School to Pay $27,000 for Remedial Classes for Dyslexic Honor Student

School officials agreed Friday to pay $27,000 for special schooling and legal expenses for a former dyslexic student who was graduated from high school with honors, even though she could not read.

“It’s long overdue,” Karen Morse said. “I’m relieved it’s over.”

Morse, who has just completed her freshman year at Salem State College in Massachusetts, had sought payment for a second year of remedial education to overcome her dyslexia, a learning disability that caused her to scramble words and read them backward.

In ninth grade, she was diagnosed as “learning disabled,” but it was another two years, when she was a junior at Henniker High School, before her dyslexia was identified.

Morse said she had hidden her inability to read by cheating, mostly by taking papers from other students and erasing their names.

After her disability was diagnosed, she spent the 1984-85 school year at the private Landmark School in Pride’s Crossing, Mass. Henniker sent her a diploma that summer, saying it would not pay for a second year at the school.

After her family sued, a state education hearing examiner ruled in March that the town was liable for the second year of tuition. Payment remained in doubt, however, since the town could appeal.

Officials agreed Friday not to appeal and to pay for the full second year of school, $16,257, plus nearly $11,000 for two years of legal fees and expenses.