Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind investigation shows state is stepping up, lawyer says

A complaint filed with the state Department of Education on behalf of a student at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind resulted in a finding that detailed several instances of noncompliance and a requirement to fix those issues.

Amanda Glass, a Managing Attorney at Disability Rights Arizona says her office got a call last May from the student’s guardian, saying the young person was being removed from the school because of an autism diagnosis. Since the student’s primary disability was autism and not related to sight or hearing, the school said, they could not serve him.

Glass says the school acknowledged it hadn’t provided some of the services to which the student was entitled, thanks to his Individual Education Plan, or IEP — those include speech and occupational therapy and counselling services. ASDB attributed that to staffing issues.

Glass joined The Show to talk about this case and what it could mean for students going forward.

Mariana Dale/KJZZ

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: We started with the investigation done by the state education department and that in her mind, it seems as though the agency did a pretty thorough job of coming up with findings that could help the student.

AMANDA GLASS: Absolutely. I want to applaud the Arizona Department of Education for their work in this particular investigation and set of findings that they issued. It is the most extensive and thorough my agency has seen. I have never seen the Arizona Department of Education appoint a special monitor to a case, but they did in this case.

So we've been working with our client, the student, and a special monitor on some of the relief that the school needs to provide to him, and it's incredible. I will say that it feels unusual to us. We've never seen something like this before, and we're just not sure why it turned out as well as it did. You know, there may be some other motivation, but our hope is that it's indicative of a sea change at the department that, you know, in light of everything happening federally and changes with the way civil rights laws and IDEA are going to be enforced, that the state is choosing to step up at this time and really take on the responsibility of ensuring that special education laws are enforced for Arizona students.

BRODIE: Do you have reason to believe that this is maybe a change in direction, a new normal for the state?

GLASS: I would love to believe that. I don't have reason other than this great finding to think that that may be true, and I will say that something that has been frustrating for us as an agency is the lack of transparency in the state complaint process at the Arizona Department of Education.

Many other states actually published these findings and corrective action orders, of course, redacting personally identifiable information for students and and possibly even protecting the school's identity, but at least showing, hey, we did this many investigations, we found noncompliance in this many cases, and we ordered this type of corrective action.

The Arizona Department of Ed does not do that at all. Although these are technically public records, they're kind of hard to get even with public records requests. I've submitted several on behalf of my organization and not received the data I'm looking for from the Arizona Department of Education.

BRODIE: Even if this is maybe just a one-off, will this case impact other students either at this particular school or elsewhere in the state?

GLASS: It should definitely impact students at this school. It's a very interesting entity. It's large. It serves about 2,000 students across the state. And the relief that came from this complaint is going to impact all of those students. The school has been required to audit their files to determine if other students like ours were denied services because of staffing issues, to have meetings with every single one of those students and their families to determine how are we going to make this right on an individual basis for all these kids.

They've also been required to work, as I said, with a special monitor who is providing them with training, helping them adjust some of their policies to be more legally compliant. And I think all of that is going to have a big impact on our students who are deaf, hard of hearing, or visually impaired in the state of Arizona. I'm very happy about that.

In terms of other schools or other local education agencies, you know, seeing this and being put on notice or learning from this, I'm not sure again how likely that is because this is kind of secret.

BRODIE: Do you have a sense of how many students at this particular school could be affected?

GLASS: I don't know for sure. Again, there's 2,000 students within the ASDB system who are served. Many, many students who have hearing impairment require speech and language therapy. I would imagine most have some form of speech language therapy because that's going to work on their communication skills beyond verbal speech, but just communication generally.

So the fact that ASDB did not have a speech therapist for the 23-24 school year is wild to me. I imagine many, many of the students who were there were impacted at least by that service.

BRODIE: Even with the order though, I mean, if the school can't afford to hire these folks, does anything change, I mean, if they don't get more money?

GLASS: It's a great question, and I think unfortunately this is the conundrum of my my entire career is I'm holding the schools accountable and saying this is the law, you must follow it for these students and the schools are saying, where do I pull from to make that right and get rid of that liability.

I will say that schools have insurance through the state, so there's the Arizona Risk Retention Trust that most schools have bought into. So they have some ability to fix these particular issues. But they do, they need funding. I mean, I do think this is reflective of a broader issue, not just in Arizona, but across the country of, we talk a lot about teacher teacher shortages, but we also need to think about related service professionals like speech therapists, occupational therapists, counselors and without those staff available, our students are going to miss out on what they need and the schools are going to be legally in trouble.

BRODIE: So you mentioned the idea of whether this is a one-off or sort of a sea change. I wonder about the importance placed on the state Department of Education now, given everything going on on the federal level and in terms of the Trump administration's efforts to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education.

GLASS: Yes, federally we know that the administration's aim is to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, which does play a critical role in enforcing the rights of students, their civil rights, their disability related rights. What we've heard several times from the administration is send it back to the states, and we are hopeful that the results here are indicative of our state's willingness to step up and take on that responsibility.

That is what I'm hoping. I really hope it's not a one-off. I hope that's what this is. I think there are a lot of ways that the state will need to step up beyond this. The state complaint process has existed since 1975 when IDEA was passed, but there are other things that other state departments of education do that ours has chosen not to.

For example, enforcing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which is more about discrimination. Arizona's Department of Ed has always pointed to the U.S. Department of Ed and said, if you have a discrimination complaint, that's not us, that's out of our hands, go to the U.S. Department of Ed. Well, we know with the major reduction in force and possible dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Ed that that's not really a viable option for families anymore.

So if you are experiencing discrimination on the basis of disability, where do you go? And I think it should be the Arizona Department of Education.

BRODIE: What are you hearing from families right now about What's going on both at the state and federal levels and, you know, maybe concerns they have about what all that could mean for their kids.

GLASS: I think the families that we serve are very concerned about services. We had the huge DDD issue in Arizona this year, talks of Medicaid being cut. The families we serve have students who rely on those supports so much, both in home, and there are supports that cross over into schools. Schools can actually bill to Medicaid for certain services that are provided.

We have families who are calling us very concerned and upset with discrimination complaints, and we used to be able to say you can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Ed's Office for Civil Rights. Now, you know, technically, yes, that's still an option, but how realistic is it that your complaint will be picked up and investigated quickly enough for it to make a difference for your child. It's not clear.

And so that is definitely not our go-to route anymore and we are having to explore other means of helping families enforce their civil rights.