The Ohio Department of Education has ordered Toledo Public Schools to provide compensatory educational time to special-education students whose specialized programs were not fulfilled when the district switched to online instruction at the coronavirus pandemic’s spring onset.
The education department’s Office for Exceptional Children acted in response to a June 15 complaint by Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, which took exception to how TPS handled the shutdown and received calls from clients concerned about its special-education plans.
“The district had a policy in place that was a blanket policy for all students with disabilities as opposed to individualized plans to meet each student’s unique needs as required by law,” Jen Behnfeldt, a child advocate with ABLE’s Medical-Legal Partnership for Children program, said Saturday.
Ms. Behnfeldt said that when her agency protested to TPS, the results were “incomplete,” with some students’ Individualized Education Plans worked on while others were not. District officials told ABLE they were making a “best-faith effort” to comply with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, she said, but that law’s requirements were not waived during the pandemic.
The state’s order directs Toledo Public Schools to amend the affected students’ current education plans to incorporate compensatory instructional time “to address the 44 school days that occurred between March 17, 2020 and May 22, 2020.”
Students with the greatest need scores in a rating system developed by the department must receive minute-for-minute compensatory time, while those in a middle tier are to be compensated at 50 percent, and those with the lowest need scores will get no compensatory time.
The district is ordered to draft letters to each time-eligible student’s parents by Jan. 4 explaining the situation and inviting their response, unless a particular student’s annual education-plan review falls before Jan. 29, the deadline by which amended Individualized Education Plans must be in place.
Jim Gant, the Toledo district’s executive transformational leader of organizational staff and business operations, issued a prepared statement in response that the district “is committed to providing a quality education to every student, every day, including during this time of a global pandemic.”
The education department’s findings, “with which TPS respectfully disagrees, has no effect on the district’s commitment to its students.”
Mr. Gant did not address how the district plans to respond to the state’s order, nor did Patty Mazur, the district’s spokesman, respond to a follow-up question about that Saturday evening.
First Published November 22, 2020, 2:24 a.m.
