Susan Senator

My friend Michael Goldberg is my special needs news resource. Autism Bulletin is an excellent, no-nonsense, smart and elegant presentation of national special needs news stories, especially about autism. Today I read about a court case where the Supreme Court was tied regarding a New York City family, thereby allowing a lower court ruling to stand. So the family who had sued the city for cost of their child with LD won in this case. First I jumped to the conclusion that the family had been wronged by NYC and had triumphed. Then I learned that this was pretty much what I refer to as a “private school family,” one who sends their children to private school from the start. So when the family learned that their child had a disability, they asserted their rights under the law to public money for services, and the school system has to pay.

From what an NPR Marketplace report said, it does not appear that the family ever even tried the public school program. This sounds piggish, but it is not clear what they did; they may have explored the public school offering without actually sending their kid, knowing it was sub-par. Unfortunately the reporting makes it seem that the family, who is very wealthy, was acting piggish and snobby as opposed to possibly acting in the child’s best interests, not wanting to see the child fail first and founder in the public school.

I was once offered a public school placement for Nat at our high school that I never sent him to. I could tell that it would be too great a leap. I could not even get assurance that Nat’s aide would have special ABA training. I could not get a tour of the vocational component. So I said “no thanks,” sight unseen and continued to send him to his hugely expensive private program, at the town’s expense. Why should I consent to put Nat at risk like that? I know what the wrong supports can mean (read the book if you don’t know).

And so I reserve judgment on this case because I don’t know enough of the behind-the-scenes. It feels a bit unsavory to me, considering that the family always sends all their kids to private schools, and yet it could also be that in this child’s case, it was right to do so. Ability to pay is not a part of the IDEA, nor should it be. But I do confess that there are many, many services I have paid for on my own because I just couldn’t bring myself to ask my overburdened school system to pay. But — why are they overburdened?

Because state and federal legislators refuse to raise enough taxes to pay for the public education they have legislated because they want to hold onto their powerful jobs!!!! A curse on all their heads, as my great grandmother Sarel Wolfson used to say, referring to the Bolsheviks and the Tsar and his henchmen, the vile Cossacki.

Justice Anthony Kennedy apparently recused himself. When Ned told me this, we both looked at each other and said at the same time, “He must be a grandfather…”

In the end, is politics always personal? Is that inevitable, that we are informed by our personal experiences, but then we must strive to see beyond that and think of the Greater Good? But what is the Greater Good? I know, but do you? Of course you do, but we may disagree…