June 25, 2024 10:51 pm• Last Updated: June 25, 2024 10:51 pm
Four Connecticut school districts face a federal civil rights complaint alleging they sent special education students to a "substandard and unequal" program.
The districts — Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury and Stratford — referred dozens of students to High Road schools, a chain with six Connecticut locations now accused of hiring under-qualified staff and over-relying on physical interventions including restraint and seclusion.
In a complaint filed with the the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the non-profit organization Disability Rights Connecticut, along with the state's Office of the Child Advocate, alleges that the districts violated federal special education law by failing to provide disabled students with an adequate education.
The complaint stems from a 57-page investigation into High Road that Disability Rights Connecticut and the Office of the Child Advocate released in March. The report criticized not only High Road but also local districts that sent students there, as well as the state Department of Education, for alleged failure to monitor the program.
"Our investigation showed that, in general, kids who are sent to this segregated school are badly under-served," Sarah Eagan, the state's child advocate, said Tuesday. "They have a civil right to an appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, and that's not what they're getting."
A spokesperson for Hartford Public Schools said Tuesday the district had received the complaint "and will be reviewing the matter with counsel." She noted that the district cooperated with the initial investigation and has committed to changes.
Representatives from the Bridgeport, Waterbury and Stratford school districts did provide comment Tuesday. A spokesperson for High Road referred back to a statement she sent in March, when she said the investigation into High Road "does not accurately reflect the academic and behavioral supports at our schools."
In their complaint, Disability Rights Connecticut and the Office of the Child Advocate ask the Department of Justice to mandate that local districts provide adequate resources for special education, provide students with appropriate behavioral health services and monitor High Road to ensure students receive physical education, art and other legally required programs.
High Road operates six schools across Connecticut, with programs in Hartford, Wallingford, Norwalk, Windham and New London. During the 2021-22 school year, the schools served about 316 students originating from 38 different local districts.
Tom Cosker, an advocate with Disability Rights Connecticut, said the group has had continued contact with school districts who send students to High Road but has been "not getting enough change happening." He said he'd like to see districts out-place special education students only when truly necessary and do more to monitor conditions in private programs where they send those students.
"They shouldn't find out about (problems) in a public report that we issue," Cosker said. "They should be finding out about that through their own monitoring and oversight."
Cosker noted that Connecticut leads all states in the placement of children with disabilities in separate schools and that Black and Latino students are out-placed more often than white students.
The four districts named in the complaint were those who sent a large number of students to High Road schools and whose students were commonly restrained or secluded there, Cosker said. He declined to say whether Disability Rights Connecticut plans further action against High Road or against the state Department of Education.
Eagan said she is "sympathetic" to constraints in poor districts like Hartford, Bridgeport and Waterbury that make it difficult to monitor High Road and other private programs, the result is a "continuing harm without a remedy, until somebody compels a remedy."
"Neither the school districts that we met with or heard from, nor the state, is taking responsibility for the adequacy of this and similarly situated programs," Eagan said. "Everybody points the finger at everybody else, and ultimately kids pay the price for that."
Matthew Cerrone, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said in an email Tuesday that the Office of the Child Advocate had shown a "refusal to work in a collaborative manner" with the agency. Additionally, he said on-site reviews of High Road schools "called into question the reliability and accuracy of DRCT/OCA's claims regarding, among other things, staffing credentials and hiring practices."
Asked about Cerrone's comments, Eagan responded that the education department's follow-up review "doesn't refute" the findings of the initial investigation, which was conducted between March 2022 and March 2024 and based largely on staffing data provided by High Road and the state.
Advocates say the issues identified at High Road — under-staffing, under-qualified instructors, lack of individualized programming, reliance on restraint and seclusion and more — are not unique to that program. Last week ProPublica reported Connecticut agencies have advised school districts to stop sending students to a New York boarding school for autistic students called Shrub Oak International School after Disability Rights Connecticut warned of "serious safety concerns" there.
According to state data, more than 3,000 special education students in Connecticut were physically restrained or secluded in a locked room during the 2021-22 school year a total of 38,758 times, resulting in 241 injuries, 10 of which required medical attention beyond first aid.
