KCTV 5Parents upset by Delano closing vote

Students at the Kansas City School District's only school exclusively for students with disabilities will be mainstreaming into other schools as soon as the start of this school year.

The move comes after a vote Wednesday night on a compromise resolution on how and when to close the RJ Delano School.

The biggest critics of the plan have been parents whose students once attended Delano.

"Delano worked out real good for him," Artice Cann said of her autistic son, Jarron, who graduated from Delano this spring at the age of 21. "He learned how to write his name and everything."

Before Delano, she said, Jarron attended a special education program at a traditional school. He was scared, she said. Teachers lost him. She found him once hiding under the stairwell.

"When I was a kid they put me in handcuffs," Jarron said, murmuring.

"Because of his behavior, they didn't know how to handle him," his mother said. "He was handcuffed to some chairs for a couple hours."

Such stories dominated a series of meetings before Wednesday's vote. Delano was among a list of schools to be closed under last year's right-sizing plan, so parents knew it would happen eventually. What they took issue with was the timing.

Placing students with special needs in other schools would require training and building improvements, and funding that requires board approval. The transition had not progressed to that point by May, and the plan was to have Delano closed by Aug. 15, at the start of the 2011-2012 school year.

"I would love to support a decision to mainstream," board member Ray Wilson said Wednesday, "but community members are asking that we take our time and I would vote to wait."

The proposal to close the RJ Delano school came from a study by a consulting company that specializes in special education. The company indicated the current setup was a violation of federal law that calls for the "least restrictive environment" for students with special needs. Typically, that means an individualized learning environment within the social setting of a traditional school.

Delano's SAC president, Debra Jones, cited portions of that same report to cement parents' concerns.

"What these auditors have identified," she told the Board, "is an inherent and very present stigma against exceptional education students amongst both students and faculty in a traditional education setting. To be completely candid, we are beginning to question if any level of training can bridge the level of deliberate segregation that currently exists in these schools."

Several board members shared some of her concerns.

Board member Duane Kelly didn't see the rush and dismissed the legal issue.

"How are we going to get sued?" he asked. "I don't know who is going to sue us. To be sued is a non-threat."

Board member Arthur Benson responded, "I'll tell you who's going to sue us: the U.S. Department of Justice, the Office of Civil Rights. When that happens, it cuts off federal funds...all funds."

Benson has significant experience with civil rights as the lawyer who litigated a decades-long school desegregation lawsuit.

Partway through the discussion, the superintendent made a promise.

"If the district is in a state of unpreparedness to make the transition," Superintendent John Covington said, "then we won't."

That prompted board member Crispin Rea to suggest a compromise: to approve disbursal of the $450,000 needed to make the transition and close Delano only after the necessary changes are in place.

Benson and board member Derek Richey balked at the compromise, deeming it micro-management of a Superintendent hired to make the changes he deemed necessary to impose education.

That compromise passed by a vote of 6-to-2.