FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
Sacramento, California http://www.feat.org
January 17, 2002
News Morgue Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp
·
Parents Win Jurisdiction Ruling In Mercury Vaccine
Lawsuits
·
Special Education Teachers Face Risks But Find Rewards
·
A Survey to Identify Criminal Activity in Special
Education
[By William Mccall, Associated Press.] http://www.boston.com/dailynews/015/economy/Parents_win_jurisdiction_rulin:. shtml <- - address ends here.
A class-action lawsuit against major drug companies for
alleged links between autism and vaccines containing mercury should be tried in
state court and not a federal one, a federal judge has decided.
U.S. Magistrate Donald Ashmanskas last week ordered the
case remanded to Multnomah County Circuit Court in Oregon, said an attorney for
families who allege the vaccines have caused autism in their children.
The drug companies had asked that the case be tried in
federal court.
They have until Jan. 22 to file any objections or seek a
review.
The ruling could help the families who filed the lawsuit,
said Portland attorney Kathleen Dailey.
“It levels the playing field because it is more affordable
to wage this battle against these megacorporations in state court rather than federal
court,” she said.
The case began with George and Tory Mead, a Portland
couple whose 3-year-old son, William, has been diagnosed as autistic. His
parents say he was developing normally until he received a series of vaccines
containing the preservative thimerosal, a form of mercury.
George Mead said a growing body of research indicates that
increases in the number of vaccines routinely administered to U.S. children
beginning in the early 1990s led to an increase in autism cases and associated neurological
disorders.
The effects of mercury toxicity were not seen until the
number of vaccinations was increased to combat various diseases such as
hepatitis, Mead said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics joined the U.S. Public
Health Service in July 1999 to warn that vaccines containing thimerosal should
be discontinued.
The National Academy of Sciences released a report last
October saying researchers still are unable to determine if there is a link
between thimerosal and disorders in children. But the report backed up the 1999
recommendation to remove vaccines with thimerosal from the nation’s medical stockpile.
The same week the National Academy of Sciences report was
released, a coalition of law firms across the nation filed claims against the
drug companies.
The defendants in the lawsuits include: Aventis Pasteur
Inc.; Pfizer Inc., a subsidiary of Warner-Lambert; GlaxoSmithKline; Merck &
Co.; Abbott Laboratories; American Home Products; Baxter International Inc.,
Eli Lilly & Co.; Sigma Chemical Co.; and Aldrich Chemical Co.
Three doctors, including one who treated Mead’s son, also
are named as defendants.
On the Net:
National Academy of Sciences publications office: http://www.nap.edu
American Academy of Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org
* * *
Special Education Teachers Face Risks But Find Rewards
[By Colleen Pohlig in the Seattle Times.]
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134391649_specialed16m.html
Teacher’s aide Brenda Reffalt still wears a scar under her
right eye from a student who hurled a desk at her last school year.
This year, she has followed the same student, a nonverbal,
severely autistic boy named Tony as he moved to Federal Way High School from a
middle school in Tacoma.
Reffalt’s sole job is to spend every minute of the
six-hour school day with him. At 13, he is already a stocky 150 pounds. She
often has to physically shield him from hurting himself or anyone else.
One minute Tony is loving and touchy; the next he squeezes
Reffalt’s fingers so tight she winces. When he craves more of her attention, he
slaps himself — or her — hard, on the face. Outdoors, if it weren’t for her constant
grasp he’d stray into traffic.
“These students rely on us for their safety,” Reffalt
says. “They don’t know it, but they do.”
Tony is among a small percentage of special-education
students who pose safety risks to their teachers and other students.
“Schools can’t afford these expensive private programs for
tough students, so a lot of times they place them in a classroom, cross their fingers
and hope for the best,” says Craig McClung, a Federal Way High special-education
teacher.
Besides the expense, there also aren’t many programs in
the state for students with complex needs. So most wind up in public schools.
In these classrooms, depending on the severity of their
disabilities, many shift from academics to learning life skills.
Special-education teachers rely on two critical allies in
managing them: the information they receive about a student’s behavior and
needs, and the availability of training to handle volatile students.
Too often, both are lacking, district and state
educators say.
That might have been to blame for the incident last
month when a
15-year-old boy allegedly slammed teacher Jenny
Panico-Digiorgio’s head against a desk and repeatedly punched her in the head,
sending her to a hospital with severe head trauma. The student is facing a
charge of second-degree assault.
Federal Way School District officials say the boy’s
caretaker at Mentor Washington, a sex-offender-treatment program, failed to
tell them he had slapped a teacher at his former California school. Workers at
the residential program say they had notified the district.
Moreover, Panico-Digiorgio, a second-year teacher, had no
additional training besides a half-day autism class. She was never trained in
how to physically restrain a student.
Panico-Digiorgio, who has been hospitalized three times
since the incident for possible hematoma in her brain, has not returned to
work. She has contacted an attorney for possible litigation against the
district, according to a Tacoma lawyer’s office.
Compared with regular education students, federal rules
under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act generally are more
lenient with special-education students who assault people if their actions are
caused by their disabilities.
Those special-education students often wind up back in the
same district in a matter of weeks.
That would likely be the case if the Federal Way student
is found not guilty of assault. He is expected to appear in juvenile court
tomorrow to determine his competency to stand trial.
Last school year, 64 special-education students in the
state were removed from classes because of behavior that was dangerous to
themselves or others, according to the state school superintendent’s office.
Roughly 116,000 special-needs students attended schools here last year.
Most of the 64 students were either placed with tutors one
on one or sent to private programs in or out of state, in many cases at the
district’s expense.
But special-education teachers say there are many
unreported assaults, which include biting, kicking, hitting, shoving and
head-butting.
In McClung’s classroom at Federal Way, where children’s
disabilities range from mild mental retardation to severe autism, student
aggression is part of the job. He focuses instead on changing the behavior.
“I’ve been hit — we’ve all been hit — but this is who
these kids are,” he says. “It’s not always bad; it’s often a part of their
disability.”
That’s where training for teachers comes in.
“The key to general safety in special education has to
be training,
and our data indicates that even veteran teachers don’t feel
they have enough training to deal with students who are aggressive,” says Pat Steinburg,
special-education coordinator for the Washington Education Association, the
state’s largest teachers union.
Teachers with special-education certificates normally
receive some behavior training in college. Districts also are required to offer
training that prepares them to calm aggressive behavior, and if that fails, to physically
restrain a student.
But it’s up to districts to make that training
available.
“My experience has been that teachers tell me they
have asked for help
and more training, and they are not getting it,” Steinburg
says.
In Federal Way, training is normally required only for
teachers in classrooms with students who have severe emotional or behavior
disabilities, and thus may be prone to aggression.
Panico-Digiorgio wasn’t one of those teachers. She had a
class teaching developmentally delayed students. She took the brief autism training
class, according to district records.
The training teaches everything from how to read an
individual student’s behavior to how to restrain a student out of control.
Some point to the cost, time away from the classroom and
lack of substitute teachers for reasons why more training isn’t available to teachers
around the state.
The other potential problem — lack of information about
students — is often fueled by a law that says districts must not withhold an
education from disabled students. There is pressure to enroll transferring
students as soon as possible, even if it means not having their complete records.
“You can have all the procedures in place, but if teachers
aren’t implementing them because they don’t have the information about a
student, that’s not good,” says Doug Gill, special-education director for the
state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Transfer schools within the state are supposed to send
complete student records within 48 hours of a request, but there are no such
laws for out-of-state schools.
School districts receive additional funding for special needs
students, but many educators complain it’s not enough to cover the rising costs
of educating them.
Regardless of the type or severity of disability, the
state provides about $4,500 per special-education student, which pays for
teacher assistants, psychiatric support and tutors. Districts also receive
about $4,025 per student in regular education funding.
For many special-education teachers, it’s not about the
money. They share a common denominator: They’re here because they love these
kids.
After working with Tony for more than a year, Reffalt says
she considers him almost a part of her family. She visits him at home during school
breaks, often to give his family a break.
“It’s not often that you meet someone who loves your special-needs
child like their own, and Brenda truly does,” says Tony’s mother, Debbi Guy. “He’s aggressive at home, too, but
especially for someone who doesn’t have to put up with it and instead chooses
to, she really is special. They have a bond.”
On a recent day, however, Reffalt took an elbow in the
head from Tony when she wasn’t looking. A minute after she grabbed his hands
and forcefully said “stop,” she was rubbing his arms and head to relax him. He
responded by affectionately draping his arms around her neck.
The job of McClung and his three aides is to help make
their nine students as independently functioning in the community as possible.
So they’re often out of the classroom, working at Goodwill, practicing dining etiquette
at Denny’s, riding the bus to a grocery.
On the same day, another boy, a junior with mental
retardation, ran away from the group after a swimming lesson. When teacher’s
aide Shirley Kelley eventually walked him back to the group, he grew angry,
clenching his fists and cursing under his breath.
Without saying a word, McClung swapped places with Kelley.
He has had to physically restrain the boy six times since September. This time,
he was able to diffuse the anger with calm words and clear direction.
“Teamwork is key,” says Kelley, who suffered a cracked
nose a few years ago from an angry student. “We really depend on each other for
our safety, and we tag-team when one of us gets tired. Having a sense of humor helps,
too.”
When McClung hears people argue that potentially violent special-education
students don’t belong in public schools, he says he doesn’t know whether to
laugh or cry.
“Where would they go?” he asks. “Private programs don’t
really exist, and being stuck at home with a tutor isn’t going to help them in
the real world. They come here, and we do our best.”
Colleen Pohlig can be reached at 206-515-5655 or cpohlig@seattletimes.com.
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* * *
A Survey to Identify Criminal Activity in Special
Education
[Dee Alpert is an established legal advocate for special
education and autism issues.]
I am doing an internet survey on falsification of special
education documentation and forgery of signatures, mostly parents’, in special education
situations. As you may know, President
Bush has appointed a Commission on Excellence in Special Education, which seems
to be designed to make recommendations to the White House and Congress for the
IDEA’s reauthorization later this year.
From experience and from hearing from parents, advocates
and attorneys around the country, it appears that these practices may be both
widespread and common. If so, then
certainly this needs to be forcefully brought to the attention of the
Commission on Excellence in Special Education and the Congress, so that the
appropriate amendments to the IDEA can be proposed.
To be frank, forgery is forgery and doesn’t become
something less, or less criminal, because it is done in the special education
arena. It is a crime. Similarly, falsification of documents
required to be made, and kept, by federal law, is a crime, not something to be
routinely done when IEP meetings get too long for speducators’ administrative
convenience.
The results of this survey will be written up and formally
presented to the Commission on Excellence in Special Education, the White
House, the Congress, and will be posted to various internet lists for your
reading and for public information.
Forgery would include things like forging parents’
signatures on IEP’s, on consents to evaluate, etc.
Falsification would include such things as:
·
having staff sign IEP’s or IEP meeting minutes as
though they attended meetings when, in fact, they were not there at the
meeting.
·
creating evaluation reports of evaluations that were
not done.
·
creating false records to indicate timely evaluation,
or timely IEP meetings, or timely commencement of services.
·
creating false records to indicate provision of related
services in accordance with IEP’s when, in fact, related services had been
provided less than mandated on IEP’s, or not at all.
If you have ever experienced any of the above, please just
send me, Dee Alpert, an e-mail at sappell@nyc.rr.com stating that you have
personally seen or experienced falsification of special education documents and
give me very short specifics (i.e., “forged my signature on IEP” or “3 teachers’
signatures on IEP who weren’t at meeting”).
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