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Youngstown Schools don’t follow required procedures regarding special education
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The city school district isn’t following the law in its practices to address special-education students’ needs.
A review from the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Exceptional Children, based on an audit conducted last spring, found three areas in which the district did not adequately or properly follow required procedures regarding its special-education students.
The report was released June 20.
“Due to the extent and nature” of the noncompliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Office of Exceptional Children “has determined that Youngstown City Schools is in violation of Free Appropriate Public Education requirements ... particularly with respect to its junior high and high school students with disabilities placed at East High School, Choffin Career & Technical Center” and Wilson Programs of Promise, the report said.
Rather than delivering services tailored specifically to individual special-education students, the district is applying standardized services or, in some cases, no services. In doing so, those students are being denied a free and public education, the report said.
Stephen Stohla, interim superintendent, said the district is 75 percent compliant. It has 60 school days from the report’s June 20 release to develop a plan.
“They said they would help us with the plan,” Stohla said. “A lot has to do with parents participating in the meetings and figuring out how to address it.”
The district’s first chief executive officer, Krish Mohip, a Chicago Public Schools administrator, begins his new job Wednesday and likely will be tasked with addressing the issues in the report.
Stohla said he likely would present the same plan for grade realignment he distributed a few months ago to school board members. “We want to move more toward neighborhood schools – rather than busing them all over – and to make room for preschools,” he said.
The school board took no action on those recommendations, which included moving sixth-graders out of the elementary school buildings to make room for all-day preschool.
Mohip then can take a year to gather community input, Stohla said. It’s too late to make major changes for next year’s grade and building configuration.
ODE will help the school district with the plan, a spokeswoman said.
“Our initial efforts will be to provide assistance for the district to help them meet the requirements outlined in their corrective action plan,” Brittany Halpin wrote in an email. “If they are unable, they will move into Progressive Sanctions, which can lead to withholding and/or redirecting use of IDEA funds.”
The report also found that the city school district, “through its junior high and high school admission practices, is predetermining the educational placements of students with disabilities based on whether they have an [individualized education program] and not on individual needs and through the IEP team process as required,” it said.
Thirdly, it reports that the school district “has an equity issue to address regarding access to vocational and career technical education programming for its junior high and high school students with disabilities.”
ODE’s review included record reviews, classroom observations, staff interviews and parent meetings as well as data an analysis.