Tonya Whitlock and her son Tres, 17, say they have not been able to get Tres into Pivot Charter School near Tampa. Tres has cerebral palsy, and the family said the charter school is concerned they cannot provide all the services Tres needs.
This month, an investigation by StateImpact Florida revealed that more than 86% of Florida charter schools don’t serve a single student with a severe disability, compared to half of traditional public schools.
State education officials say no school is required to take every student with every disability. But lawyers are divided on whether charter schools can legally turn kids away.
Julie Causton-Theoharis has researched the effects of inclusion on students with disabilities and those without. Research shows both benefit from being in the classroom toghether, she said.
More than 86 percent of charter schools do not enroll a single student with severe disabilities, according to a StateImpact Florida investigation.
School district data shows that students with disabilities are often clustered into a small number of specialty charter schools. Meanwhile, most charter schools enroll very few students with profound disabilities — if any at all.
Charter school advocates note that schools specializing in disabilities are opening across the state. Many readers responded with a shrug: “So what?,” they asked.
Researchers say those enrollment patterns matter because evidence shows both students with disabilities and students without disabilities learn more when placed in the classroom together.
Miami-Dade school board member Raquel Regalado wrote that she was inspired to run for school board after trying to find a school for her daughter with autism.
Our recent story on the difficulties students with severe disabilities have found trying to enroll in charter schools has drawn plenty of reaction from parents in similar situations.
Just 14 percent of Florida charter schools enroll students with profound disabilities. More than half of district schools enroll similar students.
We heard from parents, such as “Randy” in Pasco County, who called in to a special one-hour live radio show last Thursday.
We’ve also heard privately from parents in e-mails.
The FAMU Marching 100 drum major who died last month in Orlando was a homicide victim, according to the Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner‘s Office. The information was released Friday after a meeting between Governor Rick Scott and Florida A&M University President James Ammons. It also came shortly after we learned of a reported molestation at FAMU’s K-12 school last May.
Governor Scott announced Thursday that he wanted Ammons suspended immediately and indefinitely. The governor said the decision is based on information from FDLE agents investigating 26-year-old Robert Champion’s death. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been on the case since shortly after Champion died last month in Orlando. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office is also investigating the death, which is believed to have involved hazing by members of FAMU’s Marching 100 band.
Scott was briefed on the investigation as he traveled home from a trade mission overseas. He told reporters at the airport in Tallahassee Thursday that FDLE is expanding the investigation because of financial irregularities at FAMU.
Tres Whitlock has cerebral palsy, and he said school officials told him they did not have the staff to meet his needs.
Whitlock’s mother, Tonya, said she still doesn’t understand the law’s ambiguity after months of dealing with school officials.
Tres was at the center of our investigation of charter schools. StateImpact Florida discovered that 86 percent of state charter schools did not serve a single child with a severe disability — compared to about half of public schools.
When we published and aired our investigation featuring Tres, one of the biggest questions was, “Doesn’t the law require charter schools to accommodate students like Tres?”
The answer, as you will see below, is complicated. Here are five questions about what the law requires for students with disabilities.
New investigations by the Miami Herald and StateImpact Florida raise serious concerns about Florida’s charter schools – including who’s profiting from them, and whether they are serving kids with severe disabilities.
Fernando Zulueta, president of Academica, gets a drink at the bar in Cain at The Cove, Friday, September 16, 2011, an exclusive beach club in the Bahamas' Atlantis resort. Academica held a leadership retreat for principals of several charter schools there. MIAMI HERALD PHOTO
That’s the topic of a one-hour radio special, “Cashing in on Kids,” by WLRN/Miami Herald News in conjunction with StateImpact Florida and WUSF Public Media.
Both stations aired the program at 2 p.m. Thursday (a first time this has happened in recent memory) and there was a great response from callers and followers on Twitter.
Two callers said they were parents of kids with disabilities who had seen charter schools rejecting students with special needs themselves.
StateImpact Florida reporters Sarah Gonzalez and John O’Connor talked about the main finding of their three-month investigation: that 86 percent of Florida’s charter schools do not serve a single child with a severe disability.
Legislation filed in the Florida House of Representatives would require all Florida public schools to teach students about the events surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the impact of those events on the country.
Representatives Joseph Abruzzo (D-Wellington) and Lori Berman (D-Delray Beach) filed the legislation this week, known as House Bill 1027. “The best defense of our nation is through the education of our children. We must teach the history of 9/11 to avoid a recurrence of these tragic events,” said Abruzzo in a written statement.
A proposed constitutional amendment in Florida that would have allowed taxpayer funds to go toward religious institutions, including schools, was struck down by a judge Wednesday. Amendment 7, titled “Religious Freedom,” was slated for the November 2012 ballot. It was crafted by legislators last spring to counteract a provision of the Constitution known as the Blaine Amendment, which says taxpayer dollars cannot be spent “in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”
The proposed “Religious Freedom” amendment states:
Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to provide, consistent with the United States Constitution, that no individual or entity may be denied, on the basis of religious identity or belief, governmental benefits, funding, or other support and to delete the prohibition against using revenues from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.
Three months ago we sought to put some hard numbers on how many students with disabilities are enrolled in Florida charter schools.
We had no idea how elusive that data is.
First, we’ll skip to the end and tell you what our investigation uncovered: More than 86 percent of Florida charter schools have no students with severe disabilities. By comparison, more than half of traditional public schools have severely disabled students.
And students with disabilities in charter schools are often limited to schools that specialize in disabilities, creating a system that separates students with disabilities from their peers.
But getting to those numbers was a lot harder than it looks.
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
Sarah Gonzalez / StateImpact Florida
