In 2023, Millard Public Schools enrolled the most new option students in the state, but 27 of its 34 denials were students with IEPs. What the state report didn’t show, said spokeswoman Rebecca Kleeman, is that the district had accepted 60% of the kids with IEPs who applied that year and more than 90% the year prior.
“We exist to educate children, and we want to accept as many as we can. We also want to be careful not to exceed capacity of any program so that we can serve our students effectively,” Kleeman said in an email.
Westside Community Schools received about 700 option applications, more than any other Nebraska district, and rejected about half. Roughly 25% of the denials had IEPs.
The district welcomes option students, “but our first responsibility is to the families who live in our district, so we must ensure we have adequate space, staff and services for all students,” said district spokeswoman Elizabeth Power in a statement.
In Papillion La Vista, students with disabilities made up 14% of accepted option applications but 56% of rejections in the 2023-24 school year.
The disproportionate denial rates developed because the school board voted to close its K-12 special education program to option students for the year. The district just didn’t have enough teachers and staff to take on more students, said spokesman Christopher Villarreal. It reversed course following the enactment of the 2023 law, but capacity issues remain, he said.
”You accept up to a certain point, and then you say, now I can’t accept any more,” said Tammy Voisin, Papillion La Vista’s director of special services.
Conrad said the “capacity argument just doesn’t hold any water for me,” since districts would have to find a way to provide special ed services to families like the Zephiers that move within their boundaries.
“We can’t just throw up our hands and say ‘capacity’ if I move into the district, but that’s what we’re doing right now for kids and families with special needs who want to utilize option enrollment,” she said at a February bill hearing.
Voisin said that when the special ed program is full and a student with disabilities moves into the district, administrators “figure it out” by shifting teachers to different buildings or hiring more staff. But because the school board sets firm staffing numbers each fall for the following year, she said, the district can’t suddenly hire more people if it receives too many option enrollment requests.
State Sen. Dave Murman, who sponsored the bill to ban the disproportionate denial of kids with IEPs, said districts that receive more option students than they lose are typically better staffed in special ed than those like Omaha, where students are trying to transfer out.
Those “option positive” districts should be more easily able to adjust their staffing to take in additional students with disabilities than OPS is, said the Republican lawmaker from Glenvil.
OPS’ teacher shortage grew so severe in 2023 that it eliminated special ed programs at three North Omaha elementary schools a week before the school year started. The district gave about 140 families the option to move their kids to another school or forgo their IEP accommodations.
Staffing levels have improved from that low point, and special ed programs at the three schools returned last year. But Nebraska’s biggest district still faces gaping personnel holes, including vacancies for 62 special ed teachers, 63 classroom support staffers and 20 speech pathologists.
The district has “a deep commitment to student success” and actively recruits staff year round in a competitive marketplace to meet students’ needs, an OPS statement said.
Zooming out
Days before assuming the Oval Office in 1989, George H.W. Bush gave a hefty endorsement to public school choice, setting off a wave of legislation in state capitols across the country.
Today, most states allow nonresident students to transfer into public school districts, but Nebraska is one of 15 where districts are obligated to take transfers under certain circumstances, according to the Education Commission of the States.
Disability disparities have emerged in other states with open enrollment programs.
In 2021, Wisconsin districts rejected students with disabilities for open enrollment at nearly three times the rate of other students.
Technical high schools in Connecticut allegedly discriminated against students with disabilities after denying enrollment to 42 kids, a state report found.
Lawmakers also say they recently have increased state funding for special ed and for per-pupil payments in districts that take lots of option kids, making it financially viable to accept transfers with disabilities.
Former state Sen. Justin Wayne, a Democrat from Omaha, said the issue comes down to districts not wanting “to deal with kids who may require a little more work.”
“Elected, connected or sports is how you’re getting into schools now,” Wayne said. “Every reason that I’ve heard in the Legislature of why a school district may or may not take a kid in the Omaha area, to me, they’re just flat-out lying.”
Districts that “pick and choose” which option students to take are shrugging off state law because there’s no penalty, Linehan said.
“If you get a speeding ticket, you get a fine. If you’re a school and you ignore the rules, so what?” she said.
Royers, the union president, acknowledged that some districts may have taken disability rejections too far — especially for students with slight hearing loss or other minor disabilities that don’t require special accommodations. Those districts should be held accountable, he said.
But in most cases, he said, staffing shortages are the real barrier, and some teachers are already in a situation where it’s “mathematically impossible for them to meet all of the instructional-minute requirements for all of the students on their caseload.”
Rural rejection
The uneven denial of students with disabilities in Omaha-area districts has been playing out on a small scale in small towns.
In fall 2015, Gary Shada didn’t know that moving his family to a house a mile outside of the Pierce Public Schools district in northeast Nebraska would upend his daughter’s education.
Shada, a longtime teacher and coach in the district, hoped his two young kids could keep going to Pierce schools through option enrollment.
The district accepted his son’s application but turned down his daughter Kylee, who has Down syndrome, because the elementary school’s special education program was at capacity.
Shada appealed to the Nebraska State Board of Education, but it upheld Pierce’s decision.
Kylee, who just completed seventh grade, is still enrolled in a neighboring district while her brother is in Pierce. Last school year, Shada hoped Kylee could try option enrollment again and attend Pierce High School, but he said Superintendent Kendall Steffensen told him it’s not going to happen and “don’t ever bring it up again.”
Steffensen couldn’t be reached for comment after multiple attempts.
“I just got shot down at every turn. But I’m not saying that Pierce did anything different than any other district would do. That’s why I feel that something has got to change when it comes to option enrollment and kids with special needs,” Shada said. “You can’t just look them in the eye and say, ‘Oh, they have an IEP. We don’t want them.’”
Few parents have appealed denials, as Shada did, and even fewer have succeeded.
Since 2008, the State Board of Education has ruled on 15 appeals of applications rejected for special education capacity shortages, including two that were later withdrawn. The elected panel overturned only two denials.
Stalled out at the Capitol
For Murman, conversations about special education invoke thoughts of Whitney. His adult daughter lives with Rett syndrome and, as a kid, received instruction catered to her needs.
When another of his daughters sought to opt out of their home district in the program’s early days, the first question on the application was: “Does your student have an IEP?”
Murman said he understood that the district needed the information, but it made him wonder how they were using it.
Three decades later, Murman led the recently thwarted effort to close the disability disparity in option enrollment as the chair of the Legislature’s Education Committee.
His bill would have prohibited districts from denying option applications from most kids with disabilities at rates beyond the statewide percentage of students with IEPs — currently about 17%.
School administrators resisted the bill from the start and kept the pressure on their local lawmakers to oppose it, Murman said.
Hastings Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Schneider told Murman’s committee in February that the bill’s passage would force his district to consider taking “a backward step” by closing option enrollment to all students.
发表回复