Dec 10, 2007
By Bill Myers,
The Examiner
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - District of Columbia school officials continued to send students to a troubled Massachusetts special education clinic weeks after schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee ordered her agency to cut ties with the center, documents obtained by The Examiner show. The Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Mass., specializes in “aversive” therapy for troubled youngsters like electric shock. It has been the home to dozens of District children for more than a decade, charging D.C. more than $227,000 per child per year.
On Aug. 31, after news reports documented allegations of abuse and neglect at Rotenberg, Rhee ordered her staff to stop referring children there. Yet, on Sept. 13, two more children were sent to the center, e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show.
“This is crazy,” Rhee e-mailed a subordinate on being given the news. “How can we stop it?”
Rotenberg was still home to at least nine D.C. children as recently as late November, school e-mails confirmed.
The Examiner has written extensively about D.C.’s $210 million-plus special education system, which critics say warehouses children in clinics and schools around the country with little regard for their health or welfare. Rotenberg has been a key exhibit in critics’ briefs against the system. The Examiner reported in September that a 14-year-old D.C. boy had his arm broken by orderlies, another student was hooked up to an electric backpack and D.C. children were lashed to their bus seats.
The e-mails obtained by The Examiner paint a picture of a bureaucracy overwhelmed by the city’s special education crisis. On being told that children were still being packed off to Rotenberg, officials in the various city agencies struggled to explain what was happening.
“Perhaps this [was a] pending placement [that] predated all of this,” George Valentine, one of the city’s top lawyers, wrote to his underlings in the schools’ legal department. “But shouldn’t your attorneys have told you about any new or pending placements at that center?”
“Perhaps this [was a] pending placement [that] predated all of this,” George Valentine, one of the city’s top lawyers, wrote to his underlings in the schools’ legal department. “But shouldn’t your attorneys have told you about any new or pending placements at that center?”
The lawyers weren’t the only ones who missed Rhee’s message. On Oct. 4 — more than a month after Rhee’s directive went out — Marla Oakes, the director of the schools’ special education system, told a court-appointed monitor that Rotenberg was still an “approved” vendor, e-mails show.
Neither Oakes nor schools spokeswoman Mafara Hobson responded to requests for comment.
Despite Rhee’s orders to get D.C.’s children out of Rotenberg, most remain there because school officials haven’t found new placements for them, the documents show.
Despite Rhee’s orders to get D.C.’s children out of Rotenberg, most remain there because school officials haven’t found new placements for them, the documents show.
On Friday, Valentine blamed breakdown on the independent school hearing officers — and on the children’s parents.
“We don’t control the placements,” Valentine said. “If a parent wants and consents to it, there’s not much we can do to block it.”
In the Aug. 31 memo that ordered the schools to cut ties with Rotenberg, Rhee said most of the placements there “came about as a result of DCPS’ failure.”
Because special education staff routinely ignored federal guidelines on addressing the children’s needs, the children’s lawyer had an easy time getting the children placed in Rotenberg, the memo states.
Got a tip on special education? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail
