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The District has settled a lawsuit that claimed the city failed to provide adequate education for incarcerated high school students, the latest development in a legal back-and-forth that started during the pandemic.
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The class-action suit, filed in 2021, claimed D.C. had “effectively abandoned efforts to teach” incarcerated students with disabilities and special education needs as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered in-person learning. While other public school students learned remotely from teachers at home, students at the D.C. jail were given “work packets” to complete on their own, they said.
As part of the settlement, which must be approved by a judge, 166 students will receive “significant compensatory education packages,” the amounts of which will be determined based on how much time each student was denied proper instruction, attorneys said. Students can use the funds for a number of educational uses — including tutoring, additional classes to earn their diplomas, college courses or vocational programs.
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Kaitlin Banner, deputy legal director at Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs — which, along with the School Justice Project and Terris Pravlik & Millian law firm, is representing the plaintiffs — called the settlement a “landmark” agreement.
“It is one of the first to address what happened during covid-19 and the impact of depriving students for a long period of time of their education and related services,” Banner said. “One of the things that the settlement recognizes is that students need access to services to help them make up” what they missed.
Under city law, D.C. is responsible for providing specialized education to people 18 to 22 years old with disabilities while they are detained. That means the high school program inside the D.C. jail is supposed to have services, such as speech-language pathology, to ensure that each person is able to access the curriculum.
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The settlement outlines how educators must provide instruction to incarcerated students moving forward. Maya Angelou Public Charter School, which took over the high school program at the D.C. jail from D.C. Public Schools in October 2021, is now the facility’s provider.
It also requires D.C. to fund an outside auditor who has “significant authority under the agreement to enter the jail, to watch classes, to look at documents, to talk to students, to talk to the educators, to talk to the correctional officials,” said Kathleen L. Millian, an attorney at Terris, Pravlik & Millian. The auditor will make sure D.C. complies with the agreement and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — known as IDEA, a federal law that requires public schools to serve students with disabilities.
The plaintiffs were high school students enrolled in the D.C. jail’s on-site school called the Inspiring Youth Program when the lawsuit was filed in April 2021. The court allowed the plaintiffs to use pseudonyms because they feared retaliation for filing the suit and because the case involves sensitive information about their disabilities and educational status.
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“I’m thankful that I got to help people get the education that they need,” Charles H., one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement about the settlement. “I’m going to keep fighting for it to be better.”
Judge holds D.C. in contempt for failing to provide education to older students with disabilities in jail
At the time the suit was filed, D.C. Public Schools ran the Inspiring Youth Program, which attorneys said was responsible for 30 to 40 students at any given time.
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Officials from the traditional public school district, which was named as a defendant, did not immediately comment. Christina Grant, D.C.’s state superintendent of education, said her office is committed to implementing the terms of the settlement.
“This settlement, which provides students with essential educational supports at a critical juncture in their lives, affirms [the Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s] vision and commitment to ensure D.C. learners of all ages and backgrounds are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to pursue and thrive on the life path of their choice,” Grant said in a statement.
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According to the complaint, when the school district moved to virtual learning in March 2020, officials eliminated in-person classes inside the jail. The majority of students throughout the public school system were learning from their homes and received direct instruction from teachers and class materials, attorneys said, but students in the Inspiring Youth Program were given “inaccessible, inadequate, and inconsistently delivered work packets that they had to complete without instruction or assistance.”
The plaintiffs also claimed the city’s education agencies “systematically failed” to implement their individualized educational plans, or IEPs — documents that outline the services a student with disabilities should receive in school. “The work packets cannot provide these students with the specialized instruction and support that they need and do not replace their classes or counseling sessions,” according to the complaint.
The allegations “are not the result of an error or mistake,” according to the complaint, “but a deliberate decision to abandon the educational welfare and needs of students detained in the D.C. jail complex. For more than a year, defendants have knowingly and systemically failed to ensure that this student population receives its federally mandated special education and related services.”
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The settlement is the latest development in the years-long legal fight. Two months after attorneys filed the class-action suit, a judge issued a preliminary injunction that required D.C. to provide “full hours of special education and related services” to students with disabilities within 15 days.
In February 2022, the court found that the city had failed to do so and entered a contempt order that required D.C. to again provide students with the special education instruction and services mandated in their IEPs.
Attorneys say learning conditions inside the jail have improved since Maya Angelou Public Charter School took over last fall.
“For D.C., with the entry of Maya Angelou to the jail, we’re seeing what we would hope for in correctional education,” said Tayo Belle, managing attorney at School Justice Project. “You know, classes with regular class periods and students really working towards a diploma and truly gaining a huge educational benefit in the process.”
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