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St. Vrain is liable for boy's schooling

Private education for special-needs child to cost district $82,000

Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 1, 2006 at midnight

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A hearing officer has ordered the St. Vrain Valley School District to pay up to $82,000 for the one-on-one private-school education of a 10- year-old boy with learning disabilities and a form of autism.

The parents of Tyler Vandelac said he suffered greatly and deteriorated academically in the year he spent at the district's Frederick Elementary School.

But hearing officer Richard Fisher said there was plenty of evidence that the Frederick teachers worked hard with Tyler and that his skills improved.

Still, Fisher said, the district is liable because, once its officials agreed in May that Frederick wasn't the right place for Tyler, they failed to give the parents any appropriate alternatives.

So, when the Vandelacs chose $1,800-per-week Western Institute for Neurodevelopmental Studies and Intervention in Boulder for Tyler for the 2006-07 school year, all Fisher said he had to do was determine whether Western Institute provided an appropriate educational setting.

He said it did, and therefore ordered the school district to pay up to 36 weeks of tuition, plus $16,000 more in follow-up care.

The crux of the issue appeared to be that St. Vrain Valley officials knew that Tyler's parents weren't satisfied with the schools being suggested, and yet they didn't try to convene another meeting about it.

St. Vrain Valley officials said they would have no comment because of "pending litigation".

The case calls to mind that of Luke Perkins, whose learning problems weren't being remedied by the Berthoud School District, which was ordered to pay his $100,000- a-year private-school tuition at a specialized school in Massachusetts.

Such orders threaten to shrink resources for the average child in a Colorado public school, said Bruce Caughey, policy director at the Colorado Association of School Executives.

"That's a huge hit for any school district," Caughey said. "Anytime you take away that amount of money from the general-fund budget, it has to come from somewhere else."

Caughey said the underlying problem is that Congress mandated that public schools provide the appropriate education for special-needs students, regardless of cost, but didn't appropriate the needed money.

Louise Bouzari, an attorney for the Vandelacs, said she was surprised that the hearing officer wasn't harsher on Frederick Elementary School.

Bouzari noted that the school kept two different sets of records on Tyler - one for the school district and one shared with the parents.

The March 14, 2006, "Notes from School" record given to the parents said Tyler's morning and afternoon were both "super," and added, "We had a fun day."

The school district's functional analysis worksheet for the same day - not shared with the parents - said that Tyler was tapping his head on the wall, "crying, red face, hands over ears . . . screaming, beating his head on glass doors, calling me 'moron,' slamming doors, and out front door. He is going to kill himself, blame me."

Desiree Vandelac, Tyler's mother, said she's "devastated" that the two sets of records were so different.

"All year, my son was experiencing all this stress and pain, and they didn't indicate it," she said. "Tyler must have been wondering why Mommy and Daddy weren't protecting him. They didn't want to admit that they couldn't handle his needs."