Next week, the parents of a hearing impaired student at the West Platte School District will take part in a three-day hearing that pits the parents against the school.
At issue with the Schottel family, Isreal and Sarah, is the treatment of their son by the district.
“We held many IEP (Individual Education Program) meetings with the district, as well as several regular meetings in hopes to resolve the issues and avoid escalating the situation,” the Schottels said. “After many failed attempts, we felt forced into filing due process.”
The due process hearing with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will be held via teleconference and video conference at Fletcher Daniels State Office Building in Kansas City, while the actual hearing will be ran in Jefferson City, according to Samara Klein of Klein Law Firm, who is representing the family.
The hearing runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 4-6.
A commissioner from the administration hearing commission will make a ruling at a later time.
The family is seeking additional help for their son who has had multiple surgeries due to hearing issues and always has to wear hearing aids.
“The school is not really doing what they feel they need to do,” Klein said. “They felt like they needed more services and that is what they are asking for and the school says he doesn’t qualify for eligibility under hearing impairment the individuals with disabilities education act. We tried to have an IEP (meeting) and still tried to have people, professionals (in the field), talk to them why they still should be eligible but it never got any place and we will go into a hearing.”
The Citizen did further research and found the Schottels are not the only patrons of the district that have had issues with the special education department at West Platte, now ran by Paula Chambers.
Three different families talked with the paper about their various issues as well. One family asked to remain anonymous because the child is still in the school district and the parents fear retaliation from the district and administration.
The paper contacted West Platte superintendent Dr. John Rinehart on Tuesday. He said he would have to reach out to the district’s lawyer to see what he was at liberty to comment on regarding the multiple situations.
After deadline, Rinehart acknowledged the original DESE complaint filed early in the year raising nine counts against the district. DESE ruled in the district’s favor on all counts.
While he could not speak on any litigation, he said the district had not been contacted about a second DESE complaint.
“We respect a parent’s right to raise issues or file a complaint,” Rinehart said. “When they do, we look into the situation and respond accordingly. If action needs to be taken for any of our students in response to a parent complaint, we take care of it.”
The Citizen learned a third party was set to file a complaint against the district, but after a meeting with Chambers on Monday, the family decided not to go forward with it after they were promised certain services for their child, a source revealed.
PENDING COMPLAINT
Amanda Miller was worried about the ramifications that were going to follow her action.
Recently she filed a formal complaint with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, like the Schottels did.
“I think others haven’t come forward because of ramifications in general,” she said. “I like the school, just haven’t had a good experience with the special education system. I feel like they aren’t taking the IEP very seriously.”
Her son has speech therapy but she saw a regression over the winter break. To get him back on track, she said, an IEP was made for him to have extended work through the summer break.
Miller said she was led to believe it was all lined up earlier last year. A copy of her IEP provided said a meeting would happen in March, but it never did.
The speech teacher had quit, she learned, but she thought with the official documentation the extra help would still be provided to her son.
It wasn’t and she hasn’t been told a reason why.
“No one reached out,” she said. “It seems to be a lot of saying and not writing it down and not following through. It is my impression they didn’t seem to take his IEP seriously and they try to avoid it.”
As of this past weekend she still hasn’t met her son’s new speech teacher. She said her son liked the previous teacher, Kayla Collins, but believes the issues came from Chambers, who came to the West Platte after working in the St. Joseph School District.
Miller asked that her daughter be evaluated for a possible IEP but was told that couldn’t happen unless she was failing.
“She is in first grade; not a lot of kids are failing first grade,” Miller said.
BEHAVIORAL ISSUES NOT ADDRESSED
One family mentioned how their son was put on medication for ADHD not long after school started in fall 2018. The mother approached the teacher and asked for an evaluation for a behavioral plan to see if it would help him. She was told by the teacher that the principal, then Rebecca Henshaw, said an evaluation wasn’t necessary and they would ‘keep an eye on’ the student.
“I don’t know the state laws and I didn’t know his rights and they said it wasn’t needed and I took them for their word and they would let me know if it got worse or better,” the parent, who asked for anonymity, said.
In March, she got a call from Henshaw, who has since retired, saying her son was causing a lot of problems. During a parent-teacher conference the principal pointed out the issues with her son.
“As a teacher, if I had a parent come to me and state a child had a medical diagnosis, I would be talking to the special education director or a principal and ask the next step,” said the boy’s aunt, who is a special education teacher in the Kansas City area but also asked not to be named in fear of retaliation against her nephew and family. “I told her she needed to asked for an evaluation and she called me upset after they said it wasn’t necessary right now. In my opinion, it is not OK. I don’t think anyone has the right to say a child with a disability is not enough of a problem.”
The aunt and mother advised Henshaw the school out of compliance with DESE and shortly after the paperwork was filed to start an IEP.
“He could’ve had support for the entire year and they brushed it off for whatever reason,” the aunt said.
The mother mentioned the school was mixed-up, believing her son had been on ADHD medication for four weeks. It was four months.
She offered to sit down with the counselor and the meeting never happened. After she submitted a written request for an evaluation of her son — months after the verbal request — an IEP was provided to her on the last day of school.
The mother said her son has started speech and occupational therapy one day a week and behavioral and writing therapy every day for 45 minutes.
“I believe they only did it after the written request, if not, I don’t think he would have had his services,” the mother said. “They never apologized or acknowledged they messed up.”
The family has an appointment scheduled next month at Children’s Mercy to see if her son is autistic.
LEAVING WEST PLATTE
Carol Ann Fare now lives in Bentonville, Ark., but confirmed she and her family moved after multiple issues with the special education department at West Platte.
Her three-year-old daughter was in the First Steps program and transition into the school district last December after her third birthday.
Fare said testing should’ve been done on her daughter prior to her third birthday, but it didn’t happen until after. She stated her daughter should’ve started receiving services on Dec. 14, 2018, but she didn’t until Jan. 28 of this year.
Fare told The Citizen she was contacted by the district last year and asked to waive the 10-day notice to get an IEP done for her daughter so the school would remain in compliance with the law.
He first meeting with the school district came on Sept. 12, 2018 and she corresponded with officials at First Steps the month prior to get everything lined up for the transition in December.
“They still dropped the ball and they had plenty of time,” Fare said. “When we first met, I was hesitant being a special needs mom and the first day meeting with the IEP team members and with our transitional team and therapist, it was not a good experience. Right off the bat there were lies being told and our transition team confronted one of the members of the West Platte team regarding what she had stated about her education with special needs and autism and caught her in several lies.”
One of the administrators at West Platte told the parents and the workers at First Steps that she was certified in applied behavior analysis but when told she needed to have a degree, the administrator said she had 15 hours of training, according to Fare’s recollection of the meeting.
“That immediately put up a red flag,” she said.
The family asked for meeting notices via email to keep an electronic record but school officials instead placed notices in the backpack of her 3-year-old.
Other issues included canceling her daughter’s speech classes due to a teacher’s illness and never making up the classes. Once while the school did preschool and kindergarten evaluations there was a week-long lapse in services. When a teacher went on maternity leave, the paraprofessional stepped in and a substitute teacher filled the para role for a while as well, Fare said.
West Platte isolated her daughter from her peers, she said.
“We believe they didn’t enforce our daughter’s behavioral plan in our IEP and we confronted them numerous times regarding that,” Fare said. “In her behavioral plan, she likes to be soothed. She doesn’t know how to self-calm. They let her lie on the ground and just let her scream until she could regulate it herself. In the IEP, it says she has to have self-calming help because she doesn’t know how to do it. They weren’t following it by any means.”
The family of six moved to Arkansas after multiple compliance issues with West Platte. She added the lack of empathy from the special education department and lack of cooperation finally tipped the scales.
The situation is a lot better in northwest Arkansas, she said. Her son is being tested to see if he can receive services for an IEP, something she said wasn’t an option at West Platte until the he fell behind.
HELPING HAND
The Schottels learned shortly after his first birthday that their son was hard of hearing. Multiple surgeries followed to combat sensorineural and conductive hearing loss.
The most recent surgery resulted in finding polyps growing in his ear canal, which made the hearing worst and led to tubes being removed.
Both parents have hearing issues and an uncle and several cousins also have hearing problems.
“People often think hearing aids are like glasses, which is a huge misconception,” Sarah Schottel said. “Hearing aids do not solve all the issues.”
She noted children often learn words from hearing a TV or the radio or parents talking. Kids with hearing issues can not learn these words at the rate because they can not hear them. Their son has an auditory processing disorder, which affects five percent of school-aged children.
Sarah Schottel has worked in special education herself with deaf and hard of hearing children and got to know Dr. Regina Knott, who was a former superintendent, principal and later the special education director at West Platte. She was one of the main reasons the family moved from east of St. Joseph to Weston.
The first year their son attended school at West Platte, the district and family worked together with a deaf educator provided by the Schottels.
A new administration entered and things changed. Last year the Schottels learned they could no longer provide a deaf educator for their son during school hours for third grade after having one in first grade. The removal of hearing impairment off of his IEP felt like retaliation to the family for requesting the district to provide a deaf educator since they wouldn’t allow the Schottels into the district.
The family has supplied equipment to the school to use to help their son hear the teacher better and offered to provide training.
Their son wears hearing aides with an FM system, which amplifies the teacher but not background noise. Knott got the system approved for the child when the family moved to West Platte.
In November 2018, they had an audiologist and speech language therapist from St. Luke’s Hospital help the school district at no charge, but that service was also refused until the family demanded it.
“We feel there has been lots of resistance from the school district,” Sarah Schottel said. “We want to help him succeed and we’d think that is what they would want too. People think they are a rich school district and we are suing for money. We are not. We are advocating for his free and appropriate public education. We want something comparable to what we have been providing. We aren’t asking for the sun, but we want that is best for him.”
The district is using its law firm of Guin & Mundorf to fight the Schottels in allowing the use of a deaf educator in the district.
Isreal Schottel wonders why the district opposes adding this position but can easily drop millions on new football, baseball and softball fields without much resistance.
The family was told their son’s hearing issues are not negatively affecting him in the classroom and that hearing impairment would be taken off of his IEP.
“His loss is permanent and will always be present,” Sarah Schottel said.
In complaint cases, the parents submit evidence to DESE, which in turn contacts the school to disprove the allegations. The Schottels said they do not get to see what the school says in response to the complaint and the parents aren’t allowed to appeal the decision of DESE.
The school offered to settle with the Schottels on July 24. The offer wasn’t clear and did not address most of the issues. A detailed response was met with no answers from the district or its lawyers.
“It didn’t address a lot of what were part of the due process,” Klein said. “Unlike a car accident, you are agreeing to different elements of the student’s education plan and they didn’t address those. I asked them to address different things and I haven’t heard back.”
Klein has lined up a number of witnesses to speak on behalf of the Schottels in this case. One of them is Patty Stark, an independent education consultant, certified in speech language pathology and many other special education areas with more than 30 years of experience under her belt.
“I would welcome a parent with the background, knowledge and the expertise the Schottels have,” Stark said. “The mother works in the field of hearing impaired and both parents are hearing impaired. They know the equipment and they know the child’s need better than anyone. I would’ve welcomed their expertise and in my professional opinion, a student has been denied free and appropriate public education. He has sensory-neuro hearing loss and it is incomprehensible that the hearing impairment was ever removed as an eligibility category.”