Grandview district fighting ruling that it failed boy with severe hearing problem | Yakima Herald-Republic
I checked and there is Washington School for the Deaf. Why didn't they send him to WSD??? I don't like it when a deaf child suffers education-wise.
GRANDVIEW, Wash. -- After spending nearly 15 years in the Grandview school system, 18-year-old José Garcia reads at a second-grade level and has the math skills of a third-grader.
Although Garcia was born with a serious hearing loss, he was not diagnosed with any learning disabilities, scored high on intelligence tests and was never considered a discipline problem by his teachers, according to court records.
In fact, he regularly brought home A's and B's to his proud mother who, illiterate herself, had high hopes for her son. So when Maria Sanchez was told about two years ago that her son was not on a path to graduate this spring, her lawyer says she was stunned.
"I don't know what you call this -- gross incompetence. But the findings are all there -- this is bad," said Tacoma attorney Art Grant. He is representing Sanchez and her son in a case against the school district in which they allege that educators failed to address Garcia's hearing problem.
"It's inexcusable neglect," Grant said.
Through Grant, Sanchez filed a complaint with the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in January 2010, claiming the school district knew Garcia was profoundly deaf in preschool and repeatedly failed to properly educate her son by giving him work well below his grade level instead of addressing his hearing problem.
Last October, an administrative law judge agreed, finding that the school district denied Garcia an education because it didn't adequately adjust for his hearing problem, a violation of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The act states that all children have a right to a "free, appropriate public education."
Now, the roughly 3,100-student district is on the hook to contract with education specialists to give Garcia another six years of education. The cost of providing that education has not been estimated.
The school district is fighting most of the findings in a 39-page conclusion by Judge Matthew Wacker, who found that school staff gave false testimony as the case was investigated, filed incomplete progress reports on Garcia's education and failed to implement recommended programs and technology to help him hear in the classroom.
For example, although Garcia was supposed to have a special amplifier to improve the performance of his hearing aids, the school district never had the device in working condition, according to the findings.
Court records paint a picture of a boy who was shuffled between programs, teachers and classrooms and whose only option seemed to be failure.
Grant declined to make Sanchez available for an interview.
Wacker ordered the district to contract with two specialists -- who also testified in the case -- to devise and implement a learning plan for Garcia to get him caught up.
But it's not clear when that will happen. So far, the school district and court-appointed specialists have failed to agree on a contract.
The delay prompted Sanchez to file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the school district for failing to act on the judge's order within a mandatory 60-day period. She seeks a court order forcing the district to implement the corrective action.
In turn, the school district has filed an appeal of Wacker's findings in Yakima County Superior Court. A hearing date has not been set.
Grandview School District Superintendent Kevin Chase disputes the administrative judge's findings, but said he couldn't comment on specifics of the pending case, saying only: "Now we're asking that (Wacker's) decision be remanded because we think he was wrong on several things."
In its Superior Court complaint, the school district argues that Wacker erroneously threw out certain testimony that would help the school district. The district also seeks to submit additional evidence.
In addition, the school district claims that looking at Garcia's entire educational history -- from preschool on -- amounted to a misreading of state law, which states that corrective action only has to go back two years.
In his ruling, Wacker -- who relied on testimony from teachers, education specialists and reports from the district -- said the fact that school staff gave false testimony about Garcia's education entitled him to consider the boy's entire education.
U.S. District Judge Edward F. Shea has indicated in court documents that he is waiting to see what happens in Superior Court before proceeding.
The case has been costly for Grandview. From January 2010 to January this year, the school district paid more than $266,000 in attorney fees, according to records.
Hearing aids at 7 months
Garcia was born with sensorineural hearing loss, which is damage to the inner ear or the nerve pathways from the inner ear to the brain. It can cause anywhere from mild to severe hearing loss and cannot be corrected medically or surgically.
In Garcia's case, his loss of hearing is profound and he likely cannot hear some vowel sounds, experts say.
At 7 months old, Garcia was fitted with his first hearing aids. According to Grant, he began preschool at age 3 in a program offered by the school district.
As he started regular school, Garcia was placed in what are called self-contained classrooms, which are designed for students with learning disabilities.
According to Wacker, his third-grade teacher failed to arrange instruction in sign language or use a radio amplification system to help him hear -- both recommended by a specialist -- because she said he was "self-conscious" about them.
The district's speech and language pathologist had signed off on education plans for Garcia that called for the radio amplifier even though the district didn't have one that was operable, according to Wacker's findings.
What's more, his third-grade teacher testified that Garcia had missed most of the school year's instructions because he didn't have batteries for his hearing aids. There was no elaboration in the findings on why he did not have batteries or whose responsibility it was to keep the hearing aids in working order.
His seventh-grade teacher testified that he didn't belong in her self-contained classroom, but rather a resource classroom where he'd get help with the hearing issue, according to the findings.
But that didn't happen until ninth grade, when he began high school, where he quickly fell behind and began failing his classes. Garcia's disability in his learning plan was changed from hearing impaired to a learning disability. As a result, Garcia was put back into self-contained classrooms.
Sanchez became upset after learning that a school counselor had told Garcia as a freshman that he wouldn't graduate on time. Others, it turned out, were also watching the situation.
A tutor who had been working with Garcia connected Sanchez with the state-funded, Tacoma-based parent advocacy group Parents Are Vital in Education, which in turn connected her with attorneys who took the case.
Without an outside advocate, Grant said Sanchez would have had nowhere to turn. Raised in a dirt-floor home in a rural Mexico village, Sanchez speaks only Spanish and can't read or write. She trusted the school district, he said.
Grant said there's irony in the fact that Sanchez, a documented resident, has lived a half-block from the district's administration building for more than 20 years.
"So she was really relying on the school district doing the right thing when it came to her son," he said. "The school district has let them down and has lied to them."
Sloppy records
The school district failed Garcia in big and small ways, Wacker found.
For example, the district's speech and language pathologist kept sloppy records of Garcia's education. Logs tracking his education often lacked information, such as dates of service, names of both the provider and student and notes on any progress he may have made, according to the findings.
Communication between the district and Garcia's mother was poor, Wacker found. Often times, Garcia's sister had to translate from English to Spanish information about her brother's education.
Special education teacher Rick Ramos, who oversaw Garcia's education plan, conceded that his Spanish was "kind of bad," according to testimony in the findings.
Wacker also found that Ramos gave false testimony because he had team members sign off on Garcia's education plan as if they attended a meeting on the plan when in fact they had not. As a result, Wacker also called the testimony of the entire team "false," including that of Ramos' wife and high school counselor, Irma Gonzales-Ramos.
Attorney Grant said even though the district didn't have a teacher for hearing impaired or deaf students, it should have made arrangements to bring one in.
"The district gets a lot of extra money to educate handicapped children," Grant said. "They get paid for it by the state and feds. But typically, school districts don't spend it on the students they get it for."
Ultimately, Grant said, Garcia's case is inexcusable.
"José has been living in the same house in the same district his whole life, so you can't pass the buck -- everyone knows José," Grant said. "If that school house was open, his mother had him there -- he didn't have any attendance problems."
I checked and there is Washington School for the Deaf. Why didn't they send him to WSD??? I don't like it when a deaf child suffers education-wise.
