There are few scholarship programs that exist for special needs students, especially if you are in a high school grade level. While there are financial assistance programs for early intervention of younger students, they are usually focused on a few specific disabilities and are limited in the scope of what the assistance will cover. The dollar amount of these programs is usually not enough for a parent to remove their child from a school district and place them in private services.

A common piece of advice that a parent receives is to call an IEP meeting to review their child’s goals and the progress toward those goals. The IEP is the Individualized Education Plan that is put together for a special needs student outlining goals for that individual student’s education, and how they will be met. Parents who call our office report their frustration with the IEP process. They state that no one in the meeting is on their side and education terms are not clearly defined. The overall feeling is that they are railroaded into the plans put together by the teachers or agencies in the meeting and have very little input. Meetings called by a parent to review a struggling student’s IEP often begins with a long delay in even holding the meeting and ends with the student’s little progress being excused away. The parent eventually gets tired of fighting this system and begins to seek a way to remove their child from the district that is failing them.

When a parent begins on this road, they quickly find that it is very difficult to move their child. In St. Louis and Kansas City, public charter schools may be one option. Unfortunately, there are no charter schools that focus only on special needs. The main roadblock to this is that, per Missouri’s charter school law, students must be admitted by a lottery process and not screened in any way before entry. It remain to be seen if a charter school in St. Louis or Kansas City built for special needs students would be successful solely based on the thought that only parents of special needs students would apply to a lottery for their school. According to the Center for Education Reform, there are 85 special needs charter schools in the country, mostly in Florida and Ohio. Even if these schools were to open in St. Louis and Kansas City and be successful, what option does a parent outside of those two districts have? Missouri is the only state in the country that has a geographic cap on charter schools. This cap limits charter schools to opening only inside of the St. Louis and Kansas City Public School districts. The schools can also only accept students who live in these districts.

Parents who call our office usually know that the law requires a free, appropriate public education to be afforded to their child. Therefore, they ask “can’t I just transfer my child to another district with better services?” The answer is unfortunately “no.” This ideal is called open enrollment and Missouri has yet to join the 40 other states in the country who have some form of open enrollment. Open enrollment simply allows parents to transfer their child to a school outside of their assigned district if the receiving district has room. For more on open enrollment, check out our previous post on how open enrollment would help special needs students.

Parents also call in and ask if there are special schools in their district only for special needs students. Twenty three districts contract with Special School District (SSD) of St. Louis County, who operates five special education schools. This leaves 500 districts in the state of Missouri without this option. Parents also report to us the difficulty of getting their child moved into SSD. One parent reported their child being suspended 11 times in the current school year before the district would discuss SSD as an option. According to the parent, this child was on an IEP the previous year and had far fewer behavioral incidents, but was removed from an IEP in the current school year, against the parent’s wishes.

The bottom line in all of these stories is that the parents of the 133,000 Missouri children with IEPs have very few options when they feel the assigned local district is not able to meet the needs of their child. Implementing real education reforms in Missouri will have a positive impact on special needs families. Open enrollment, charter school expansion and scholarship tax credit programs are all good ways to give parents options when their assigned local districts are not educating their children. Districts should look at this recent United Supreme Court case as evidence that the law gives parents great powers when seeking the appropriate education for their child. Districts should jump on board for reforms, or risk paying for children to go to specialized schools, even without their consent. Furthermore, having options will help these children on a path to become productive members of society. Isn’t that what everyone should be working toward?

In some cases, as Meta, MO mother Lois Wankum testified to the committee at their October 20th hearing, students are much closer to a school in an adjacent district than the one to which they are assigned. In other cases, parents are simply looking to remove their child from a failing school district and enroll them in ones that are better performing. For many special needs parents this policy could unlock the doors of educational opportunity for their child that is trapped in a district that does not have the appropriate services to help their child.

Open enrollment would allow for these parents, who often do not have the means to send their child to a private education service such as TouchPoint or Giant Steps, to move their child to a district that may have better services. For example, the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis County gave an excellent presentation on their special needs services at the St. Louis meeting of the Interim Committee on Autism Spectrum Disorders. At the same hearing a mother gave desperate testimony on how her autistic child was having many problems in his local school district and she could not afford to send her child to a specialized private school. “I am drowning here” was the phrase that she repeated over and over. Why should her head continue to be held under water by outdated school district lines? Why should these district lines trap her son in the boundaries of receiving an ineffective education instead of receiving a possible lifeline of intervention leading to a productive, healthy life?

A study in Minnesota, one of 25 states that have open enrollment, shows that “the families of special-needs students are increasingly using the open-enrollment option and are satisfied with their choices.” This same option could be a reality for the families of 133,000+ IEP students in the state of Missouri, should the state choose to allow this policy. These families are not concerned with outdated school boundaries, only with seeing that their child has the best possible education options, and thus the best chance for leading a productive life.

At the same time school districts are scrambling to deal with decreased funding as the economic recession has led to declining tax revenue. St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) recently cutting nursing staff in their district is just one of many recent examples of schools cutting back to close budget deficits. SLPS is dealing with a deficit of $53 million.

The reality that children with autism, and other special needs, are increasing at an alarming rate and schools are receiving less funds leads to this question: How will these special needs students receive an appropriate education? In Missouri, legislators are having trouble funding existing programs, like Career Ladder which gives teachers additional pay for performing extra tutoring and other functions, and are warning of more cuts to come. In addition Missouri,according to the recommendation of the state’s education commissioner, is not applying for the first half of the Race to the Top federal competitive grant program.

One way forward in funding of special needs education is to incentivize the private charity of businesses and individuals to get involved. One way other states have done this is by allowing scholarship tax credit programs. In these programs individuals or corporation are given tax credits for donating to an approved scholarship program. These scholarships are awarded to individuals and used at the school of their choice or to receive additional specialized education in addition to the school they are currently attending. Several states including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Utah have scholarship tax credit programs targeted at students with special needs. A recent study of Florida’s program has concluded that the program is helping to better diagnosis students with special needs.

As the number of special needs students increases we must turn to new methods of funding to provide the best chance for these students to receive an appropriate education, leading them to become productive members of our society. Government entities, both state and local, are not going to be able to keep up with the increased demand for funding that these students will require. Reform minded methods, like scholarship tax credit programs, are going to be the only way to see that these children are not left behind.

Bryce’s condition forced Scharnhorst to experience first-hand the hopeless lack of options that millions of parents face in regards to the education of their special needs child. Though in a high-preforming school district, Bryce was not making any progress. It was only after transferring to a very costly specialized learning center that inspiring growth was finally achieved. “When you see communication in an autistic child–taking instruction and paying attention–you know you found education.”

For this reason, Scharnhorst continues to re-fill Bryce’s Law. “With autism there is no tomorrow, there is only now. Bryce’s Law is my focus. No piece of legislation is more important or deserved than Bryce’s Law.” The creation of the Missouri Special Needs Tax Credit Program will brighten the future of approximately 130,000 children currently enrolled in public school special education that were previously left in the dark.

“You have to look inside your heart. These children need us.”

Visit www.bryceslaw.org for more information.