Paula.. Do you much about this?
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| Sat, 04-21-2007 - 5:46pm |
Or know of any body with a similar situation?
Rina
Dear Listmates: Please help a fellow attorney representing a Northport family if you have any familiarity with this issue:
AKCUDDY132@AOL.COM WRITES
I have a case on Long Island (Northport-East Northport CSD) where the District launched a Child Protective Services complaint against the parents because the parents refused to consent for their child to be screened by BOCES for a therapeutic program. (THE KID HAS NO PSYCH DIAGNOSIS.) They just wanted to send this dyslexic, TS kid out of the district because he requires a bit more work than most. So they reported the parents to CPS with this as one of the allegations, trying to force consent by this means rather than getting it overridden by an IHO, as it would never fly in an impartial hearing. There are a number of other IDEA issues that the District, in collusion with CPS, is trying to push in the family court ignoring all of the procedural protections of the IDEA.
The firm that is orchestrating this is Ingerman & Smith. I am trying to find out if anyone else is running into this with I&S or with this district. I am in the 8th day of trial in the family court on this BS, but what they attempted to do is use it to force the parents into consenting to the change of placement, and most families, faced with the expense of a trial on something like this, likely would buckle in order to extricate themselves from the family court. I suspect that this is a common tactic of this firm or SD to dump these kids into the BOCES programs because they do not want to provide for them appropriately in the mainstream setting or want to make the kid miserable at 14, 15 and 16 so that he will drop out.
I'd appreciate anyone from LI who knows of this happening with other kids to please let me know, or have anyone contact me with information about this tactic being used. Please forward this without further permission to any listserve or individual(s) you might think would be able to provide me info on this issue. Thanks.
Andrew Cuddy, Esq.
akcuddy132@aol.com
(716)868-9103

Yikes!
No. This is the first I heard of it. Not good...
-Paula
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com