Tuition lawsuit against school can go forward
Tuesday, April 24, 2001
Jack Torry
Dispatch Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — An Upper Arlington family is one step closer to recovering tens of thousands of dollars they incurred in tuition costs when they sent their son to a private school for children with learning disabilities.
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday upheld a ruling last fall by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that allows the family to sue Upper Arlington public school officials for the tuition costs. The family argued that school officials failed to develop a program that would help their dyslexic son learn to read.
As a result, Cameron and Nancy James sent their son Joseph to a series of private schools, including Kildonan School in New York, where tuition costs as much as $32,000 a year. Joseph, 21, graduated from Kildonan in 1998 and currently attends the University of Vermont.
Yesterday’s action by the Supreme Court does not mean that Upper Arlington will have to reimburse the family for the tuition costs. But it clears the way for a hearing on the issue before a federal judge in Columbus.
“The school district has every intention of proceeding and looking forward to an eventual decision in its favor on the merits,” said Julie Martin, an attorney for the Upper Arlington Schools.
Federal disability law requires state and local schools to develop what are known as individualized education programs (IEPs) to help children with learning disabilities. But in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local school officials could reimburse the private school costs for students if a court “ultimately determines that such placement, rather than a proposed IEP, is proper under” the law.
In the Upper Arlington case, the Jameses argued that school officials would not design an IEP for Joseph unless they first removed him from private school and enrolled him in the Upper Arlington school system. School officials across the country fear that they could end up paying for new special programs only to find that students do not attend them.
“That was worrisome because it would be difficult to take him out of some place where he was learning and then find out that (Upper Arlington) could not, or would not, provide him with an appropriate education,” Nancy James said last night.
Joseph attended Barrington Elementary School in Upper Arlington from kindergarten in 1985 to the fourth grade in 1989. But when his parents discovered his reading skills were below a first-grade level, they enrolled him in a private school.
In 1994, Joseph transferred to Kildonan, a private boarding school that specializes in children with severe dyslexia. His parents appear to be seeking as much as three years worth of tuition.
The Supreme Court did not issue a written opinion yesterday but instead refused to accept the case. By doing so, the justices let stand the ruling of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.