ADHD & ESE

You will never meet a nicer mom than TD's mom, but she constantly has had to fight the Manatee County School Board bureaucracy to get special education services for her son JD.  TD has ADHD, and Manatee did not want to even consider having an ADHD student in their exceptional student education program.  And the Manatee School Superintendent likes to use Greg Scharff, a California attorney that specializes in limiting the ESE services Florida school districts provide special needs students.  It is a money thing.  Forget federal law and the student's needs, it does not fit in the budget of many of the counties lying within a low-tax state.  Some superintendents in the state believe in hammering the parents of special needs students with legal fees until they break.

After the Manatee School Board would not provide TD the services JD's mom was certain were needed, she asked for an administrative hearing.  Click here for the Administrative Law Judge's ruling, a ruling in TD's favor.  At that point, Manatee pulled out all of the legal stops, and with five attorneys, marched into federal court.   Manatee worries about its ESE budget, but its legal budget has no limit.  The parent must be hammered into financial submission to set the precedent for other parents with similar concerns. 

A federal judge just communicated on Friday that federal law does apply to the Manatee County School Board and that money will need to be found to pay for special education services to serve a special needs student.  If the five attorneys representing  the school board agree to donate back their fees in view of their loss, there will be plenty of money to educate TD many times over.  Obviously that won't happen.  You can feel sure that if an appeal is possible, that will be the recommendation the attorneys involved. 

If you have an ADHD child that has been denied special education services, click here to get a copy of the Judge's ruling.  If you would like a copy of the transcript from the administrative hearing and/or the federal court hearing, just email me and I will work to get you one.