Help Mareena
Unfortunately the misuse of our taxpayer dollars by districts is more the norm than it is the exception . Mareena's case is not an isolated one, this happens quite often in different districts as well. Below are some examples of what Mareena and many other families have encountered.
The fact of the matter is that Mareena's story is one of thousands across this great country. If we do not voice our opinion and continue to allow disctricts to misuse their power and our tax dollars, nothing will change. This issue has been around since our children have been attending schools and in 1975 laws were passed to protect all children. The Los Alamitos school district along with so many others repeatedly violate the rights of disabled children and use bully tactics to scare parents into keeping quiet. This must come to end.
"special education experts say resistance to paying for services is so ingrained among school districts that they will spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on attorney fees — amounts that in some cases dwarf the costs of the services sought — to deny or not reimburse families for the educational needs."
"But the alliance takes things a step further, according to interviews and documents. It fights families seeking special education services under state and federal laws. Such an agency is so rare that state that national leaders in the special education field said San Diego is the only place with a similar organization. San Diego's, they said, is far less active."
"The apparent attempt to dupe the appellate court with the amicus brief reflects the depth of legal challenges families face in attempting to win services they believe should be provided under state and federal laws to children with disabilities."
"Susan Barker was a resource specialist in Riverside, Calif. in 2005 when she raised red flags about the limited services provided to students with disabilities in the school district. She made a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and says her superiors in the school district promptly began intimidating her."
“There’s disagreements between families and school districts, and less than 1 percent of families request a due process hearing, and only 3 percent of them actually go to the hearing,” parent advocate Ann McDonald-Cacho said, citing CLA statistics. “The numbers show that most families…don’t have the resources, they don’t know where to find a lawyer, they don’t know how they could possibly hire a lawyer in order to work out these disagreements,” McDonald-Cacho said .
“This type of action … may unreasonably limit parents’ dispute resolution options, and force parents either to participate in a potentially more adversarial, lengthy and costly due process complaint and hearing, or to fail to participate in the due process complaint and hearing and thereby risk the hearing official’s ruling in favor of the public agency,” the guidance states.