Three D.C. agencies have failed throughout the pandemic to provide adequate education to incarcerated students with disabilities, a nonprofit group said in a recent complaint filed with the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.
“Multiple students confirmed that they are receiving identical packets, regardless of whether they are in ninth, tenth, eleventh, or twelfth grade,” the complaint says. Students “are not told what grades they have earned, and they are given no opportunity to review their graded work.”
On behalf of the students, advocates asked the Office of Civil Rights to initiate an investigation of the “collective ongoing denial” by D.C. Public Schools, the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) of an appropriate public education for students with disabilities at the Youth Services Center.
“DCPS has harmed [these students], and they need to repair that harm,” Kelsey Woodford, one of the Disability Rights DC attorneys who filed the complaint, said in an interview.
The mother of a student with disabilities detained at the facility since last year said she was concerned that her son did not learn anything during the school year. She spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation against her son.
Throughout the school year, her 12th-grade son was given only middle-school work, she said. Her son’s 504 plan, designed to ensure his learning needs are met, requires that DCPS provide him with in-class assistance, but she said he did not have a teacher for several months. Even when computers were available, she said, class instruction was not.
“Even though they are detained, they are still students. They still have a right to learn,” she said.
To account for student losses under the agencies’ care, Disability Rights DC demands compensatory education, including individualized instructional material; five-day-a-week live education, through in-person lessons or virtual learning; teachers certified in special education; and continued reports of each student’s status toward completion of graduation requirements. The Youth Services Center houses more than 50 people between ages 12 and 21, but advocates said they didn’t know how many need special education services.
A spokesperson for OSSE, which is tasked with ensuring that students with disabilities are receiving a free and appropriate public education, said the agency had not received notice of the complaint.
DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee and acting DYRS director Hilary Cairns did not return requests for comment.
When schools shut down amid the pandemic, students in the D.C. community received in-person instruction and technology devices, but incarcerated students with special needs were left unattended, Woodford said.
The complaint by Disability Rights DC adds to the scrutiny of the District’s education policies during the pandemic. In April, 40 students with disabilities — enrolled in the Inspiring Youth Program, which operates inside the D.C. Jail — filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that DCPS failed to educate them during the pandemic. The case is pending, but a judge mandated in June that the District provide special-education services immediately.
In March, Disability Rights DC advocates filed a first complaint with OSSE’s special-education division on behalf of a 16-year-old student with a disability. According to the student’s Individualized Education Program, he required synchronous education and other services to access his education, but the complaint says he was denied such needs during the several months he was detained. Virtual instruction was nonexistent last spring, the advocates said, and over the fall it was sporadic at best.
In response to that first complaint, OSSE said it determined that DCPS “provided specialized instruction … to the greatest extent possible within the restrictions placed on students at Youth Services Center during the covid-19 pandemic.”
Two Disability Rights DC staff members then visited the Youth Services Center early last month to meet the students, Woodford said. During the visit, one student said that they were still getting only paper packets, sporadic tutoring and access to laptops for only one to two hours. Students also said there was just one tutor to assist six students with their packets.
Officials are “sending the message over and over again that this population of students is low-priority for the district,” Woodford said.
On Sept. 30, two days after the complaint was filed, DYRS and DCPS ended their partnership at the Youth Services Center. Maya Angelou Academy — the nonprofit organization that manages the Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools in the District — then took over the education of the students housed at the Youth Services Center, Woodford said.
“The DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services and DC Public Schools are committed to the success of the students at the Youth Services Center,” DCPS said in a statement. “DCPS and DYRS collaborated throughout this process to ensure a smooth transition for our students.”
Students’ advocates worry the Maya Angelou Academy will need extra support and funding to help incarcerated students get back to where they need to be.
“They are inheriting an education system in complete disarray,” Woodford said.
