added to a future agenda.
“That’s where my frustration really kicked in because it took months for it to become an agenda item,” McSheffrey said.
Meanwhile, more parents started testifying at the meetings.
“We had parents sobbing,” McSheffrey said. “It’s disturbing to hear, especially when it seems as though no one wants to address it.”
McSheffrey pushed for an investigation and finally with the transition of a new superintendent this July, it looks like that’s going to happen.
“Why is this happening? Is it intentional? Is it just an oversight? It doesn’t make any sense,” McSheffrey said. “We definitely need to figure out the why so we can prevent it from happening in the future.”
The situation is frustrating, but not unheard of, especially for students of color like Derek.
Amanda Glass specializes in education issues as an attorney at the Arizona Center for Disability Law. She said ACDL is seeing more and more schools refusing to evaluate students and there are a number of possible explanations.
“There have been lawsuits in the past about kids of color being over-identified as having disabilities when in fact, they’re just operating in a system that is not set up for their success,” Glass said. “So that is one issue. We don’t want to over identify kids. We don’t want to disproportionately identify kids of color.”
There could be funding reasons too. Even though schools get federal funding for students who are determined to have disabilities, Glass said it’s often not enough to meet the needs of those kids, who are given their own individualized education program, known as an IEP.
“Once you’ve identified a student and you’ve created an IEP, you’re legally obligated to provide those services whether you have sufficient funding or not,” Glass said.
For some students, schools get funded at a level that’s more than what they end up requiring, but:
“There’s a lot of kids with behavior issues who might need a one-on-one aide or to be in a special classroom with a lower student-to-teacher ratio, those things can get really expensive,” Glass said. “So if you just don’t identify the kid and you don’t put services into a plan, you don’t have to provide those services.”
Ultimately, parents often don’t know their rights and there’s an access to justice issue. School districts always have legal representation, whereas parents may not and Glass said it’s an extremely complicated area of law.
“And so, to expect parents, you know, lay people to understand this is really unfair,” Glass said.
That means even an affluent stay-at-home parent who can spend a lot of time advocating for their child may struggle, not to mention working families for whom English is a second language.
