It seems she was a life long “special ed” student who is actually fairly intelligent – just never developed the ability to read. Maybe she’s dyslexic?
Now in community college and uses the voice to text function on her smartphone to “translate” class materials into something she can understand.
intercst
Maybe she has ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder). The people she should be suing is her parents or herself.
Maybe that’s the legal defense for the city.
There are a lot of these kinds of cases. ADA requires school districts to accommodate students with disabilities and provide a special ed program that meets their needs. That gets expensive, and school districts often shortchange kids to save more money for football (or other popular programs).
There was a kid in Oregon that had some kind of rare, but verifiable mental condition where she went crazy at the smell of food. The school district had to pay for some kind of special school in Massachusetts that cost $300,000/yr.
intercst
I agree on accommodating special needs but 300,000 a year for one student is absurd. That is more than it costs to educate 25 kids in one year. I would set a limit on that to 5x.
iirc While “Charter” schools in Michigan are required to accept anyone, just as the public schools are, privates can discriminate.
Steve
The Feds supply local school districts with about $25K per year for each special ed student which is in addition to the regular per pupil funding. This can provide for a lot of programs but not, obviously, a program for someone who needs $300K. That is exceptional, the far end of the distribution.
DB2
The FBI searched at least two Minnesota autism centers Thursday as itinvestigated “substantial evidence” of fraudulent Medicaid claims made by many companies participating in the state program. The state-funded Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) program, which serves people under 21 with autism spectrum disorder, has experienced exponential growth in Medicaid billing. Reimbursement claims soared from $1.7 million in 2017, the first year of the program, to nearly $400 million last year and again this year.
Federal law enforcement suspects many autism centers are billing for services not actually provided.
DB2
I’m glad Gov. Tim Walz calls for tougher Medicaid ](Gov. Tim Walz calls for tougher Medicaid fraud penalties) investigations.
When I was living in Houston, there was some kind of Medicaid fraud going on in a HIV/Aids program and apparently over 90% of the nations total billing was going to providers in Texas (obviously 90% of the HIV/Aids population wasn’t residing in Texas)
I happened to be watching one of those Sunday morning political shows where a reporter asked GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson if we should be investigating the fraud. She replied, “Oh no, that would put more regulatory demands on business.”
Maybe the fraudsters were some of her big campaign contributors?
intercst
Classic. The guiding principle of USian governance and economics, for 40 years “must not burden the ‘JCs’”
Michigan is about to bump minimum wage at the start of next year. Restaurant “JCs” are screaming Armageddon: “billions of jobs lost” they wail, if they need to pay their people more.
How far are we willing to go with the “No child left behind” concept?
Nice idea, but there should be some practical limits.
We hear stories of parents deciding to live in school districts that have special education programs. That is one way. But special ed is likely to be manpower intensive making it expensive. Tax payers must be willing to support it.
She is doing a service.
Her education matters.
The magnent schools are not pulling anyone up. They sink the budgets. Everyone is getting hurt. Time to keep pointing it out
Yep.
I have a cousin that married a gal from Kentucky and they decided to adopt 5 or 6 special needs kids. Then they decided that Kentucky wasn’t providing the kind of education the kids needed, so they moved to a small town in New Hampshire near the Canadian border. (New England states tend to fund education better.)
Long story short. They eventually were responsible for about 40% of the towns special needs education budget and got run out of town. Now they’re back in Kentucky.
intercst
Here’s the story on the $300,000 kid.
intercst