Lopsided local reporting on educational issues

[Reefmonkey]

I've noticed a trend in the last few years of unflattering reporting on local media portrayal of how local school districts handle students with disabilities. Generally, the articles portray the districts as uncaring and not wanting to acknowledge or provide services for children with disabilities, and portray the parents as noble crusaders for their childrens' rights under the law. The district is portrayed as ducking comment on the issue. Rarely do the articles ever prominently acknowledge that schools are prohibited under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) from commenting at all on the situation. The parents can badmouth the district all they want, can even make up lies about the district, and the district cannot defend itself or even counter the lies. Greg Groogan with Fox 26 is especially prolific in championing the parents and neglecting to mention the schools are under what amounts to a gag order. Groogan himself is one of those parents who feels his own child's autism was not properly handled by a school district, which calls his impartiality into question

 

I've personally seen school districts' sides of contentious cases where parents are claiming the districts denied FAPE. I've seen very often parents are refusing to accept schools' good-faith evaluations of their children and determination that they do not qualify for special education services, and I've also seen that there are many parents out there whose children have been identified, and given services, but the parents want more, and take the districts to due process, or even federal court. When parents win, they report having been vindicated, but when the school wins, it's almost never reported as a vindication for the district. If it gets reported at all (again, under FERPA, the districts can't report their victory) it gets reported as parents getting "railroaded" by a system that is "stacked against them." So what does not get reported is how often parents take districts to due process for ridiculous reasons, demanding atrociously expensive and unfeasible accomodations, even including paying for private school tuition amounting sometimes well over $100,000 a year.

 

Because of FERPA, I cannot provide specifics on most of the cases I know about. However, I can cite a case that occurred in Massachusetts that demonstrates what I am talking about, since it went to federal court and became a matter of public record this year. The case is Lincoln-Sudbury Regional School District vs Mr. and Mrs. W. The W's daughter, Wallis, was a sophomore in the local high school when she suffered a concussion in field hockey practice at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year. She returned to school after two weeks, was given accommodations for having missed those weeks, and continued making the same high grades after the concussion as she did before. However, she did struggle somewhat in a very advanced math class she was taking, and in May 2013, her teacher recommended that she take a less rigorous but still advanced math class the next year. Her parents began to claim that Wallis was a disabled child, and accused the school of failing to comply with their legal obligations to provide her with special education. In September 2013, they removed her from the Lincoln-Sudbury schools and enrolled her at Lawrence Academy, a private school. (Wallis is now an honors student at George Washington University). They then took the district to due process to demand that the district reimburse them for the private school tuition. It was a long drawn out process that cost the school district tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, drawn out mostly by the parents' delay tactics where they demanded that hearing officer after hearing officer recuse themselves, before it was found that the school had met all the legal requirements, and the parents' claims were "patently frivolous" and brought for "an improper purpose." The district then sued the parents in federal court for attorney's fees, while the parents countersued for a motion of summary judgement on their counterclaim appealing the due process hearing. The federal court found for the school and against the parents on all filings.

 

Lest you think that this Massachusetts case is an isolated one that happened far from Houston, there is a similar case that happened here in Houston just last year which I can talk about, because the mother waived privacy to try to garner publicity for her fight. The mother is Tianna Hall, a self-appointed crusader for autism rights in schools. Her autistic son was getting Extended School Year services over the summer, but she decided he wasn't getting enough, and was "regressing" over the summer, so she paid for private interventions, and then demanded that the school district, Spring Branch, reimburse her. Not only was it found that her son had not regressed as she claimed, in the course of the hearing it was discovered that she had made multiple false statements (contradicted by her own posts on social media), had been giving her son marijuana on her own belief that it would help him, and it was found that her own behavior in the home was adversely affecting her son. Additionally, the hearing officer made the rare move of chastising her in his decision for false personal attacks she had made against Joni Warren, the head of the special education department. It should be noted that Greg Groogan came to sessions of the due process hearing to support Tianna Hall and take pictures with her that she posted on social media, but Groogan didn't report on this story once the hearing officer released his findings.

 

These are not isolated cases, school districts have to deal with these kinds of frivolous demands all the time. Most of the time the districts cave and give the parents as much as they can because it's less expensive than lawyer fees, and sometimes this includes paying for private school tuition. There is a cottage industry around this, with "special education advocates" charging parents by the hour and going in and demanding every service under the sun from the district, no matter how inappropriate for the particular child. The most notorious among them is Louis Geigerman. Geigerman has no schooling or experience in the fields of education or psychology, and he uses one or two psychologists who will say whatever he pays them to in order to counter the schools' evaluations. Geigerman is regularly quoted as an "expert" by Fox 26.

 

Recently there have been reports on the local media (first reported by Fox 26) of physical abuse of a 20 year old autistic student at the Harris County Department of Education's ABS-West. Even the Texas Education Agency found ABS-West had violated policies, and certainly it is important that this be reported and fixed. However, the local media vilification of ABS-West and the HCDE has been over-the-top. Students do not get sent to ABS-West unless they have showed significant levels of violence towards themselves or others, so much so that the local schools' special enclosed Alternative Behavior classrooms cannot handle them. The teachers in the districts' alternative behavior classrooms regularly get spit on, have chairs thrown at them, get bitten, punched, kicked, scratched, etc. get told they are going to be killed, etc. I've seen the multiple bruises and scabs from scratches my own wife has come home with - and these are the students that the schools believe they can handle on their own - imagine how dangerous the students they send to ABS-West are. Imagine a whole school of students like this, and as a teacher having to deal with nothing but these kids all day, every day. I can believe that the employees of ABS-West lose their cool from time to time - but that is reason to provide them more services, more support, not vilify teachers who are underpaid to be physically and verbally abused all day.

 

Even in cases of teachers within school districts using excessive physical manipulation on students, the local media tends to exaggerate and report the parents' claims as fact. In April 2016, Greg Groogan reported "a child challenged with Down Syndrome, was throttled and thrown to the ground by an adult special education teaching assistant." This was not true. The incident was captured on surveillance cameras, the child was supposed to be sitting, was noncompliant, and the teaching assistant put one hand on the child's shoulder, no where near his neck, and attempted to push him into a seating position. The child then flopped down on the ground, which was a tactic he used when he was noncompliant. The district rightly fired the teaching assistant immediately, but the District Attorney's office, on viewing the tape, found no reason to press charged. The mother was going around telling the story of her child being "choked", and also claimed that the district had not allowed her access to the video, which was not true, the district had allowed her to view the video, but had not granted her request for a copy of the video, because it had images of other students who were protected by privacy laws and they could not allow her to distribute it.

 

What I hope to accomplish by posting this is not to argue that districts are perfect, but to hopefully raise awareness that there are parents out there looking to game the system, not above exaggerating or even outright lying about schools, and there are local reporters, some with their own biases and axe to grind, perfectly happy to print these parents' sob stories as fact, without acknowledging that schools are barred by law from publicly defending themselves against even defamatory false accusations.

[Reefmonkey]

2 hours ago, ekdrm2d1 said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is false.

Care to elaborate?

[Blue Dogs]

There's also the incident at Furr High School, where HISD & others got the principal fired over FAKE allegations.

[Blue Dogs]

On 2/19/2020 at 2:13 AM, Zwallace said:

There is also marijuana and other drugs problem existing at schools. Those drugs are really popular among young people and even small kids. I think we are to do something, or at least, be more attentive to other children problems. Student safety should be school priority #1. The local authorities have to create more rehab centers, for example, like this one https://addictionresource.com/drug-rehab/men-only/ It could become a solution. 

YIKES! It's that bad ?

[zaphod]

I would never fault a parent with a child with a disability for feeling like they have to fight for their kid. I suspect that if parents were passive and nobody ever demanded video evidence or inquiries, that the subsequent lack of accountability would indeed lead to students being abused.

 

I understand that teachers have to put up with a lot. But compassion burnout is real, and so you cannot assume all teachers are good at their job or that they care about your kid's interests at all. And people do have high expectations for public school districts. They are huge, omnipresent things that we all had to spend 12 years attending, then we we grow up they become a huge component to the average person's tax burden.

[Reefmonkey]

Absolutely parents and children have rights and should avail themselves of the processes to assert those rights. But there are affluent parents who are abusing those processes to coerce schools into providing services their children don't qualify for, in order to give their already-priviledged children more advantages. In the wake of last year's college admissions cheating scandal, is this so hard to believe? Autism is the new hip label, and it and ADHD come with all sorts of accomodations, including on SAT and ACT tests. When a parent threatens to go to due process because testing found their child didn't qualify, the district has two options: fight them in due process, which might end up going to federal court, and cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars, or cave in and give those services, which would cost tens of thousands over time instead. Usually districts choose the latter, which is cheaper, but sometimes do fight, to prevent precedents from being established, and usually get vilified for it, whether they win or lose. And which ever way the school goes, the process takes away money that is needed for truly needy kids.

 

I'm not saying that all or even most kids in special ed are there illegitimately, to the contrary, but even with true disabilities, a lot of times parents have unrealistic expectations of the kind of services schools should provide, they may be misinformed about what are appropriate interventions for their child's disabilities. They may also expect a Cadillac when schools are only required to pay for a Chevrolet. Schools are often put in impossible situations, often with unfunded mandates. There are a lot of seriously mentally ill students out there, dangers to themselves and others, some so seriously ill that they require inpatient treatment costing upwards of $100,000 a year, and schools have been ordered to pay for this. Think about it, if a child has cancer, a disease that is beyond a school nurse's ability to treat, is the school on the hook for paying to send the child to MD Anderson? Then why are schools being paid to treat severe mental illnesses, diseases that are beyond a school system's ability to treat? This is the intersection between our society's dysfunctional unequal attitude towards mental illness in comparison to physical illness, and our state's dysfunctional school finance system.

[Blue Dogs]

Any new developments on the TX Education Agency's bid in taking over Houston ISD ?

[mkultra25]

4 hours ago, Blue Dogs said:

Any new developments on the TX Education Agency's bid in taking over Houston ISD ?

 

Not directly related to the takeover, but there's this:

 

Top HISD administrator on paid leave after FBI, IRS search

[MachuPichu]

On 9/4/2018 at 1:46 PM, Reefmonkey said:

These are not isolated cases, school districts have to deal with these kinds of frivolous demands all the time. Most of the time the districts cave and give the parents as much as they can because it's less expensive than lawyer fees, and sometimes this includes paying for private school tuition. There is a cottage industry around this, with "special education advocates" charging parents by the hour and going in and demanding every service under the sun from the district, no matter how inappropriate for the particular child. The most notorious among them is Louis Geigerman. Geigerman has no schooling or experience in the fields of education or psychology, and he uses one or two psychologists who will say whatever he pays them to in order to counter the schools' evaluations. Geigerman is regularly quoted as an "expert" by Fox 26.

 

 

 

Thanks for posting and exposing Louis Geigerman. I've been following and reading about special educational matters for the longest time, and this Geigerman fella truly is a piece of work. He tried to open his own charter school once, but then realized how hard it is to actually run a school, so he easily gave up on that endeavor.  He obviously bit off more than he could chew and then tucked his tail and ran off. I guess he feels more comfortable critiquing from the sidelines of his own sanctimony because he realized how truly inadequate he is as a catalyst for the betterment of society's children. Everything I've read about him (and most advocates in Texas for that matter like Pat Freeze, Shemica Allen, Lisa Carelli-Lang, and Karen Mayer Cunningham) shows all they do is really just for theatrics to impress upon uninformed (or in Tianna's case, emotionally unstable) parents, but there is no true meaningful outcome their actions bring to helping children. Any apparent "good" they do is unfortunately cancelled out by the needless bureaucracy they put in, harassment of staff members, as well as the taxing of already thin school resources. Good educators, diagnosticians, teachers, LSSPs, administrators, and therapists end up leaving the field as a result, causing a feedback loop to supply their own demand. 

 

For further reference, there was a Texas House Bill 1669 which would allow schools to be reimbursed for legal fees if they win a due process case. I absolutely cannot fathom why anyone committed to justice and fairness would be against this. But of course the outrage king Louis Geigerman was adamantly against this, obviously because a measure like that would level the playing field against fiends like Louis and his NARDA-kin. Essentially, a law like that would help schools and children, but would be bad for Louis's advocate business.  

 

As Upton Sinclair once said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. In Louie’s case, he not only created a box he could crawl in and shield himself from reality, but Louis also curls into a fetal position on the floor, covers his ears and prays for the rest of the world to go away.

Edited April 18, 2020 by MachuPichu
typo

[Blue Dogs]

On 4/17/2020 at 10:03 PM, MachuPichu said:

 

 

Thanks for posting and exposing Louis Geigerman. I've been following and reading about special educational matters for the longest time, and this Geigerman fella truly is a piece of work. He tried to open his own charter school once, but then realized how hard it is to actually run a school, so he easily gave up on that endeavor.  He obviously bit off more than he could chew and then tucked his tail and ran off. I guess he feels more comfortable critiquing from the sidelines of his own sanctimony because he realized how truly inadequate he is as a catalyst for the betterment of society's children. Everything I've read about him (and most advocates in Texas for that matter like Pat Freeze, Shemica Allen, Lisa Carelli-Lang, and Karen Mayer Cunningham) shows all they do is really just for theatrics to impress upon uninformed (or in Tianna's case, emotionally unstable) parents, but there is no true meaningful outcome their actions bring to helping children. Any apparent "good" they do is unfortunately cancelled out by the needless bureaucracy they put in, harassment of staff members, as well as the taxing of already thin school resources. Good educators, diagnosticians, teachers, LSSPs, administrators, and therapists end up leaving the field as a result, causing a feedback loop to supply their own demand. 

 

For further reference, there was a Texas House Bill 1669 which would allow schools to be reimbursed for legal fees if they win a due process case. I absolutely cannot fathom why anyone committed to justice and fairness would be against this. But of course the outrage king Louis Geigerman was adamantly against this, obviously because a measure like that would level the playing field against fiends like Louis and his NARDA-kin. Essentially, a law like that would help schools and children, but would be bad for Louis's advocate business.  

 

As Upton Sinclair once said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. In Louie’s case, he not only created a box he could crawl in and shield himself from reality, but Louis also curls into a fetal position on the floor, covers his ears and prays for the rest of the world to go away.

Assuming the proposed statewide takeover of HISD is off the table for the moment ?

[LesterTheLester]

Hi, Blue Dogs. Looks like it for now:

 

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/judge-issues-injunction-to-stop-tea-takeover-of-hisd/285-f9ece490-ecb0-4550-a74b-7c986b1cf378#:~:text=Greg Abbott said the TEA,outside of a public meeting

[Reefmonkey]

Ugh, letting TEA take over HISD would be like letting an arsonist write the national fire code. TEA's fingerprints are all over so many of the problems HISD and districts across the state are having. HISD was already having its struggles back in 2013 when HISD made it annex North Forest ISD. Merging a failed district with a struggling one - what a fantastic idea! And the debacle over special ed both in HISD and across the state - it was TEA that told districts to cap the number of students identified as special ed, but then when the DoEd came in and cracked down on schools, TEA threw them under the bus instead of accepting its responsibility. And then the feds give a billion in a grant to help rectify the situation, the schools are like "oh, finally," but TEA says "no, we're keeping that money, that's for us to 'enforce' you." And then this year the TEA has restricted schools' options for making their own decisions on how to reopen safely, while providing them no useful guidance on how to do so.

[Blue Dogs]

Several African American elected officeholders in Houston & many civil rights activists have blasted HISD's decision in not giving Lathan the position of HISD Superintendent on a permanent basis, calling the decision "grossly misguided" & "ill-motivated":

 

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/2020/11/18/386318/naacp-leaders-call-vote-against-interim-hisd-superintendent-racially-polarized/

 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/Grossly-misguided-and-ill-motivated-15734253.php

 

 

The racially-charged hostility inside HISD School Board of Trustees continues to escalate even further.....

Edited November 19, 2020 by Blue Dogs

[Ross]

4 hours ago, Blue Dogs said:

Several African American elected officeholders in Houston & many civil rights activists have blasted HISD's decision in not giving Lathan the position of HISD Superintendent on a permanent basis, calling the decision "grossly misguided" & "ill-motivated":

 

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/2020/11/18/386318/naacp-leaders-call-vote-against-interim-hisd-superintendent-racially-polarized/

 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/Grossly-misguided-and-ill-motivated-15734253.php

 

 

The racially-charged hostility inside HISD School Board of Trustees continues to escalate even further.....

I've had enough of the racially based BS on the HISD Board. Those idiots think it's all about them, when it's really all about the kids and their education. It's a little better since Jones and Davila left, but it could be better. The animosity between the Hispanics and the Blacks is just bad. As for Lathan, when she proposed giving staff bigger raises than the teachers, I was done with her.

[Blue Dogs]

On 11/19/2020 at 7:57 PM, Ross said:

I've had enough of the racially based BS on the HISD Board. Those idiots think it's all about them, when it's really all about the kids and their education. It's a little better since Jones and Davila left, but it could be better. The animosity between the Hispanics and the Blacks is just bad. As for Lathan, when she proposed giving staff bigger raises than the teachers, I was done with her.

In other words: you don't think Lathan will get the job on a permanent basis ?

 

Now the animosity between Latinos & African Americans inside HISD: this isn't the first time we've seen deep-seated hostility, it's been going on for decades (some cases, Latinos aligned with arch-segregationists).

[Ross]

1 hour ago, Blue Dogs said:

In other words: you don't think Lathan will get the job on a permanent basis ?

 

Now the animosity between Latinos & African Americans inside HISD: this isn't the first time we've seen deep-seated hostility, it's been going on for decades (some cases, Latinos aligned with arch-segregationists).

Lathan might still get the job, I just don't support her for that role. Fortunately, my kid graduates in May, so I don't have to worry about him being a victim of bad decisions after that.

 

The HISD Board is often seen as a stepping stone to bigger and better political positions, so people do stupid stuff to make a name for themselves. Unfortunately, it's the kids who suffer. It' snot helped by the Legislature not funding schools properly.

[Reefmonkey]

When I heard the board wasn't giving her the job, and was resuming its search for outside candidates, but that she was "welcome to apply for the position," I took that to mean her chances of getting the job were slim to none. Telling someone who has already done the job, so you know how they perform in it, that you are going to look for other candidates but they are "welcome to apply for the position" is kind of like your committed girlfriend telling you she wants to be able to see other people. It's not because she's pretty sure she wants to marry you, but wants to date a few other guys before she decides for sure that you're the one.

 

And I think going outside the district is the right thing to do. HISD has some pretty long-standing cultural problems, and bringing in fresh blood is really the only way to change that culture.

Edited November 24, 2020 by Reefmonkey

[Blue Dogs]

On 11/24/2020 at 3:59 PM, Reefmonkey said:

When I heard the board wasn't giving her the job, and was resuming its search for outside candidates, but that she was "welcome to apply for the position," I took that to mean her chances of getting the job were slim to none. Telling someone who has already done the job, so you know how they perform in it, that you are going to look for other candidates but they are "welcome to apply for the position" is kind of like your committed girlfriend telling you she wants to be able to see other people. It's not because she's pretty sure she wants to marry you, but wants to date a few other guys before she decides for sure that you're the one.

 

And I think going outside the district is the right thing to do. HISD has some pretty long-standing cultural problems, and bringing in fresh blood is really the only way to change that culture.

Now Lathan is leaving Houston ISD. I don't blame her at all! 

[SameButDifferent]

If you think advocates in Houston are bad, you should see the ones in Clear Creek ISD, especially Karen Cunningham. Having failed in stand-up comedy, Karen has turned to the world of special education theatre. She pulls off some super shady stuff and attacks teachers, paraprofessionals, diagnosticians, LSSPs, SLPs, OTs, at the behest of needy privileged parents. Her clientele are mostly privileged and irrational people like Angel Webb, Kimberly Green Barnett, and Jamie Reece. Karen bad mouths school staff in ARD meeting meetings to impress the emotionally unstable and needy parents, all the while negotiating with middle management administrators like Billye Trader and Cynthia Peltier. They're basically in cahoots and essentially throw the school employees under the bus. Karen gets the satisfaction of boosting her ego, wallet, and public image amongst the "Angry CCISD Parents of Facebook", and the middle managers get to sweep problems under the rug and save the school money (going to court costs the school money and they will NEVER get reimbursed for legal fees). Better for the Billyes and Cynthias to just give in and save their hides at the expense of the actual educators. 

Karen and the school administration knows the things she pushes for is complete nonsense, but will do anything to feed her ego and her wallet. 

Edited May 27, 2021 by SameButDifferent

[SameButDifferent]

On 9/4/2018 at 1:46 PM, Reefmonkey said:

I've noticed a trend in the last few years of unflattering reporting on local media portrayal of how local school districts handle students with disabilities. Generally, the articles portray the districts as uncaring and not wanting to acknowledge or provide services for children with disabilities, and portray the parents as noble crusaders for their childrens' rights under the law. The district is portrayed as ducking comment on the issue. Rarely do the articles ever prominently acknowledge that schools are prohibited under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) from commenting at all on the situation. The parents can badmouth the district all they want, can even make up lies about the district, and the district cannot defend itself or even counter the lies. Greg Groogan with Fox 26 is especially prolific in championing the parents and neglecting to mention the schools are under what amounts to a gag order. Groogan himself is one of those parents who feels his own child's autism was not properly handled by a school district, which calls his impartiality into question

 

I've personally seen school districts' sides of contentious cases where parents are claiming the districts denied FAPE. I've seen very often parents are refusing to accept schools' good-faith evaluations of their children and determination that they do not qualify for special education services, and I've also seen that there are many parents out there whose children have been identified, and given services, but the parents want more, and take the districts to due process, or even federal court. When parents win, they report having been vindicated, but when the school wins, it's almost never reported as a vindication for the district. If it gets reported at all (again, under FERPA, the districts can't report their victory) it gets reported as parents getting "railroaded" by a system that is "stacked against them." So what does not get reported is how often parents take districts to due process for ridiculous reasons, demanding atrociously expensive and unfeasible accomodations, even including paying for private school tuition amounting sometimes well over $100,000 a year.

 

Because of FERPA, I cannot provide specifics on most of the cases I know about. However, I can cite a case that occurred in Massachusetts that demonstrates what I am talking about, since it went to federal court and became a matter of public record this year. The case is Lincoln-Sudbury Regional School District vs Mr. and Mrs. W. The W's daughter, Wallis, was a sophomore in the local high school when she suffered a concussion in field hockey practice at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year. She returned to school after two weeks, was given accommodations for having missed those weeks, and continued making the same high grades after the concussion as she did before. However, she did struggle somewhat in a very advanced math class she was taking, and in May 2013, her teacher recommended that she take a less rigorous but still advanced math class the next year. Her parents began to claim that Wallis was a disabled child, and accused the school of failing to comply with their legal obligations to provide her with special education. In September 2013, they removed her from the Lincoln-Sudbury schools and enrolled her at Lawrence Academy, a private school. (Wallis is now an honors student at George Washington University). They then took the district to due process to demand that the district reimburse them for the private school tuition. It was a long drawn out process that cost the school district tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, drawn out mostly by the parents' delay tactics where they demanded that hearing officer after hearing officer recuse themselves, before it was found that the school had met all the legal requirements, and the parents' claims were "patently frivolous" and brought for "an improper purpose." The district then sued the parents in federal court for attorney's fees, while the parents countersued for a motion of summary judgement on their counterclaim appealing the due process hearing. The federal court found for the school and against the parents on all filings.

 

Lest you think that this Massachusetts case is an isolated one that happened far from Houston, there is a similar case that happened here in Houston just last year which I can talk about, because the mother waived privacy to try to garner publicity for her fight. The mother is Tianna Hall, a self-appointed crusader for autism rights in schools. Her autistic son was getting Extended School Year services over the summer, but she decided he wasn't getting enough, and was "regressing" over the summer, so she paid for private interventions, and then demanded that the school district, Spring Branch, reimburse her. Not only was it found that her son had not regressed as she claimed, in the course of the hearing it was discovered that she had made multiple false statements (contradicted by her own posts on social media), had been giving her son marijuana on her own belief that it would help him, and it was found that her own behavior in the home was adversely affecting her son. Additionally, the hearing officer made the rare move of chastising her in his decision for false personal attacks she had made against Joni Warren, the head of the special education department. It should be noted that Greg Groogan came to sessions of the due process hearing to support Tianna Hall and take pictures with her that she posted on social media, but Groogan didn't report on this story once the hearing officer released his findings.

 

These are not isolated cases, school districts have to deal with these kinds of frivolous demands all the time. Most of the time the districts cave and give the parents as much as they can because it's less expensive than lawyer fees, and sometimes this includes paying for private school tuition. There is a cottage industry around this, with "special education advocates" charging parents by the hour and going in and demanding every service under the sun from the district, no matter how inappropriate for the particular child. The most notorious among them is Louis Geigerman. Geigerman has no schooling or experience in the fields of education or psychology, and he uses one or two psychologists who will say whatever he pays them to in order to counter the schools' evaluations. Geigerman is regularly quoted as an "expert" by Fox 26.

 

Recently there have been reports on the local media (first reported by Fox 26) of physical abuse of a 20 year old autistic student at the Harris County Department of Education's ABS-West. Even the Texas Education Agency found ABS-West had violated policies, and certainly it is important that this be reported and fixed. However, the local media vilification of ABS-West and the HCDE has been over-the-top. Students do not get sent to ABS-West unless they have showed significant levels of violence towards themselves or others, so much so that the local schools' special enclosed Alternative Behavior classrooms cannot handle them. The teachers in the districts' alternative behavior classrooms regularly get spit on, have chairs thrown at them, get bitten, punched, kicked, scratched, etc. get told they are going to be killed, etc. I've seen the multiple bruises and scabs from scratches my own wife has come home with - and these are the students that the schools believe they can handle on their own - imagine how dangerous the students they send to ABS-West are. Imagine a whole school of students like this, and as a teacher having to deal with nothing but these kids all day, every day. I can believe that the employees of ABS-West lose their cool from time to time - but that is reason to provide them more services, more support, not vilify teachers who are underpaid to be physically and verbally abused all day.

 

Even in cases of teachers within school districts using excessive physical manipulation on students, the local media tends to exaggerate and report the parents' claims as fact. In April 2016, Greg Groogan reported "a child challenged with Down Syndrome, was throttled and thrown to the ground by an adult special education teaching assistant." This was not true. The incident was captured on surveillance cameras, the child was supposed to be sitting, was noncompliant, and the teaching assistant put one hand on the child's shoulder, no where near his neck, and attempted to push him into a seating position. The child then flopped down on the ground, which was a tactic he used when he was noncompliant. The district rightly fired the teaching assistant immediately, but the District Attorney's office, on viewing the tape, found no reason to press charged. The mother was going around telling the story of her child being "choked", and also claimed that the district had not allowed her access to the video, which was not true, the district had allowed her to view the video, but had not granted her request for a copy of the video, because it had images of other students who were protected by privacy laws and they could not allow her to distribute it.

 

What I hope to accomplish by posting this is not to argue that districts are perfect, but to hopefully raise awareness that there are parents out there looking to game the system, not above exaggerating or even outright lying about schools, and there are local reporters, some with their own biases and axe to grind, perfectly happy to print these parents' sob stories as fact, without acknowledging that schools are barred by law from publicly defending themselves against even defamatory false accusations.

There needs to be a law for schools to countersue and not allow unreasonable parents to take advantage of schools. 

[Blue Dogs]

On 5/27/2021 at 4:57 PM, SameButDifferent said:

There needs to be a law for schools to countersue and not allow unreasonable parents to take advantage of schools. 

Let's not forget about the ugly battle over CRT.

[LesterTheLester]

Here is another review of Karen Mayer Cunningham that was put on Yelp. com

 

Having failed in stand-up comedy and marriage counseling, Karen turned to the world of special education theatre. The driving force behind her business model is advertising on Facebook as well as attacking special education teachers and assessment staff in IEP meetings. I've worked with her for years and I know how she and other so-called special education advocates operate.

Karen bad mouths school staff in IEP meeting to impress the needy, uninformed, unstable, distraught or confused parent. She puts up a front to show how "ruthless" she can be, that she will "fight for your child's right to a free and appropriate public education". In actuality these are all platitudes. It's all a joke and she does not really care one ounce. In essence Karen channels a parent's irrational ire towards the special education staff.

What the parents don't know is Karen and the special education administrators secretly have private conversations away from the IEP meetings. They both agree ahead of time to allow Karen to harass the employees, and they go to meetings to allow Karen to attack the school staff and teachers. The administrators then come in and say things like "Oh we will give you this and that now, Mr. and Mrs. Confused and Angry Parent. This was a bad teacher/SLP/school psychologist/occupational therapist". Then Karen gets to look like the hero to the parents. In turn the administrators get to look like a hero to their school board and superintendent for not letting the IEP meeting go to Due Process and costing the district an arm and a leg. The consequence for such recklessness? Teachers and other staff end up quitting due to the frustration of extra needless bureaucracy and the blame game. That's why there are always shortages of special education staff. Staff go through the endless loop of Recycle, Reuse, Repeat. The cycle continues and nothing of merit actually changes. Karen and the school administration knows the things she pushes for is complete nonsense, but will do anything to feed her desire for validation and to feel important and needed.

But every once in a while the schools fight back and don't allow the Karens of the world to screw around. Case in point is this legal decision where Conroe ISD called Karen out on her mess and took it all the way to a Due Process Hearing.

https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/305-SE-0616_Conroe.pdf

In the end "Special education boss" Karen Mayer Cunningham got wrecked and laughed out of court when they showed that what she pushes for all the time is without merit. Her usual (fake) gripes are about placement, eligibility, IEEs, and services.

Regardless, Conroe ISD lost a ton of money on legal fees defending what was right. The deck is truly stacked against schools in this lopsided world, and the ones who end up losing are the school staff and the students.

But the Conroe ISD Due Process case is extremely rare and out of the ordinary. Business as usual for schools are pseudo-contentious IEP meetings where Karen gets the satisfaction of giving an appearance that she was a catalyst for change. The school administrators on the other hand get to save the school from exorbitant legal fees. They're really in on it together and both could not care less about the school staff or the special needs students.

[Irene]

Here’s my experience with “Special Education Boss” Karen Mayer Cunningham.

She really does not believe anything she alleges to fight for and does not truly advocate for the rights of children in special education. Having worked in Clear Creek Independent School District for many years in special education in ARDs and managerial roles, I have witnessed her performative outrage, bad faith arguments, distortions, waste, and outright fraud. But unlike the needy uninformed clientele she services, I have also been privy to what goes on behind closed doors and can speak firsthand about her duplicity and how she manipulates people. Here is a breakdown:

 

Karen

Karen is just a good marketer. Her product is not only her “Special Education Boss” merchandise, monthly subscription fee, expensive training courses, online classes, but also herself as a brand. Her shortcomings as a person aside, she acts belligerently in ARD meetings and knowingly makes bad faith arguments and discussions in order to perform for uninformed parents. To make herself seem useful she needs somebody on campus who is the evil special education “bad guy” who allegedly denies FAPE to a child. Then she needs to be seen as the good cowboy vigilante who swooped in to save a child from that evil teacher, diagnostician, LSSP, Speech Therapist, Occupational Therapist, Music Therapist, or Physical Therapist who was denying a child a Free and Appropriate Public Education.

 

Special Education Administrators

The special education administrators are tasked by the Superintendent and Board of Directors with many objectives. There are two relevant ones at play here. First is saving the district money spent on litigation because expensive lawyer fees are never reimbursed. Second is to avoid public relations disasters that may stem from litigation like Due Process hearings or ADA complaints.

 

Parent

Special Education Boss Karen’s clientele are easily impressed parents who without effort fall prey for marketing gimmicks and internet clickbait. They’re often upper middle-class people who spend more time on Facebook than any human being should. They in turn rave about how great Karen is on Facebook or other social media, furthering her narrative and feeding into her grift. Because of confidentiality laws, schools are not allowed to correct these distortions and outright lies.

 

And finally…

This is where the mutual interests of Karen and special education administrators come together. She and administrators often have meetings and lunch to chat, gossip, and reach negotiations ahead of official ARD/IEP meetings. They also often badmouth these parents, agree on who Karen gets to attack in the ARD meetings, which campus person takes blame, and how Karen gets to be seen as the person to correct such errors. This in turn impresses the uninformed parents and hopefully the ARD meetings end in agreement and don’t go up to Due Process litigation. Karen in turn looks like a hero and the school administrators get to avoid litigation and bad PR.

 

In essence, they agree to intentionally throw their teachers and other staff members under the bus to give Karen an air of usefulness and legitimacy. Karen gets to give the appearance she swooped in and got the child the services they needed. This typically prevents further litigation because parents feel (falsely) that Karen fixed something. The easily impressed parents then post on Facebook about how great Karen was, thus feeding into her narrative and self-indulgence to feel both intellectually and morally superior.

 

School staff get burned out and either switch careers or get shifted around to other positions. Then some other poor schmuck fills in the position of the vacant special education staff. Nothing really gets better even though there gets to be an impression things actually change, and Karen, in her need for relevance, clickbait, attention, PR, and legitimacy, gets validated as some magical catalyst of change. The parents then recommend her to others and feed the cycle. As of late she is also stepping it up with press conferences in yet another disgusting marketing ploy.

 

Every now and then these parents are still not satisfied and Karen can’t convince the parents to avoid going to Due Process. Here again, Karen inserts herself into more duplicity. From my experience she negotiates with the school behind closed doors and intentionally loses the Due Process hearings. The compromise she has with school administrators is if management lets her “win” most day-to-day IEP/ARD meetings then she will drop the ball on the Due Process hearings. I can’t speak for every Due process she’s been in, but just the ones I’ve been involved in, but by my last count she has “lost” every case of litigation. There has been some discussion with a few districts about giving her a few Due Process hearings to give her some air of legitimacy, but it has not yet come to that.

 

Here is a synopsis of the rogue’s gallery:

-Karen = self-promoting opportunist in need of a scapegoat. She does not get any real meaningful results. As another cog in the wheel of injustice, she takes advantage of the system for her own ego. Karen’s “strength” is her marketing, networking, and lack of morals. In her cynical grift-like pyramid scheme she is trying to offer more trainings to others so they can do the same as she does.

-Special education administrators = people who want job security, to save the school money, and avoid bad PF. They use teachers and staff as their pawns towards this end. Special education administration’s “strength” is their large pool of educators they willingly shift around like pawns on a chessboard.

-Parents / Karen’s clientele = gullible schmucks who fall for Karen’s used car salesman tactics.

-Teachers/school staff = the actual people who get things done. Some are good and some are bad. But all are victims who are at best cannon fodder and scapegoats for opportunists like Karen. 

-Kids who Karen alleges to help = the real victims.

Edited March 19, 2022 by Irene

[Reefmonkey]

On 5/27/2021 at 4:57 PM, SameButDifferent said:

There needs to be a law for schools to countersue and not allow unreasonable parents to take advantage of schools. 

There actually is such a law, under Section 1415(i)(3)(B)(i)(II) of IDEA 2004, which allows school districts to recover attorney's fees from parents who make frivolous or unreasonable die process claims. However, districts rarely resort to this except in especially egregious cases to avoid the bad publicity. I'm trying to find the article from a few years ago, I think it was written by Lisa Falkenberg, where a Houston-area district sued a parent over a frivolous claim, and won, but the article spun it to sound like Big Bad School uses legal system to further victimize Poor Parents of A Disabled Child.

[Blue Dogs]

On 11/24/2020 at 3:38 PM, Ross said:

Lathan might still get the job, I just don't support her for that role. Fortunately, my kid graduates in May, so I don't have to worry about him being a victim of bad decisions after that.

 

The HISD Board is often seen as a stepping stone to bigger and better political positions, so people do stupid stuff to make a name for themselves. Unfortunately, it's the kids who suffer. It' snot helped by the Legislature not funding schools properly.

Speaking of using the HISD School Board of Trustees as a stepping stone: Jolanda Jones did just that & was recently elected to the seat held by Garnet Coleman in TX House of Representatives District 147 in a special election. 

[Irene]

On 11/5/2021 at 3:10 PM, LesterTheLester said:

Here is another review of Karen Mayer Cunningham that was put on Yelp. com

 

Having failed in stand-up comedy and marriage counseling, Karen turned to the world of special education theatre. The driving force behind her business model is advertising on Facebook as well as attacking special education teachers and assessment staff in IEP meetings. I've worked with her for years and I know how she and other so-called special education advocates operate.

Karen bad mouths school staff in IEP meeting to impress the needy, uninformed, unstable, distraught or confused parent. She puts up a front to show how "ruthless" she can be, that she will "fight for your child's right to a free and appropriate public education". In actuality these are all platitudes. It's all a joke and she does not really care one ounce. In essence Karen channels a parent's irrational ire towards the special education staff.

What the parents don't know is Karen and the special education administrators secretly have private conversations away from the IEP meetings. They both agree ahead of time to allow Karen to harass the employees, and they go to meetings to allow Karen to attack the school staff and teachers. The administrators then come in and say things like "Oh we will give you this and that now, Mr. and Mrs. Confused and Angry Parent. This was a bad teacher/SLP/school psychologist/occupational therapist". Then Karen gets to look like the hero to the parents. In turn the administrators get to look like a hero to their school board and superintendent for not letting the IEP meeting go to Due Process and costing the district an arm and a leg. The consequence for such recklessness? Teachers and other staff end up quitting due to the frustration of extra needless bureaucracy and the blame game. That's why there are always shortages of special education staff. Staff go through the endless loop of Recycle, Reuse, Repeat. The cycle continues and nothing of merit actually changes. Karen and the school administration knows the things she pushes for is complete nonsense, but will do anything to feed her desire for validation and to feel important and needed.

But every once in a while the schools fight back and don't allow the Karens of the world to screw around. Case in point is this legal decision where Conroe ISD called Karen out on her mess and took it all the way to a Due Process Hearing.

https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/305-SE-0616_Conroe.pdf

In the end "Special education boss" Karen Mayer Cunningham got wrecked and laughed out of court when they showed that what she pushes for all the time is without merit. Her usual (fake) gripes are about placement, eligibility, IEEs, and services.

Regardless, Conroe ISD lost a ton of money on legal fees defending what was right. The deck is truly stacked against schools in this lopsided world, and the ones who end up losing are the school staff and the students.

But the Conroe ISD Due Process case is extremely rare and out of the ordinary. Business as usual for schools are pseudo-contentious IEP meetings where Karen gets the satisfaction of giving an appearance that she was a catalyst for change. The school administrators on the other hand get to save the school from exorbitant legal fees. They're really in on it together and both could not care less about the school staff or the special needs students.

Karen Cunningham is currently in yet another due process hearing with Clear Creek ISD (CCISD) for Angel Webb. There's been some discussion with the special education administrators to let Karen actually win one this time. From what I've heard from people in the district, Karen's desperately in need of a win after 5 consecutive losses. This due process is also different for her because Angel Webb is one of Karen's heaviest social media marketers and biggest clientele. She's also the leader of the parents of CCISD special education Facebook page. This will definitely help her business, which is also why they’re making this proceeding open to the public.

I'd be interested in what direction the special education department and CCISD board of directions decides to go with this one. One faction of the district is thinking about letting Karen win in return for Karen appeasing her other crusading parents. The other faction is saying enough is enough and wants to fight back against Karen’s shameless self promotion and dishonesty. Either way the schools will end up being the “Big bad school further victimizing those poor parents”