The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced that the Four Rivers Special Education District in Illinois has entered into an agreement to ensure its disciplinary practices do not deny students with disabilities a free appropriate public education (FAPE) and comply with civil rights obligations to students with disabilities under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The Four Rivers Special Education District operates one school designed specifically to serve students with emotional disabilities and students with disabilities who benefit from the supports the district offers in its Learning in Functional Environments program: the district reports that it “houses intensive, supportive special education classrooms to meet the needs of children when the home districts cannot provide the necessary level of supports.” Notwithstanding the district’s stated purpose to effectively serve students with disabilities who require intensive supports, OCR’s review established otherwise, raising serious civil rights compliance concerns. The district routinely referred students to law enforcement for non-criminal behaviors, referring students 96 times in one school year, which was more than the total number of students enrolled that year. These law enforcement referrals were often for behavior that could have been based on disability such as “disruption,” “inappropriate language,” and “phone violation” notwithstanding the district’s advertised specialization in meeting the needs of students with disabilities.
In addition, several students with disabilities spent extensive time out of the classroom – one student went to the school crisis room 143 times during a single school year, spending as long as four hours and 20 minutes there in a single day – but district records did not reflect evaluation of whether this non-instructional time merited reevaluation to determine whether different or additional supports may be necessary for a student or evaluation whether a student needed compensatory services to ensure that student’s equal access to education.
“Four Rivers Special Education District has signed a robust agreement to assure that students with disabilities will not be removed from the classroom or referred to law enforcement for non-criminal, disability-based conduct,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon. “This agreement will ensure that students placed in the district will receive the appropriate education guaranteed by federal law and will no longer be referred to law enforcement for behaviors a school that advertises its provision of ‘intensive, supportive special education classrooms’ should be fully equipped to manage.”
The resolution agreement commits the district to:
- Convene an IEP meeting for each student with disabilities who missed instructional time resulting from law enforcement contact or use of the crisis room in the 2021-2022 through 2023-2024 school years in order to revise and/or more clearly define the use of law enforcement or the crisis room in the student’s IEP as appropriate to meet the individualized needs of the student, and determine whether its use of law enforcement or the crisis room for the student resulted in a denial of a FAPE, then, if so, determine and provide necessary compensatory education and/or remedial services to provide the student a FAPE.
- Develop and implement policies and procedures governing its use of the crisis room to ensure that all students with disabilities receive a FAPE.
- Develop and implement policies and procedures governing contacts with law enforcement for students, to ensure that all students with disabilities receive a FAPE, including criteria for contacting law enforcement that is limited to criminal behaviors that cannot be effectively managed by the district and steps consistent with Section 504 and Title II that must be taken prior to a law enforcement contact.
- Develop and implement a record-keeping system and procedures to ensure accurate, complete and timely documentation of each law enforcement contact and each use of the crisis room. And,
- Train administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals, and social workers on the requirements of Section 504 pertaining to the district’s obligation to provide a FAPE to students with disabilities, and when a student’s IEP team must convene to address the repeated use of law enforcement and/or the crisis room.
The resolution letter to the Four Rivers Special Education District and the resolution agreement are available on the OCR website.